They Of The High Trails Part 24

The boy staggered under the force of this. "Holy smoke! Did you do that?"

"Sure I did. It was the only way to save that dear old mother of yours.

I told your sister also that I was going to stop your white-marble exercise, and I'm going to do it if I have to break your back."

There was no mistaking the sincerity and determination of Kelley's tone, and the young man, so far from resenting these qualities, replied, meekly: "I want to get out of it, Ed. I've been saying all day that I must quit it. But what can I do?"

"I'll tell you my plan," said Kelley, with decision. "You've got to buy my interest in the mine."

Morse laughed. "But I haven't any money. I haven't three hundred dollars in the world."

"I'll take your note, provided your sister will indorse it, and she will."

The young fellow looked up at his tall friend in amazement which turned at last into amus.e.m.e.nt. He began to chuckle. "Good Lord! I knew you'd made a mash on Flo, but I didn't know it was mutual. I heard her say, 'be sure and write.'" He slapped Kelley on the back. "There'll be something doing when she comes back in the spring, eh?"

Kelley remained unmoved. "There will be if she finds you rolling that white marble."

"She won't. I'll take your offer. But what will you be doing?"

"Climbing some Alaska trail," replied Kelley, with a remote glance.

THE PROSPECTOR

_--still pushes his small pack-mule through the snow of glacial pa.s.ses seeking the unexplored, and therefore more alluring, mountain range._

VI

THE PROSPECTOR

Old Pogosa was seated in the shade of a farm-wagon, not far from the trader's store at Washakie, eating a cracker and mumbling to herself, when a white man in miner's dress spoke to her in a kindly voice and offered her an orange. She studied him with a dim, s.h.i.+ning, suspicious gaze, but took the orange. Eugene, the grandson of her niece, stood beside the stranger, and he, too, had an orange.

"Tell her," said the white man, "that I want to talk with her about old days; that I am a friend of her people, and that I knew Sitting Bull and Bear Robe. They were great chiefs."

As these words were interpreted to the old witch, her mouth softened a little and, raising her eyes, she studied her visitor intently. At last she said: "Ay, he was a great chief, Sitting Bull. My cousin. I came to visit Shoshoni many moons ago. Never returned to my own people."

To this the miner replied, "They say your husband, Iapi, was one of the sheep-eaters exiled to the mountains?"

Her eyes widened. Her gaze deepened. She clipped her forefinger in sign of agreement. "It was very cold up there in winter. We were often hungry, for the game had all been driven to the plain and we could not follow. Many of our children died. All died but one."

The stranger, whose name was Wetherell, responded with a sigh: "My heart is heavy when I hear of it. Because you are old and have not much food I give you this money." And he handed her a silver dollar and walked away.

The next day, led by Eugene, Wetherell and Kelley, his partner, again approached the old Sioux, this time with a generous gift of beef.

"My brother, here, is paper-chief," he explained. "As a friend of the red people he wants to put in a book all the wrongs that the sheep-eaters suffered."

In this way the gold-seekers proceeded to work upon Pogosa's withered heart. Her mind was clouded with age, but a spark of her old-time cunning still dwelt there, and as she came to understand that the white men were eager to hear the story of the lost mine she grew forgetful.

Her tongue halted on details of the trail. Why should not her tale produce other sides of bacon, more oranges, and many yards of cloth? Her memory wabbled like her finger--now pointing west, now north. At one time the exiles found the gold in the cabin in a bag--like s.h.i.+ning sand; at another it lay in the sand like s.h.i.+ning soldiers' b.u.t.tons, but always it was very beautiful to look upon, and always, she repeated, the white men fled. No one slew them. They went hurriedly, leaving all their tools.

"She knows," exulted Wetherell. "She knows, and she's the one living Indian who can direct us." To Eugene he exclaimed: "Say to her pretty soon she's going to be rich--mebbe go home to Cheyenne River. If she shows us the trail we will take her to her own people."

Like a decrepit eagle the crone pondered. Suddenly she spoke, and her speech was a hoa.r.s.e chant. "You are good to me. The bones of my children lie up there. I will go once more before I die."

