They Of The High Trails Part 26

Wetherell, in much doubt of his ability to scale that cliff, started forth. The old trail could be seen dimly, and also the recent tracks of three horses. They were not precisely fresh, but they gave some uneasiness.

"Who made 'em, Eugene, and when?" he asked.

"One man riding--white man," announced Eugene. "Two pack-horse--very light pack--made--mebbe so--three days ago."

"The forest-ranger from the other side, possibly."

Wetherell, by watching the hoof-marks, by studying the conformation of the cliff before him, and by glancing back now and again at Pogosa, contrived to find the way. Slowly and for several hours they climbed this vast dike. It was nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea here, and Kelley himself breathed with effort as he climbed.

"I begin to see why people don't use this trail much," he said, as they stopped to rest on one of the broad shelves. "I'm beginning to wonder how we're going to pack our ore to market over this road."

"It will take mighty rich ore to pay its own freight," responded Wetherell.

Pogosa seemed strangely excited. Her eyes were gleaming, her face working with emotion.

"See the old girl!" said Kelley. "We must be hot on the trail of the mine. It don't look like mineral formation, but gold is where you find it."

"Go on," signed Pogosa.

The way seemed interminable, and at times Wetherell despaired of getting his withered commander into the park which he was sure lay above this dike. At noon they halted long enough to make coffee. Kelley flavored it as before, and Pogosa was ready to go on an hour later.

As they rose above the dike and Bonneville's Peak came into view a low humming sound startled the hunters. It came from Pogosa. With eyes lit by the reviving fires of memory, she was chanting a hoa.r.s.e song. She seemed to have thrown off half the burden of her years. Her voice gradually rose till her weird improvisation put a shiver into Wetherell's heart. She had forgotten the present; and with hands resting on the pommel of her saddle, with dim eyes fixed upon the valley, was reliving the past.

"She singing old hunting song," Eugene explained. "Many years ago she sing it. This heap fine hunting-ground then. Elk, big-horn, bear. All fine things in summer. Winter nothing but big-horn. Sheep-eaters live here many summers. Pogos' young and happy then. Now she is old and lonesome. People all gone. Purty soon she die. So she say."

Even the unimaginative mind of Tall Ed Kelley thrilled to the tragic significance of this survivor of a dying race chanting her solitary song. Her memory was quickening under the touch of these cliffs and the sound of these streams. She was retracing the steps of her youth.

Kelley interpreted it differently. "She's close to it," he called. "It's here in this valley, in some of these ridges."

Resolutely, unhesitatingly, Pogosa rode down the first stream which ran to the north, making directly for a low hill on which could be discerned a low comb of deflected rocks of a dark color. At last, riding up the ledge, she slipped from her horse and, tottering forward, fell face downward on the gra.s.s beside an upturned giant slab of gray stone.

The men stared in wonder, searching the ground for evidence of mineral.

None could be seen. Suddenly lifting her head, the crone began to sing again, uttering a heart-shaking wail which poured from her quivering lips like the cry of the forsaken. The sight of her withered hands strained together and the tears in her sunken cheeks went to the soul.

The desolate rocks, the falling rain, the wild and monstrous cliffs, the encircling mountains, all lent irresistible power to her grief. She seemed the minstrel of her race mourning for a vanished world.

"Come away," Eugene urged with a delicacy which sprang from awe. "_Her husband buried there._"

Deeply touched to know that her grief was personal, and filled, too, with a kind of helpless amazement at this emotional outbreak, the gold-seekers withdrew down the slope, followed by the riderless pony, leaving the old woman crouched close against the sepulcher of her dead, pouring forth the sobbing wail of her song.

"This looks like the end of our mine," said Kelley, gloomily. "I begin to think that the old witch led us up here just for the sake of visiting that grave."

"It looks that way," responded Wetherell, "but what can we do? You can't beat her, and we've done all we could to bribe her."

Eugene advised: "You wait. Bimeby she got done cryin'. To-morrow she got cold--want meat, coffee--plenty bad. Then we go get her."

They went into camp not far away in the edge of a thicket of scraggly wind-dwarfed pines, and put up their tents for the night.

"Wouldn't it put a cramp into you," began Kelley, as they stood beside their fire, "to think that this old relict has actually led us all the way up here in order to water the grave of a sweetheart who died forty years ago?"

"It shows how human she is."

"Human! She's superhuman. She's crazy, that's what she is."

"It is all very wonderful to me, but I'm worried about her. She mustn't stay out there in this rain. It's going to turn cold. See that streak in the west?"

As Wetherell left the camp-fire and began to climb back toward the comb of rocks he felt not merely the sheer immensity of this granite basin, but the loneliness, its almost insupportable silence and emptiness. With the feeling of one who intrudes he called to the old woman. He stooped and put his arm about her. "Come," he said. "You will die here. Come to the fire."

She suffered him to lead her away, but her head hung on her breast, her arms were limp.

Back at the camp-fire, after seeing that Pogosa had been properly taken care of, the men faced each other in gloomy silence.

"Right here we take our medicine, partner," remarked Kelley. "Here we put a dot and double the line. I'd like to break over that divide and see how it looks in there, but our lady friend seems indisposed, and I guess we'll just toast our knees and think where we missed it."

"After all," said Wetherell, soothingly, "this morning may be merely incidental. Let us be patient. She may recover." And at dark he carried some hot drink over to her tepee, but found her sleeping, and decided not to awaken her.

Back at their fire, as the night deepened, the men lighted their pipes, and with blankets at their backs huddled close about it. An imperious voice broke from Pogosa's tent. Wetherell looked around at Eugene.

"Did you speak?" he asked.

Eugene protested. "No. Pogosa talk."

"It sounded like a chief's voice," Kelley began. "A vigorous voice."

Eugene, trembling like a scared puppy, crept close to Wetherell. His voice was a mere whisper. "That no Pogos'--that Injun spirit talking."

Kelley was amused. "A spirit, eh? What does this spirit Injun say?"

"Say, 'White man with red beard listen--come closer and listen'--"

"That's you, Andy. Draw close. Your side partner has something to say."

Wetherell, alarmed by this delirium of his patient, rose to his feet, and as he did so her harsh voice uttered a short phrase which stiffened Eugene with fright. He left his place and sidled after Wetherell.

"She say _me_, Eugene, come talk for you."

"Very true. You'll need him. This may be a dying confession," argued Kelley.

"You go ahead in tepee," Eugene urged. "Me sit outside. Pogos' medicine now. See 'um vision. Spirits talk to her."

As he peered in at the tepee door Wetherell perceived Pogosa dimly. She was sitting erect in her bed. Her eyes were wide, the pose of her head erect and vigorous. She appeared a span taller, and when she spoke her voice seemed to issue from a deep and powerful chest.

With Eugene as a scared interpreter, Pogosa said: "Here, now where we are encamped, a battle took place many winters ago, and some of the exiles were slain. One of these was Iapi, the husband of Pogosa. He it was who could not speak Shoshoni."

Impatiently Kelley asked, "Will she be able to show us the mine?"

"She will try, but she is old and her mind is misty. She say she is grateful to you, Red Beard, and will give the gold to you. She asks that you take her back to her own people after you find the mine."

"Is the mine far from here?" asked Wetherell, gently.