They Of The High Trails Part 25

"Yes," responded Kelley, "it's certainly up to you to cherish the old lady."

In the morning Wetherell dressed hastily and crept into the little tent where Pogosa lay. "How are you, granny?" he asked. She only shook her head and groaned.

"She say her back broke," Eugene interpreted.

A brisk rubbing with a liniment which he had brought from his kit limbered the poor, abused loins, and at last Pogosa sat up. She suddenly caught Wetherell's hand and drew it to her withered breast.

"Good white man," she cried out.

"Tell her I'll make her eyes well, too," he commanded Eugene. "The medicine will hurt a little, but it will make her eyes stronger to see the trail."

Kelley could not suppress his amus.e.m.e.nt as he watched Wetherell's operations. "You'll spoil gran'ma," he remarked. "She'll be discontented with the agency doctor. I'm not discouragin' your ma.s.sage operations, mind you, but I can't help thinking that she'll want clean towels, and an osteopath to stroke her back every morning, when she goes back to her tepee."

"If she only holds out long enough to help us to find the mine she can have a trained nurse, and waiting-maid to friz her hair--if she wants it frizzed."

"You don't mean to let her in as a partner?"

"I certainly do! Isn't she enduring the agonies for us? I'm going to see that she is properly paid for it."

"A hunk of beef and plenty of blankets and flannel is all she can use; but first let's find the mine. We can quarrel over its division afterward."

"I doubt if we get her ahorse to-day. She's pretty thoroughly battered up."

"We must move, Andy. Somebody may trail us up. I want to climb into the next basin before night. Let me talk to her."

She flatly refused to move for Kelley, and Eugene said: "She too sick.

Legs sick, back sick, eyes sick. Go no further."

Kelley turned to Wetherell. "It's your edge, Andy. She's balked on me."

Wetherell took another tack. He told her to rest. "By and by I'll come and rub your back again and fix your eyes. To-morrow you will feel strong and well." To this she made no reply.

All the day Kelley kept his eyes on the back trail, expecting each moment to see some dusky trailer break from the cover. As night began to fall it was Wetherell who brought a brand and built a little fire near the door to Pogosa's tent so that the flame might cheer her, and she uttered a sigh of comfort as its yellow glare lighted her dark tepee walls. He brought her bacon, also, and hot bread and steaming coffee, not merely because she was useful as a guide, but also because she was old and helpless and had been lured out of her own home into this gray and icy world of cloud.

"Eddie," he said, as he returned to his partner, "we're on a wild-goose chase. The thing is preposterous. There isn't any mine--there can't be such a mine!"

"Why not? What's struck you now?"

"This country has been traversed for a century. It is 'sheeped' and cattle-grazed and hunted and forest-ranged--"

Kelley waved his hand out toward the bleak crags which loomed dimly from amid the slas.h.i.+ng shrouds of rain. "Traversed! Man, n.o.body ever does anything more than ride from one park to another. The mine is not in a park. It's on some of these rocky-timbered ridges. A thousand sheep-herders might ride these trails for a hundred years and never see a piece of pay quartz. It's a big country! Look at it now! What chance have we without Pogosa? Now here we are on our way, with a sour old wench who thinks more of a piece of bread than she does of a hunk of ore. It's up to you, Andy--you and your 'mash.'"

"Well, I've caught the mind-reading delusion. I begin to believe that I understand Pogosa's reasoning. She is now beginning to be eaten by remorse. She came into this expedition for the food and drink. She now repents and is about to confess that she knows nothing about the mine.

She and Eugene have conspired against us and are 'doing' us--good."

"Nitsky! You're away off your base. The fact is, Pogosa is a Sioux. She cares nothing for the Shoshoni, and she wants to realize on this mine.

She wants to go back to her people before she dies. She means business--don't you think she don't; and if her running-gear don't unmesh to-night or to-morrow she's going to make good--that's my hunch."

"I hope you're right, but I can't believe it."

"You don't need to. You keep her thinking you're the Sun-G.o.d--that's your job."

