The Voyage of the Rattletrap Part 12

X: AMONG THE MOUNTAINS

After we got back to the Rattletrap we promised ourselves plenty of Sport the next day watching the freighters with their long teams and wagon trains. Jack could not recover from his first glimpse of Henderson.

"Rather a neat little turnout to take a young lady out driving with," he said, after we had gone to bed. "Twenty-two oxen and four wagons. Plenty of room. Take along her father and mother. And the rest of the family. And her school-mates. And the whole town. Good team to go after the doctor with if somebody was sick--mile and a half an hour. That trotting-cow man at Yankton ought to come up here and show Henderson a little speed. Still, I dare say Henderson could beat Old Browny on a good day for sleeping, and when he didn't have Blacky to pall him along."

But we got small sight of the trail the next day, as the rain we had left behind came upon us again in greater force than ever.

It began toward morning, and when we looked out, just as it was becoming light, we found it coming down in sheets--"cold, wet sheets," as Ollie said, too. The horses stood huddled together, wet and chilled. We got on our storm-coats and led them up to a house a sort distance away, which proved to be Smith's ranch.

There we found large, dry sheds, under which we put them and where they were very glad to go. Once back in the cabin of the Rattletrap, we scarcely ventured out again.

It certainly wasn't a very cheerful day. We would not have minded the rain much, because we were dry enough; but the cold was disagreeable, and we were obliged to wear our overcoats all day. We could watch the road from the front of the wagon, and saw a number of freighters go by, usually with empty wagons, as it soon became too muddy for those with loads. We saw one fourteen-ox team with four wagons, and another man with twelve oxen and three wagons. There were also a number of mule teams, and we noticed one of twelve mules and five wagons, and several of ten mules and three or four wagons. With these the driver always rode the nigh wheel animal--that is, the left-hand rear one.

"I'm going to put a saddle on Old Blacky and ride him after this," said Jack. "Bound to be in the fas.h.i.+on. Wonder how Henderson is getting along in the mud? A mile in two hours, I suppose. Must be impossible for him to see the head oxen through this rain."

The downpour never stopped all day. We tried letter-writing, but it was too cold to hold the pen; and Jack's efforts at playing the banjo proved equally unsuccessful. We fell back on reading, but even this did not seem to be very satisfactory. So we finally settled down to watching the rain and listening to the wind.

When evening came we shut down the front of the cover and tried to warm up the cabin a little by leaving the oil-stove burning, but it didn't seem to make much difference. So we soon went to bed, rather damp, somewhat cold, and a little dispirited.

I think we all stayed awake for a long time listening to the beating of the rain on the cover, and wondering about the weather of the morrow.

When we awoke in the morning it did not take long to find out about the weather. The rain had ceased and the sky was clear, but it was colder. Outside we found ice on the little pools of water in the footprints of the horses. We were stiff and cold. Some of us may have thought of the comforts of home, but none of us said anything about them.

"This is what I like," said Jack. "Don't feel I'm living unless I find my shoes frozen in the morning. Like to break the ice when I go to wash my face and hands, and to have my hair freeze before I can comb it."

But we observed that he kept as close to the camp-fire which we started as any of us. We went up to Smith's to look after the horses. While Jack and I were at the sheds Ollie stayed in the road watching the freight teams. A big swarthy man, over six feet in height, came along, and after looking over the fence at Smith's house some time, said to Ollie:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Effect of a Dog on a Mexican]

"Do you s'pose Smith's at home?"

"Oh, I guess so," answered Ollie.

"I'd like to see him," went on the man, with an uneasy air.

"Probably you'll find him eating breakfast," said Ollie.

"I don't like to go in," said the man. "Why not?"

"I'm--I'm afraid of the dog."

"Oh!" replied Ollie. "Well, I'm not. Come on," and he stalked ahead very bravely, while the man followed cautiously behind.

"He's a Mexican," said Smith in explanation afterwards. "All Mexicans are afraid of dogs."

"That's a pretty broad statement," said Jack, after Smith had gone. "I believe, if there was a good reward offered, that I could find a Mexican who isn't afraid of dogs. Though perhaps it's the hair they're afraid of; Mexican dogs don't have any, you know."

"Don't any of them have hair?" asked Ollie.

"Not a hair," answered his truthful uncle. "I don't suppose a Mexican dog would know a hair if he saw it."

"I think that's a bigger story than Smith's," said Ollie.

It was Sunday, and we spent most of the day in the wagon, though we took a long walk up the valley in the afternoon. The first thing Ollie said the next morning was, "When are we going to see the buffaloes?"

Smith had been telling us about them the evening before. They were down-town, and belonged to a Dr. McGillicuddie. They had been brought in recently from the Rosebud Indian Agency, and had been captured some time before in the Bad Lands.

We followed the trail, now as deep with mud as it had been with dust, meeting many freighters on the way, and found the buffaloes near the Deadwood stage barn.

