Two on the Trail Part 40

Her terrible agitation was the means of calming his own. He had to be cool for both. He pressed her close to him, stroking her hair.

"Brave, _brave_ Natalie!" he whispered. "Not a sound, till we are clear!"

He gave her a moment to recover herself, letting his encircling arms speak the comfort and cheer he could not utter. Little by little the piteous trembling subsided and the rigid form relaxed.

"Ready, now?" he whispered.

She eagerly nodded.

"I lead the way," he breathed in her ear; "and you keep close at my heels. Take it easy. It must be hands and knees, and an inch at a time."

Natalie pressed his hand to her lips.

He crawled through the hole, and waited for her outside. She made no sound. He touched her rea.s.suringly; and realized with a pang how she was handicapped, with one arm in a sling. They crept back around the foot of the piled rocks, dragging themselves with tense muscles, a foot at a time and waiting long between. By the touch of her hand on his foot he knew she followed close. Looking over his shoulder, he sensed the huddled figure still motionless on the wall.

He could not have told what gave the alarm. They had reached the rivulet, when suddenly Mary leaped off the wall with a cry that brought the two men tumbling out of the tepee.

Garth, springing to his feet, seized Natalie's hand, and pulled her after him.

"Come on!" he whispered cheerily. "We're safe now!"

They scrambled up over the stones of the watercourse, careless of the noise they made.

"What is it?" they heard Grylls shout below.

A sentence in Cree explained.

"Watch the raft!" he shouted. "I'll bring her back!"

They heard him run heavily toward them. Hastily unslinging his gun, Garth sent a shot at random through the darkness. They heard the bullet spring off a stone. The steps ceased.

"By G.o.d! _he's_ up there!" cried Grylls thickly. "Come back, Mabyn!

We'll get 'em easy in the morning!"

There was no further sound of pursuit.

As they climbed, Garth searched from side to side, as well as he could in the darkness, for a suitable spot to make a stand. High above the level of the river, a huge cube of rock resting squarely in the bottom of the ravine, and forcing the stream to travel around it, offered what he wanted. One side of the boulder lay against a steep rocky wall; and in the angle was a secure niche for Natalie.

Her courage failed a little when she saw he meant to stop. "Not here!

Not here!" she protested nervously. "We must put miles between us before morning!"

"The way home lies back across the river," Garth said gently.

"Then why did you come up here?" she said a little wildly. "They'll never let us back!"

His heart ached for her, at the thought of what she must still go through. "Courage! for one more day, my Natalie!" he urged, drawing her to him. "We can't start without horses and food, and those I have to win for you!"

"You make me ashamed!" she whispered.

He heard no more whimpering.

Garth, appreciating the vital necessity of sleep, if he was to keep his wits about him next day, lay down in his blankets while Natalie kept watch. With the first tinge of gray overhead, she woke him, as he had bidden her.

"If we only had a good breakfast to begin on!" were his waking words; "and there's nothing but raw flour and water."

Natalie, in answer to this prayer, produced a flat package from her dress which proved to contain bread and meat. "I always kept something, in case I should be able to get away," she explained.

They ate, sitting quietly side by side in the darkness--they could even laugh a little together now--and they arose vastly refreshed.

Garth climbed the big rock to wait for daylight to reveal the strength and the weakness of the position he had chosen. The top of the rock formed a flat plane slightly inclined toward their rear; and, lying at full length upon it, he could shoot over the edge without exposing more than the top of his head. He lifted up a heavy stone or two; and stood them along the edge for further protection. Then he waited--waited for hours it seemed to him; looking and looking down the ravine until his eyes were fit to start out of his head; and he could see nothing; but lo! when he looked again the light was there!

On the whole he was satisfied. His rock commanded the entire ravine below; it was as steep as a pair of stairs. There was not a stick of herbage below; only a trough of heaped and broken rock ma.s.ses. On either hand they were shut in by straight lead-coloured walls of rock; and at the bottom of the ravine, the forbidding, mist-gray wall of the main gorge cut off the view. In front and on the left they were amply protected; their right flank was the weak spot. Above them on this side, part of the wall of the ravine had given way some ages past; and a bit of the plain had sunk down. The hollow thus formed contained a grove of gaunt trees and underbrush. If their a.s.sailants, under cover of the rocks on the way, ever climbed to it, Garth and Natalie would be badly off indeed.