Kelley was quick to take advantage of sunset emotion. "Tell her we will be here before sunrise. Warn her not to talk to any one." And to all this Eugene gave ready a.s.sent.

Wetherell slept very little that night, although their tent stood close beside the singing water of the Little Wind. They were several miles from the fort and in a lonely spot with only one or two Indian huts near, and yet he had the conviction that their plans and the very hour of their starting were known to other of the red people. At one moment he was sure they were all chuckling at the "foolish white men"; at another he s.h.i.+vered to think how easy it would be to ambush this crazy expedition in some of the deep, solitary defiles in those upper forests.

"A regiment could be murdered and hidden in some of those savage glooms," said he to himself.

Kelley slept like a top, but woke at the first faint dawn, with the precision of an alarm-clock. In ten minutes he had the horses in, and was throwing the saddles on. "Roll out, Andy," he shouted. "Here comes Eugene."

Wetherell lent himself to the work with suddenly developed enthusiasm, and in half an hour the little train of laden animals was in motion toward the hills. Pogosa was waiting, squatted on the ground at some distance from her tepee. Slipping from his horse, he helped her mount.

She groaned a little as she did so, but gathered up the reins like one resuming a long-forgotten habit. For years she had not ventured to mount a horse, and her withered knees were of small service in maintaining her seat, but she made no complaint.

Slowly the little train crawled up the trail, which ran for the most part along the open side of the slope, in plain view from below. At sunrise they were so well up the slope that an observer from below would have had some trouble in making out the character of the cavalcade. At seven o'clock they entered the first patch of timber and were hidden from the plain.

On the steep places, where the old squaw was forced to cling to her saddle, groaning with pain, the kindly Wetherell walked beside her, easing her down the banks. In crossing the streams he helped her find the shallowest fording, and in other ways was singularly considerate.

Kelley couldn't have done this, but he saw the value of it.

"It's a hard trip and we've got to make it as easy for the old bird as we can."

"She's human," retorted Wetherell, "and this ride is probably painful for her, mentally as well as physically."

"I s'pose it does stir her up some," responded Kelley. "She may balk any minute and refuse to go. We'd better camp early."

A little later Eugene called out, "She says set tepee here." And Kelley consented.

Again it was Wetherell who helped her from her saddle and spread his pack for her to rest upon. He also brought a blanket and covered her as tenderly as if she were his own grandmother. "She's pretty near all in,"

he said, in palliation of this action. He took a pleasure in seeing her revive under the influence of hot food.

When she began to talk, Eugene laughingly explained: "She stuck on you.

She say you good man. Your heart big for old Injun woman."

Kelley chuckled. "Keep it up, Andy," he called through the tent. "I leave all that business to you."

Pogosa's face darkened. She understood the laugh. "Send him away," she commanded Eugene, all of which made Kelley grin with pleasure.

The whole enterprise now began to take on poetry to Wetherell. The wilderness, so big, so desolate, so empty to him, was full of memories to this brown old witch. To her the rus.h.i.+ng stream sang long-forgotten songs of war and the chase. She could hear in its clamor the voices of friends and lovers. This pathway, so dim and fluctuating, so indefinite to the white man, led straight into the heroic past for her. Perhaps she was treading it now, not for the meat and flannel which Kelley had promised her, but for the pleasure of reliving the past. She was young when her husband was banished. In these splendid solitudes her brave young hunter adventured day by day. Here beside one of these glorious streams her children were born in exile; here they suffered the snows of winter, the pests of summer; and here they had died one by one, till only she remained. Then, old and feeble, she had crawled back into the reservation, defiant of Washakie, seeking comfort as a blind dog returns to the fireside from which he has been cruelly spurned.

As she slept, the men spread a map on the ground, and for the hundredth time Wetherell measured the blank s.p.a.ce lying between Bonneville Basin and Fremont's Peak marked "unexplored," and exclaimed:

"It's wonderful how a mountain country expands as you get into it. Don't look much on the map, but, gee! a fellow could spend ten years looking for this mine, and then be no better off than when he started."