The Great Sioux Trail Part 25

"I don't know. I became so busy with something else that I forgot all about him, and he must have gone away in the twilight. An Indian in a niche above me began firing arrows at me, and I had to stick close in a little hollow in the stone so he couldn't reach me. If the Little Giant hadn't come along, and made another of his wonderful shots I suppose I'd be staying there for a week to come."

"Tom can shoot a little," said Boyd, divining the whole story from the lad's few sentences, "and he also has a way of shooting at the right time. Now, you sit down here, Will, and eat these steaks I'm broiling, and I'll give you a cup of coffee, too, just one cup though, because we're sparing our coffee as much as we can now."

Will ate and drank with a great appet.i.te, and then he told more fully of his adventure with the foe whom he had never seen until the Little Giant's bullet sent him spinning into the void.

"He'd have got you," said Brady thoughtfully, "if Tom hadn't come along."

"You know we wuz worried 'bout him stayin' so long," said the Little Giant, "an' so I went out to look fur him. It wuz lucky that I took his gla.s.ses along, or I might never hev seen him or the Sioux. I don't want to brag, but that wuz one o' my happy thoughts."

"You had nothing to do with taking the gla.s.ses, Tom Bent," said Brady seriously.

"Why, it wuz my own idee!"

"Not at all. The idea was in your head but it was not put there by your own mind. It was put there by the Infinite, and it was put there because Will's time had not yet come. You were merely an instrument, Tom Bent."

"Mebbe I wuz. I'm not takin' any credit to myself fur deep thinkin' an'

I 'low you know more 'bout these things than I do, Steve Brady, since you've had your mind on 'em so much an' so long. An' ef I wuz used ez an instrument to save Will, I'm proud that it wuz so."

Will, who was lying on the turf propped up by his elbow before the fire, looked up at the skies, which were now a clear silver, in which countless stars appeared to hang, lower and larger than he had ever seen them before. It was a beautiful sky, and whether it was merely fate or chance that had sent the Little Giant to his aid he felt with the poet that G.o.d was in his heaven, and, for the time at least, all was right with his world.

"You got a good sight of the Indian, did you, Tom?" asked Boyd.

"I saw him plain through the gla.s.ses. He wuz a Sioux. I couldn't make no mistake. Like ez not he wuz a hunter from the village we saw on the slope below, an' whar one hunter is another may not be fur away."

"Thinking as you do," said Boyd, "and thinking as I do the same way you do, I think we'd better put out our fire and shift to another part of the valley."

"That's a lot of 'thinks,'" said Brady, "but it seems to me that you're both right, and I've no doubt such thoughts are put into our minds to save our lives. Perhaps it would be best for us to start up the slopes at once, but if our time is coming tonight it will come and no flight of ours will alter it."

Nevertheless they took the precaution to stamp out the last coal, and then moved silently with the animals to another part of the dip. While they were tethering their horses and mules there in a little glade all the animals began to tremble violently and it required Will's utmost efforts to soothe them. The acute ears of Brady detected a low growling on their right, not far from the base of the cliff.

"Come, Tom," he said to the Little Giant. "You and I will see what it is, and be sure you're ready with that rifle of yours. You ought to shoot beautifully in this clear moonlight."

They disappeared among the bushes, but returned in a few minutes, although the growling had become louder and was continuous. Both men had lost a little of their ruddiness.

"What was it?" asked Will.

"It wuz your friend, the Sioux warrior who held you in the cliff so long," replied the Little Giant, shuddering. "Half a dozen big mountain wolves are quarrelin' 'bout the right place to bury him in. But, anyway, he's bein' buried, an' mighty fast too."

Will shuddered also, and over and over again. In fact, his nervous system had been so shaken that it would not recover its full force for a day, and the others, trained to see all things, noticed it.

"You soothe them animals ag'in, young William," said the Little Giant, "an' we'll spread the blankets fur our beds here in the bushes."

Bent again showed supreme judgment, as in quieting the fears of the horses and mules for the second time Will found that renewed strength flowed back into his own nervous system, and when he returned to the fireless camp his hand and voice were once more quite steady.

"There is your bed, William," said Brady. "You lie on one blanket, put the other over you, and also one of the bearskins. It's likely to be a dry and cold night, but anyway, whether it rains or snows, it will rain or snow on the just and the unjust, and blankets and bearskin should keep you dry. That growling in the bushes, too, has ceased, and our friend, the Sioux, who sought your life, has found a dreadful grave."

Will shuddered once more, but when he crept between the blankets his nerves were soothed rapidly and he soon fell asleep.