It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on the big rock. Garth had lost his hat long ago; and he was both unshaven and unshorn. He crouched, hugging his knees, with his rifle across his thighs; and his sheepskin coat hung over his shoulders ready to fling off, when he needed to act. The flannel shirt beneath was in rags; and his moccasins, mere apologies for foot-coverings. But to Natalie, regarding the cool, bright shine of his eyes, as he smiled down on her, he was wholly beautiful. She was scarcely better off; her pale face was enframed in a sad wreck of a limp, stained felt hat; but she could smile too; and Garth had never found her lovelier in her bravery.

The suspense was well-nigh intolerable--and so they fell to chaffing.

"If mother could only see us now!" said Garth with a grin.

"I feel like a white cat coming out of a coal-bin," said Natalie.

"'What's the use!' she says, looking round at herself. 'The job is too big to tackle. If I was only a black cat it wouldn't show!'"

"You could walk right on as Liz, the girl bandit of the Rockies," said Garth.

"Don't you talk!" she retorted. "You look as if Liz had missed her cue, and you'd been through the sawmill!"

And then Garth saw a black sleeve sticking out from behind a rock in the ravine below; and he got down to business. A little sigh of relief escaped him at the sight of his enemies at last. He fired. The shot went wide.

Natalie sank back in her corner, deathly pale; and with a hand over her lips, to keep from crying out. Her part was harder than his.

He called down to her rea.s.suringly. "All right! Only a try-out!"

Further down, a second figure showed briefly, scrambling up the right-hand side of the trough. Garth fired--a fraction of a second too late. He could scarcely credit such nimble agility in a figure so gross.

It was Grylls. Thus two of them were accounted for. Searching for the third, he saw the black crown of a hat projecting above a stone on the other side of the ravine. This was an easy shot; he aimed and fired with a savage satisfaction. The hat disappeared; but again he knew, somehow, that his bullet had not found its mark.

At the same moment Grylls won a rock a yard higher up. He was not coming up the bottom of the ravine, but aiming obliquely up the side for the trees high above. Garth, grimly covering his shelter, saw him bob his head around; a bare, cropped, tousled head, like a hiding schoolboy's.

Quick as he was with the trigger, Grylls was quicker. The bullet flattened itself harmlessly beyond.

As he shot there was a scramble across the ravine; and he saw the other figure had mounted. The hat, Mabyn's hat, again showed; and he took another shot at it. This time the bullet knocked it spinning off the rifle barrel which upheld it; and in a flash Garth understood how neatly they were fooling him. Each in turn drew his fire, while the other made an advance. He resolved to shoot no more.

Meanwhile the first one he had glimpsed, which must be Mary, had not moved from the middle of the ravine. Some of the stones were moved, and he guessed she had made a permanent shelter there. There was a shot from below, and the bullet spattered itself on the heavy base of rock.

Holding his hand, Garth awaited a second shot. He saw a tiny white puff at last, and marked the aperture whence it issued. The bullet hurtled whiningly overhead. Steadying his gun on the edge of the rock, he took careful aim--but the other spoke first. It was a marvellous shot--or a chance one. The bullet splintered the edge of the stone protecting Garth's head, and sang off. A jagged sliver of stone ploughed across the back of his extended hand. He exclaimed as in casual surprise, and his gun exploded harmlessly in the air. He looked at his hand stupidly as at an alien member; then suddenly he understood; and whipping out his handkerchief, bound up the wound, knotting the linen with teeth and fingers.

Up to this moment Garth had been playing a dispa.s.sionate game; but he returned to his loophole conscious of a great surge of cold rage against those below. He yearned to get even; but he could wait for it. Mabyn exposed his hat tantalizingly; Grylls shot out a foot, or bobbed up his head--but Garth saved his bullets. He would not even try to pierce the sharpshooters' defenses again. An occasional shot came from there; but never such another as the last.

Finally Grylls changed his tactics. From behind his rock he taunted Garth vilely. The walls of the ravine reverberated horridly with the sound of the sudden human voice.

But Garth still bided his time; merely adding the insult of the words to Natalie's ears, to the score of his rage.