The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 19

The old man had twisted the halter ropes under his feet. He seized a pole and swerved the raft to the current, pointing in to the other side.

They could hear the roar of the wild mountain stream pouring a maelstrom down from the glare ice and snow of the upper meadows. The next plunge of the pole missed bottom. There was a yielding creak of logs. The raft poised, and spun round.

"Let her go, man! We'll wriggle her in below!"

"Then loose your halter ropes, they're pulling us round."

They tossed the ropes free. Wayland waved his pole to head the bronchos across. They heard the mule squealing at the head of the lake.

"She can't sink--wriggle her round, Wayland!"

The raft spun twice to the under-pull, took an inch or two of water, and swirled into the quiet shadows of the far sh.o.r.e.

"Minds me of that story of Napoleon! Do you carry bridges in y'r pockets, too, Wayland?" asked the old man, as the Ranger gave a long prod that sent the raft grating ash.o.r.e.

"What story?" asked Wayland.

"Oh, Boney came to a river too deep for swimming cavalry. General ordered engineer fellow to get 'em across! Man began to draw maps. When he came to Napoleon with his blue print plans, he found a common soldier fellow had pontooned 'em all across!"

"Did the big fellow get a leg up on his job; or did the soldier fellow get the bounce for going outside regulations?"

"That is possible, too." The old man was handing off the saddles and camp kit.

"If you'll wait here, sir, I'll go along for the horses! I don't know the trails along on this side! It's outside the N. F!"

There was no moonlight to guide him; but there was the wall of blue sky where the mountains opened; and he followed up the lake sh.o.r.e with a sense of feel more than sight for one of those little indurated game tracks that would lead back over the stones to the trail that the outlaws had seemed to follow. If you think it an easy thing to walk over a pile of moraine by the obscure light preceding dawn--try it! The great moraines flank the mountains in petrified billows stranded on the sh.o.r.es of time from the ice ages, in stones from the size of a spool to a house.

Step on the small stones; and they roll, bringing down the whole bank in a miniature slide under your feet! Pick your way over the sharp edges of the big rocks; and the glazed moisture is slippery as ice; but he, whose foot hold fumbles, has no business in the mountain world; and the Ranger swung from crest to crest of the pointed rocks, safely shrouded in the lake mist, guided solely by the blank glare of sky between the mountain walls.

He could hear the tinkle of waters down the ledges on his right; and the little flutter of wind riffling through the Pa.s.s sucking up the mists forewarned dawn. He had climbed the roll of stone slowly, picking each step, for, perhaps, two-hundred feet, when that trail sense of _feel_ made him stoop to examine the ground. The roll of moraine he had climbed met another stone billow; and between the two ran a groove, a little narrow hardened tracing where the tracks of game going to and from watering place had packed and worked in between the rolling pebbles the ice dust of a million years.

This, then, was the trail that the outlaws must have followed away from the lake. He stooped to examine closer. There were horse tracks. Had his own horses stumbled up from the lake along this trail? It would lead back to the camp fire of the night before. Better reconnoitre while there was still the hiding of the mist.

He looked back. The lake was obliterated by the mist curling up; but above he could see the black rocks of the precipice trail as if the Pa.s.s behind had closed its doors against retreat; and was it imagination, or did he see, an eagle soaring, strong-winged, majestically out from the rocks in curves of insolent power? Memory of the nauseating horror came over him in a physical wave; and curiously enough, he kept hearing the soft voice of the Senator's scoffing question: "Who of the public gives one d.a.m.n?" It was easier sitting smug inside the firing line. He knew men in the Service who would call him a fool for going out on this present quest; and he knew others whose jealousy would say it was all done for self-advertising; and he knew also that he might be dismissed for going out beyond the letter in order to fulfil the spirit of the law; but preceding the horror of the precipice trail, was that other memory of the dead boy lying at the foot of the Rim Rocks beside the writhing ma.s.s of mutilated sheep.

The Ranger followed along the game trail. Who was it had said that the only difference between charcoal and diamond was that one was soft and the other hard? Was that what ailed the Nation? Had the fine edge of citizenship dulled? Was the Nation losing the fine edge of distinction between right and wrong?

Another little flutter of wind set the restless mists boiling.

"Strange it is hot so early," thought Wayland. Fir trees stood out from the shifting gray haze. Among them, did he see shadows moving? They might be deer coming down to water. Involuntarily, he stepped behind some alder brush off the trail. Another flutter of wind thinning the turbid mist. There was a whiff of camp smoke. Through the mist, he could make out figures not a hundred yards away--five horses ready for travel, four men clumsily lifting a fellow in cow-boy slicker into his saddle. The man fell forward over the pummel. The group seemed undecided what to do. Then, picked out--distinct--deliberate--coming over the stones from the lake side--leisurely, lazily, careful, soft footsteps with rests between--The Ranger would not have been surprised to see the missing outlaw limp from the mist--Then, the head of his own errant mule bobbed forward, and another roll of mist came up from the lake. Wayland caught the trailing halter, headed the amazed little animal back down the goat track with an urgent kick and sprang after it to a clatter of rolling stones. When the clamor sank, he heard the pound of hoofs as the outlaws galloped in the other direction. Five paces farther, he found both the bronchos nosing consolingly round the mule.

Wayland emitted a deep breath of relief. If he had waited five minutes longer at the raft, they would have had his horses. It was all in the difference between being on the wrong and the right side of five minutes.

