The Voyage of the Rattletrap Part 11

Shortly after this we came upon the first sage-bush which we had seen. It was queer gray stuff, shaped like miniature trees, and had the appearance of being able to get along with very little rain.

Toward night we found ourselves winding down among the hills to the Cheyenne River. They were strange-looking hills, most of them utterly barren on their sides, which were nearly perpendicular, the hard soil standing almost as firm as rock.

They were ribbed and seamed by the rain--in fact, they were not hills at all, properly speaking, but small bluffs left by the washing out of the ravines by the rain and melting snows. Just as the sun was sinking among the distant hills we came to the river.

It was shallow, only four or five yards wide, and we easily forded it and camped on the other side. The full moon was just rising over the eastern hills. There was not a sound to be heard except the gentle murmur of the stream and the faint rustle of the leaves on a few cottonwood-trees. There was plenty of driftwood all around, and after supper we built up the largest camp-fire we had ever had. The flame leaped up above the wagon-top, and drifted away in a column of sparks and smoke, while the three horses stood in the background with their heads close together munching their hay, and the four of us (counting Snoozer) lay on the ground and blinked at the fire.

"This is what I call the proper thing," remarked Jack, after some time, as he roiled over on his blanket and looked at the great round moon.

"Yes," I said, "this will do well enough. But it would be pretty cool here if it wasn't for that fire."

"Yes, the nights are getting colder, that's certain. I was just wondering if that cover will withstand snow as well as it does rain?"

"Why," said Ollie, "do you think it's going to snow?"

"Not to-night," returned Jack. "But it may before we get out of the mountains. The snow comes pretty early up there sometimes.

I think I'll get inside and share the bed with the rancher after this, and you and Snoozer can curl up in the front end of the wagon-box. It would be a joke if we got snowed in somewhere, and had to live in the Rattletrap till spring."

"I wouldn't care if we could keep warm," said Ollie. "I like living in it better than in any house I ever saw."

"I'm afraid it would get a little monotonous along in March,"

laughed Jack. "Though I think myself it's a pretty good place to live. Stationary houses begin to seem tame. I hope the trip won't spoil us all, and make vagabonds of us for the rest of our lives."

We were reluctant to leave this camp the next morning, but knew that we must be moving on. It was but a few miles to the town of Buffalo Gap, and we pa.s.sed through it before noon.

"There are more varmints," cried Ollie, as we were driving through the town. They were in a cage in front of a store, and we stopped to see them.

"What are they?" one of us asked the man who seemed to own them.

"Bob-cats," he answered, promptly.

"Must be a Buffalo Gap name for wild-cats," said Jack, as we drove on, "because that's what they are."

Ollie had gone into a store to buy some cans of fruit, and when he came out he looked much bewildered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Lesson in Finance]

"I think," he said, "that that man must be crazy, or something. There were thirty cents coming to me in change. He tossed out a quarter and said, 'Two bits,' and then a dime and said, 'Short bit--thank you,' and closed up the drawer and started off. I didn't want more than was coming to me, so I handed out a nickle and said, 'There, that makes it right.' The man looked at it, laughed, and pushed it back, and said, 'Keep it, sonny; I haven't got any chickens.' Now, I'd like to know what it all meant."

We both laughed, and when Jack recovered his composure he said:

"It means simply that we're getting out into the mining country, where no coin less than a dime circulates. He didn't happen to have three dimes, so the best he could do was to give you either twenty-five or thirty-five cents, and he was letting you have the benefit of the situation by making it thirty-five. A bit is twelve and a half cents, and a short bit is ten cents. A two-bit piece is a quarter."

"Yes; but what about his not keeping chickens?"

"Oh, that was simply his humorous way of saying that all coins under a dime are fit only for chicken-feed."

We camped that night beside the trail near a little log store. "What you want to do," said the man in charge, "is to take your horses down there behind them trees to park 'em for the night. Good feed down there."

"'To park,'" said Jack, in a low voice. "New and interesting verb. He mean's turn 'em out to gra.s.s. We mustn't appear green."