It rained all that day, and when night settled down it grew unreasonably warm for that alt.i.tude, and down on the marshes the horses stood, patiently enduring the gnats and mosquitoes. They plagued Pogosa so cruelly that Wetherell took his own web of bobinet and made a protecting cage for her head and hands. Never before had she been s.h.i.+elded from the pests of outdoor life. She laughed as she heard the baffled buzzing outside her net, and, pointing her finger, addressed them mockingly.

Wetherell took the same joy in this that a child takes in the action of a kitten dressed as a doll. To Eugene he said:

"You tell her Injun plenty fool. He don't know enough to get gold and buy mosquito netting. If she is wise and shows me the mine she will never be bitten again. No flies. No mosquitoes. Plenty beef. Plenty b.u.t.ter and hot biscuits. Plenty sugar and coffee. White man's own horse carry her back to her people."

It took some time to make the old woman understand this, and then she replied briefly, but with vigor, and Eugene translated it thus: "White man all same big chief. Go find mine, _sure_, for you. No want other white man to have gold. All yours."

The morning broke tardily. The rain had ceased, but the gray mist still hid the peaks, and now and then the pines shook down a shower of drops upon the tent cloth as if impatient of the persistent gathering of moisture. Otherwise the forest was as still as if it were cut from bronze.

Kelley arose and, going outside, began kicking the embers together.

"Wake up, Andy. It's a gray outlook we have," he announced, after a careful survey. "The worst sign is this warmth and stillness. We're in the heart of the storm, and the mosquitoes are h.e.l.lish."

As Wetherell was creeping from the tent door one of the pines quivered and sent down a handful of drops, squarely soaking the back of his neck, and a huge mosquito stuck savagely to the end of his nose. He was not in the best of humor as he straightened up.

"I can stand cold and snow, or wet and cold, but this hot, sticky, dark weather irritates me. Let's climb high and see if we can't reach the frost-line."

"We'll be frosty enough when this storm pa.s.ses," Kelley said, comfortingly. Then in a note of astonishment and surprise, "Well, look at that!"

Wetherell looked where he pointed, and beheld Pogosa squatting before a meager fire at her tent door, her head carefully draped in her bobinet.

He forgot his own lumps and b.u.mps, and laughed. "So doth the white man's civilization creep upon and subdue the Amerind, destroying his robust contempt for the elements and making of him a Sybarite."

Eugene appeared, grinning ruefully. "Heap dam' moskeets. Drink my blood all night."

"I reckon you got gran'ma's share," said Kelley.

Pogosa met Wetherell's glance with an exultant smile and pointed at the net as if to say: "See, I am safe. The angry brutes cannot touch me."

"The old girl is on her taps this morning. She deserves a reward. Wait a jiffy. There"--and Kelley uncorked a flask and poured a wee drop of an amber-colored liquid into the cup of coffee which Wetherell was about to take to her--"say nothing and see what happens."

She ate a rousing breakfast and was especially pleased with the coffee.

Kelley repeated the dose, and she, much invigorated, ordered Eugene to bring her pony to her. This tickled Kelley mightily.

"You see how it is! She's already the millionairess. Who ever heard of an Injun getting up a horse for an old squaw? Look at Eugene!"

Eugene was indeed in open rebellion, and Wetherell, not caring to have trouble with him, went down and brought up the pony himself. He also gave the old woman his slicker and insisted on her wearing it, whereat Eugene wondered again.

The rain was beginning as they took their way over the meadow, and Wetherell was near to being bogged the first crack out of the box. "Do we go up that cliff?" he asked.

Pogosa waved her forefinger back and forth as though tracing the doublings of the trail.

Kelley scanned the wall narrowly. "I don't quite see it," he remarked, openly, "but I reckon I can find it," and he spurred his horse to the front.

"No! No!" screamed Pogosa in a sudden fury, her voice shrill and nasal.

Kelley stopped, and she motioned Wetherell to his place in the lead.

With a comical look in his eyes the trailer fell back. "'Pears like I ain't good enough to precede her Majesty. Go ahead, Andy."