"Y' don't need t' tell me we're goin' South an' down--We might be goin'

to the bottomless pit. The wind's like a furnace."

"Off the Desert," explained the Ranger.

The sun had risen high above the peaks. The mists had receded to belts and wisps of cloud against the forests. Waters tumbling wind-blown from the ledges were swelling to a chorus. Little cross bills and jays that had come round the breakfast camp still followed the pack train.

"As this is off y'r National Forests, A suppose y' couldn't have jumped into the bunch an' arrested every man-jack of 'em?"

"Not without being a target for five shots while they would have been targets for only one."

"We'd have strung 'em up in the good old days, an' sent for the sheriff to clean up the remnants."

They had left the goat track and dipped down a s.h.a.ggy green hollow between mountains that seemed to slope to lakes of pure light above a blue open plain.

"Any citizen can arrest a law breaker whereever found. Our badge is supposed to increase that privilege; but the crime was committed just a stone's throw _off_ the grazing ground in the National Forests. We'd have to turn our prisoners over to Sheriff Flood. How long do you think he'd keep 'em in custody? They'd escape while he was having an attack of 'look-the-other-way--'"

"Your idea to run 'em aground in their own State?"

"Not necessary to go so far. Run them across _this_ State line--then catch them off guard in some of these canyons or arroyos. Turn them over to a sheriff who doesn't owe his bread and b.u.t.ter to Moyese. He'll have to hold them till Williams and MacDonald come down to testify. By that time, I fancy we'll hear from people who have been losing stock all the way up from Arizona. Moyese will be keeping mighty quiet."

"Meanwhile, Mr. White-vest, who planned all this deviltry--he goes free!

These are only the poor rowdy tools for--"

"For the Man Higher Up," finished Wayland.

"Wayland, who is this white-vested anarchist, this vested-righter who subverts your laws?"

"His name is Legion, sir! That's what's the matter! These hide-bound vested righters are only vested righters when the rights don't happen to belong to some other man." The Ranger related the incidents of the visit to the Ridge.

The old man rode along in silence.

"And from what you say," finished Wayland, "he evidently didn't mean any harm to come to the boy; but that is always the way with this cursed system. You're law breaking law-makers, your divine-right-king-crooks out here--don't _plan_ crime. They only plan to have their own way.

It's like a man breaking down a dam to get a little water. When the floods burst through the break, he thinks it isn't his fault."

"That's what some of our Scotch kings thought; we took their heads off just the same."

"Well, if we can get our people wakened up, we'll take a few heads off, too, at election time." He touched his pony to a brisk trot across the meadow, following the mule as it dodged in and out among the larches, up over a saddle back and down again thwarting a long bare hollow.

Wayland saw the light come sifting in gold dust. Somehow, the warmth of it swept round him in a consciousness of that night on the Ridge. It was like the snow flakes she talked about, sculpturing the rocks, shaping destiny. Would the day ever come when they two could ride forth adventuring happiness together? The hammer of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, the resinous tang of the gold-dust air, the shaking of the evergreen needles like gypsy tambourines--filled him with an absurd sense of the joy of life; and he could never drink the joy of these things without thinking of her; for the consciousness of her presence, of the warm glow of her love, enveloped all now, permeated his being, a life inside his life, blended of his own.

"A don't like the way that mule o' yours keeps lookin' ahead with both ears, Wayland! It's all-fired quiet here, for noon-hour when the streams should be shouting. There is something mighty queer and still in this air. Yon saucy woodp.e.c.k.e.r has quit drillin'! Hold back a bit! A'm goin' ahead! A've known these mountains longer than you have," and curving through the brushwood, the old frontiersman came out ahead of the pack leader.

The little mule had undoubtedly followed a kind of trail. Though the gra.s.ses were saddle-high, punky logs showed the fresh rip of shod horses.

Little mossy streams betrayed roiled water and stones over-turned. Then, the path emerged from the trees so abruptly you could have drawn a line along the edge of the timber, out to a great hollowed slope, wind-blown, bare of rocks, clear of trees as if levelled by a giant trowel; hushed, preternaturally hushed, the Ranger thought as he came up abreast and glanced to the top of the long slope where the snows glistened over the edge of the rocks heavy and white.

"This is what we heard last night! See, Wayland, the snow up there has been breakin'! It sags! Got its fore feet forward for a race down one of these days!"

Both men became aware of something portentous and heavy in the silence: it was mid-day; but there was no noon-time shout of disimprisoned waters.

Not a crossbill, not a jay, neither eagle nor hawk, showed against the azure fields of sky and snow. A little riffle as of waiting fluttered through the gra.s.ses and leaves. Wayland was looking with dumb amazement at the great field of laurel in bloom across the slope; three or four miles of it, leaves of green wax in the sun, flowers pa.s.sion pale, motionless, waiting; what was it he missed? The insect life; there were neither b.u.t.terflies nor bees rifling the fields of honey bloom; the flowers, acres and acres of them, stood pa.s.sion pale, motionless waiting--waiting what? Then, there was a singing in his ears, a weird strange undertone to the hush of the forest behind them. His breath came heavy. The old man was speaking in a m.u.f.fled voice.

"See, boy, there are three men on the other side! They are signalling."

Wayland came alive out of his strange trance.

"It isn't to us they are signalling. Move back quick, out of sight, sir; see! there's a man half way across, the fellow in the yellow slicker!

There's some one on foot holding him in his saddle! What ever are they waving so frantically for?"