Then he said to the man:

"Yes, we reckoned we'd park 'em down there to-night."

The next day was the coldest we had experienced, and we were glad to walk to keep warm. We were getting among the smaller of the hills, with their tops covered with the peculiarly dark pine-trees which give the whole range its name. We camped at night under a high bank which afforded some protection from the chilly east wind. Now that we were all sleeping in the wagon there was no room in it to store the sacks of horse-feed which we had, and we knew that if we put them outside Old Blacky would eat them up before morning.

"There's nothing to do," said Jack, "but to carry them around up on that bank and hang them down with ropes. Leave 'em about twelve feet from the bottom and ten feet from the top, and I don't think the Pet can get them."

We accordingly did so, and went to bed with the old scoundrel standing and looking up at the bags wistfully, though he had just had all that any horse needed for supper. But in the morning we found that he had clambered up high enough to get hold of the bottom of one of the sacks and pull it down and devour fully half of it. He was, as Jack said, "the worst horse that ever looked through a collar."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Rattletrap in the Storm]

But the weather in the morning gave us more concern than did the foraging of the ancient Blacky. It was even colder than the night before, and the raw east wind was rawer, and with it all there was a drizzling rain. It was not a hard rain, but one of the kind that comes down in small clinging drops and blows in your face in a fine spray. Jack got breakfast in the wagon, and we ate the hot cakes and warmed-over grouse with a good relish.

Then we loaded in what was left of the horsefeed, and started.

It was impossible to keep warm even by walking, but we plodded on and made the best of it. The road was hilly and stony; but by noon we had got beyond the rain, and for the rest of the way it was dry even if cold. The hills among which we were winding grew constantly higher, and the quant.i.ty of pine timber upon their summits greater. Just as dusk was beginning to creep down we came around one which might fairly have been called a small mountain, and saw Rapid City spread out before us, the largest town we had seen since leaving Yankton. We skirted around it, and came to camp under another hill and near a big stone quarry a half-mile west of town. There was a mill-race just below us, and plenty of water. We fed the horses and had supper. There was a road not much over a hundred yards in front of our camp, along which, through the darkness, we could hear teams and wagons pa.s.sing.

"I wonder where it goes to?" said Ollie.

"I think it's the great Deadwood trail over which all the supplies are drawn to the mines by mule or horse or ox teams,"

said Jack. "There's no railroad, you know, and everything has to go by wagon--goods and supplies in, and a great deal of ore out.

Let's go over and see."

The moon was not yet risen and the sky was covered with clouds, so it was extremely dark. We took along our lantern, but it did not make much impression on the darkness. When we reached the road we found that everywhere we stepped we went over our shoe-tops in the soft dust. We beard a deep, strange creaking noise, mixed with what sounded like reports of a pistol, around the bend in the trail. Soon we could make out what seemed to be a long herd of cattle winding towards us, with what might have been a circus tent swaying about behind them.

"What's coming?" we asked of a boy who was going by.

"Old Henderson," he replied.

"What's he got?"

"Just his outfit."

"But what are all the cattle?"

"His team."

"Not one team?"

"Yes; eleven yoke."

"Twenty-two oxen in one team?"

"Yes; and four wagons."

The head yoke of oxen was now opposite to us, swaying about from side to side and swirling their tails in the air, but still pressing forward at the rate of perhaps a mile and a half or two miles an hour. Far back along the procession we could dimly see a man walking in the dust beside the last yoke, swinging a long whip which cracked in the air like a rifle. Behind rolled and swayed the four great canvas-topped wagons, tied behind one another. We watched the strange procession go by. There was only one man, without doubt Henderson, grizzled and seemingly sixty years old. The wagon wheels were almost as tall as he was, and the tires were four inches wide. The last wagon disappeared up the trail in the dust and darkness.

"Well," said Jack, "I think when I start out driving at this time of night with twenty-two guileless oxen and four ten-ton wagons that I'll want to get somewhere pretty badly." Then we went back to the Rattletrap.