The three men kept watch and watch through the night, and they saw no Indian foe. Once Boyd heard a rustling in the bushes, and he made out the figure of a huge mountain wolf that stood staring at them for a moment. The horses and mules began to stir uneasily, and, picking up a stone, the hunter threw it with such good aim that the wolf, struck smartly on the body, ran away.

The animals relapsed into quiet, and nothing more stirred in the bushes, until the leaves began to move under the light breeze that came at dawn.

CHAPTER IX

THE BUFFALO MARCH

Drawn by an impulse that he tried to check but could not, Will went in the morning to the point in the bushes whence the growling had come the night before, finding there nothing but the bones of the Sioux, from which every trace of flesh had been removed. He shuddered once more. He, instead of the warrior, might have been the victim. His eyes, trained now to look upon the earth as a book and to read what might be printed there, saw clearly the tracks of the wolves among the gra.s.s and leaves.

After finishing what they had come to do they had gone away some distance and had gathered together in a close group, as if they had meditated an attack, possibly upon the horses and mules.

Will knew how great and fierce the mountain wolves of the north were, and he was glad to note that, after their council, they had gone on and perhaps had left the valley. At least, he was able to follow their tracks as far as the lower rocks, where they disappeared. When he returned to the little camp he told what he had seen.

"We're in no danger of a surprise from the big wolves," said Brady.

"They'd have killed and eaten some of the horses and mules if we hadn't been here, but wolves are smart, real smart. Like as not they saw Thomas shoot the Sioux, and they knew that the long stick he carried, from which fire spouted, slaying the warrior, was like the long sticks all of us carry, and that to attack us here was death for them. Oh, I know I'm guessing a lot, but I've observed 'em a long time and I'm convinced wolves can reason that far."

"All animals are smarter than we think they are," said the Little Giant.

"I've lived among 'em a heap, an' know a lot o' their ways. Only they've a diff'rent set o' intellectooals from ours. What we're smart in they ain't, an' what they're smart in we ain't. Now, ef I had joined to what I am myself the strength o' a grizzly bear, the cunnin' o' a wolf an'

the fleetness o' an antelope I reckon I'd be 'bout the best man that ever trod 'roun' on this planet."

"I've one thing to suggest before we start," said Will, "and I think it's important."

"What is it?" asked Boyd.

"That we make copies of the map. We may become separated for long periods--everything indicates that we will--I might fall into the hands of Felton, who seems to have a hint about the mine, and, if I saw such a thing about to occur, I would destroy the map, and then you would have the copies. Each of you faced by a similar misfortune could make away with his copy, and if the worst came to the worst I could re-draw it from memory."

"Good idee! Good idee!" exclaimed the Little Giant with enthusiasm.

"I've been tellin' Jim an' Steve that though they mightn't think it, you had the beginnin's o' intelleck in that head o' yours."

"Thank you," said Will, and they all laughed.

"It's a good thought," said Boyd, "and we'd better do it at once."

Will carried in his pack some pens and a small bottle of indelible ink, and with these they drew with the greatest care three more maps on fine deerskin, small but very clear, and then every man stored one in a secure place about his person.

"Now, remember," said Boyd, "if any one of us is in danger of capture he must get rid of his map."

Then, their breakfast over, they began the ascent of the slope, leading toward the White Dome, finding it easier than they had thought. As always, difficulties decreased when they faced them boldly, and even the animals, refreshed by their stay in the valley, showed renewed vigor, climbing like goats. The Little Giant whistled merrily, mostly battle songs of the late war which was still so fresh in the minds of all men.

"I notice that you whistle songs of both sides," said Brady. "Musically, at least, you have no feeling about our great Civil War."

"Nor any other way, either," rejoined the Little Giant. "I may hev hed my feelin's once, though I ain't sayin' now what they wuz, but fur me the war is all over, done fit clean out. They say six or seven hundred thousand men wuz lost in it, an' now that it's over it's got to stop right thar. I'm lookin' to the future, I am, to the quarter of a million in gold that's comin' to me, an' the gorgeous ways in which I'm goin'

to spend it. Young William, see that big mountain ram standin' out on the side o' the peak over thar. I believe he's the same feller that you tried to stalk yesterday, an' that he's laughin' at you. He's a good mile away, but I kin see the twinkle in his eye, an' ez sh.o.r.e ez I stan'

here he lifted his left foot to his nose an' twisted it 'bout in a gesture which among us boys allers meant fight. Do you stan' his dare, young William, or are you goin' to climb over thar whar he is an' hev it out with him?"

"I'll let him alone," laughed William, looking at the splendid ram, outlined so sharply in the clear mountain light. "I meant to do him harm, but I'm glad I didn't. Maybe that Indian was engaged in the same task, when he saw me and changed his hunting."