"See!" exclaimed Ollie; "there they are, in the yard."

"Don't say 'yard,'" returned Jack; "say 'corral,' with a good, strong accent on the last syllable. A yard is a corral, and a farm a ranch, and a revolver a six-shooter--and a lot more.

Don't be green, Oliver."

"Oh, bother!" replied Ollie. "There's ten of 'em. See the big fellow!"

"They're nice ones, that's so," answered Jack. "I'd like to see the Yankton man we heard about try to milk that cow over in the corner."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Post-Mortem on a Grizzly]

After we had seen the buffaloes we wandered about town and jingled our spurs, which were quite in the fas.h.i.+on. We encountered a big crowd in front of one of the markets, and found that a hunter had just come in from the mountains to the west with the carca.s.s of the biggest bear ever brought into Rapid City. Some said it was a grizzly, and others a silvertip, and one man tried to settle the difficulty by saying that there wasn't any difference between them. But it was certainly a big bear, and filled the whole wagon-box. Ollie sidled through the crowd and asked so many questions of the man, who was named Reynolds, that he good-naturedly gave Ollie one of the largest of the claws. It was five inches long.

At noon we went down to the camp of the freighters on the outskirts of town, near Rapid Creek. There must have been fifty "outfits"--Jack said that was the right word--and several hundred mules, as many oxen, and a few horses. The animals were, most of them, wandering about wherever they pleased, the mules and horses taking their dinner out of nosebags, and the mules keeping up a gentle exercise by kicking at one another. It seemed a hopeless confusion, but the men were sitting about on the ground, calmly cooking their dinners over little camp-fires. One man, whom we had got acquainted with in the morning at Smith's, asked us to have dinner with him, and made the invitation so pressing that we accepted. He had several gallon's of coffee and plenty of bacon and canned fruit, and a peculiar kind of bread which he had baked himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Gene Starts a Cook-Book]

"I'm a-thinking," he said, "there ain't enough sal'ratus in that there bread; but I'm a poor cook, anyhow."

The bread seemed to us to be already composed chiefly of saleratus, so his apology struck us as unnecessary. He very kindly wrote out the receipt on a s.h.i.+ngle for Jack, but I stole it away from him after we got home and burned it in the camp-fire; so we escaped that.

"Your pancakes are bad enough," I said to him. "We don't care to try your saleratus bread."

Jack was a good deal worked up about the loss of his receipt, and experimented a long time to produce something like the freighter's bread without it; but as Snoozer wouldn't try the stuff he made, and he was afraid to do so himself, nothing came of it.

We enjoyed our dinner with the man, however, and Jack added further to his vocabulary in finding that the drivers of the ox teams were called "bullwhackers," and those of the mules and horses "muleskinners."

In the afternoon we climbed the hill above our camp. It gave us a long view off to the east across the level country, while away to the west were the mountain-peaks rising higher and higher. It was still cold, and the raw northeast wind moaned through the pines in a way that made us think of winter.

We went to bed early that night, so as to get a good start for Deadwood the next day. We brought the horses down from the ranch in the evening, blanketed them, and stood them out of the wind among some trees.

"Four o'clock must see us rolling out of our comfortable beds and getting ready to start," said Jack, as we turned in. "We must play we are freighters."

Jack planned better than he knew; we really "rolled out" in an exceedingly lively manner at three o'clock. We were sleeping soundly at that hour, when we were awakened by the motion of the wagon. Jack and I sat up. It was swaying from side to side, and we could hear the wheels b.u.mping on the stones. The back end was considerably lower than the front.

"It's running down the bank!" I cried, and we both plunged through the darkness for the brake-handle. We fell over Ollie and Snoozer, and were instantly hopelessly tangled. It seemed an age, with the wagon swaying more and more, before we found the handle.

Jack pushed it up hard, we heard the brake grind on the wheels outside; then there was a great b.u.mp and splash, and the wagon tilted half over and stopped. We found Ourselves lying on the side of the cover, with cold water rising about us. We were not long in getting out, and discovered that the Rattletrap was capsized in the mill-race.

"Old Blacky did it!" cried Jack, as he danced around and shook his wet clothes. "I know he did. The old sinner!"

We got out the lantern and lit it. Only the hind end of the wagon was really in the race; one front wheel still clung to the bank, and the other was up in the air. Ollie got in and began to pa.s.s things out to Jack, while I went up the hill after the horses. Jack was right. Old Blacky was evidently the author of our misfortune. He had broken loose in some manner, and probably begun his favorite operation of making his toilet on the corner of the wagon by rubbing against it. The brake had carelessly been left off, he had pushed the wagon back a few feet, and it had gone over the bank. I soon had the harness on the horses, and got them down the hill. We hitched them to the hind wheel with a long rope, Jack wading in the water to his waist, and pulled the wagon upright. Then we attached them to the end of the tongue, and after hard work drew it out of the race. By this time we were chilled through and through. Our beds and nearly everything we had were soaking with water.