The Yukon Trail Part 14

"I'll stop your clock right then if you do," threatened Big Bill with a scowl.

Dud had been busy stamping out the camp-fire while Holway was driving the horses into the brush.

"Mebbe you had better get the camp things behind them big rocks," Macy conceded.

Even as he spoke there came the crack of a revolver almost at the entrance to the draw.

One of the men swore softly. The gimlet eyes of the old miner fastened on the spot where in another moment his hoped-for rescuers would appear.

A man staggered drunkenly into view. He reeled halfway across the mouth of the draw and stopped. His eyes, questing dully, fell upon the camp.

He stared, as if doubtful whether they had played him false, then lurched toward the waiting group.

"Lost, and all in," Holway said in a whisper to Dud.

The other man nodded. Neither of them made a move toward the stranger, who stopped in front of their camp and looked with glazed eyes from one to another. His face was drawn and haggard and lined. Extreme exhaustion showed in every movement. He babbled incoherently.

"Seven--eighteen--ninety-nine. 'Atta-boy," he said thickly.

"Don't you see he's starving and out of his head?" snapped Holt brusquely. "Get him grub, _p.r.o.nto_."

The old man rose and moved toward the suffering man. "Come, pard. Tha'

's all right. Sit down right here and go to it, as the old sayin' is."

He led the man to a place beside Big Bill and made him sit down. "Better light a fire, boys, and get some coffee on. Don't give him too much solid grub at first."

The famished man ate what was given him and clamored for more.

"Coming up soon, pardner," Holt told him soothingly. "Now tell us howcome you to get lost."

The man nodded gravely. "Hit that line low, Gord. Hit 'er low. Only three yards to gain."

"Plumb bughouse," commented Dud, chewing tobacco stolidly.

"Out of his head--that's all. He'll be right enough after he's fed up and had a good sleep. But right now he's sure some Exhibit A. Look at the bones sticking through his cheeks," Big Bill commented.

"Come, Old-Timer. Get down in your collar to it. Once more now. Don't lie down on the job. All together now." The stranger clucked to an imaginary horse and made a motion of lifting with his hands.

"Looks like his hawss bogged down in Fifty-Mile Swamp," suggested Holt.

"Looks like," agreed Dud.

The old miner said no more. But his eyes narrowed to s.h.i.+ning slits. If this man had come through Fifty-Mile Swamp he must have started from the river. That probably meant that he had come from Kusiak. He was a young man, talking the jargon of a college football player. Without doubt he was, in the old phrasing of the North, a chechako. His clothing, though much soiled and torn, had been good. His voice held the inflections of the cultured world.

Gideon Holt's sly brain moved keenly to the possibility that he could put a name to this human derelict they had picked up. He began to see it as more than a possibility, as even a probability, at least as a fifty-fifty chance. A sardonic grin hovered about the corners of his grim mouth. It would be a strange freak of irony if Wally Selfridge, to prevent a meeting between him and the Government land agent, had sent him a hundred miles into the wilderness to save the life of Gordon Elliot and so had brought about the meeting that otherwise would never have taken place.

CHAPTER X

THE RAH-RAH BOY FUNCTIONS

Big Bill grumbled a good deal at the addition to the party. It would be decidedly awkward if this stranger should become rational and understand the status of the camp he had joined. The word of old Holt alone might be negligible, but supported by that of a disinterested party it would be a very different matter. Still, there was no help for it. They would have to take care of the man until he was able to travel. Perhaps he would go in with them as an additional guard. At the worst Big Bill could give him a letter to Selfridge explaining things and so pa.s.s the buck to that gentleman.

Gid Holt had, with the tacit consent of his guards, appointed himself as a sort of nurse to the stranger. He lit a smudge fire to the windward side of him, fed him small quant.i.ties of food at intervals, and arranged a sleeping-place for him with mosquito netting for protection.

Early in the evening the sick man fell into a sound sleep from which he did not awake until morning. George was away looking after the pack-horses, Dud was cooking breakfast, and Big Bill, his rifle close at hand, was chopping young firs fifty feet back of the camp. The cook also had a gun, loaded with buckshot, lying on a box beside him, so that they were taking no chances with their prisoner. He could not have covered twenty yards without being raked by a cross-fire.

The old miner turned from rearranging the boughs of green fir on the smudge to see that his patient was awake and his mind normal. The quiet, steady eyes resting upon him told that the delirium had pa.s.sed.

"Pretty nearly all in, wasn't I?" the young man said.

The answer of Gid Holt was an odd one. "Yep. Seven--eleven--fifteen.

Take 'er easy, old man," he said in his shrill, high voice as he moved toward the man in the blankets. Then, in a low tone, while he pretended to arrange the bedding over the stranger, he asked a quick question.

"Are you Elliot?"

"Yes."

"Don't tell them. Talk football lingo as if you was still out of your haid." Holt turned and called to Dud. "Says he wants some breakfast."

"On the way," the cook answered.

Holt seemed to be soothing the delirious man. What he really said was this. "Selfridge has arranged a plant for you at Kamatlah. The camp has been turned inside out to fool you. They've brought me here a prisoner so as to keep me from telling you the truth. Pst! Tune up now."

Big Bill had put down his axe and was approaching. He was not exactly suspicious, but he did not believe in taking unnecessary chances.

"I tell you I'm out of training. Played the last game, haven't we? Come through with a square meal, you four-flusher," demanded Elliot in a querulous voice. He turned to Macy. "Look here, Cap. Haven't I played the game all fall? Don't I get what I want now we're through?"

The voice of the young man was excited. His eyes had lost their quiet steadiness and roved restlessly to and fro. If Big Bill had held any doubts one glance dissipated them.

"Sure you do. Hustle over and help Dud with the breakfast, Holt. I'll look out for our friend."

Elliot and Holt found no more chance to talk together that morning.

Sometimes the young Government official lay staring straight in front of him. Sometimes he appeared to doze. Again he would talk in the disjointed way of one not clear in the head.

An opportunity came in the afternoon for a moment.

"Keep your eyes skinned for a chance to lay out the guard to-night and get his gun," Holt said quickly.

Gordon nodded. "I don't know that I've got to do everything just as you say," he complained aloud for the benefit of George, who was pa.s.sing on his way to the place where the horses were hobbled.

"Now--now! There ain't n.o.body trying to boss you," Holt explained in a patient voice.

"They'd better not," snapped the invalid.

"Some sc.r.a.pper--that kid," said the horse wrangler with a grin.

Macy took the first watch that night. He turned in at two after he had roused Dud to take his place. The cook had been on duty about an hour when Elliot kicked Holt, who was sleeping beside him, to make sure that he was ready. The old man answered the kick with another.