A FORTY-MILE RIDE
The ranch was only a small log shack, of two rooms, with corral and sheds and hay-land around it; it wasn't much of a place, but we were glad to get there. Smoke was rising from the stove-pipe chimney. As we drew up, one of the women looked out of the kitchen door, and the other stood in a shed with a milk-pail in her hand. The woman in the doorway was the mother; the other was the daughter. They were regular ranch women, hard workers and quick to be kind in an emergency. This was an emergency, for Major Henry was about worn out.
"Fetch him right in here," called the mother; and the daughter came hurrying.
We carried him into a sleeping room, and laid him upon the bed there. He had been all grit, up till now; but he quit and let down and lay there with eyes closed, panting.
"What is it?" they asked anxiously.
"He's sick. We think it's appendicitis."
"Oh, goodness!" they exclaimed. "What can we give him?"
"Nothing. Where can we get a doctor?"
"The mines is the nearest place, if he's there. That's twenty miles."
"But a man we met said it was fifteen."
"You can't follow that trail. It's been washed out. You'll have to take the other trail, around by the head of Cooper Creek."
"Can we get a saddle-horse here?"
"There are two in the corral; but I don't know as you can catch 'em. They're used to being roped."
"We'll rope them."
The major groaned. He couldn't help it.
"It's all right, old boy," soothed Fitz. "We'll have the doctor in a jiffy."
"Don't bother about me," gasped the major, without opening his eyes. "Go on through."
"You hush," we all retorted. "We'll do both: have you fixed up and get through, too."
The major fidgeted and complained weakly.
"One of us had better be catching the horses, hadn't we?" suggested Red Fox Scout Ward. "Van and I'll go for the doctor."
"No, you won't," said I. "I'll go. Fitz ought to stay. I know trails pretty well."
"Then either Van or I'll go with you. Two would be better than one."
"I'm going," declared Van Sant. "You stay here with Fitz, Hal."
That was settled. We didn't delay to dispute over the matter. There was work and duty for all.
"You be learning the trail, then," directed Fitz. "I'll be catching the horses."
"You'll find a rope on one of the saddles in the shed," called the daughter.
Fitz made for it; that was quicker than unpacking Sally and getting our own rope. Scout Ward went along to help. We tried to ease the major.
"You should have something to eat," exclaimed the women.
We said "no"; but they bustled about, hurrying up their own supper, which was under way when we arrived. While they bustled they fired questions at us; who we were, and where we had come from, and where we were going, and all.
The major seemed kind of light-headed. He groaned and wriggled and mumbled. The message was on his mind, and the Red Fox Scouts, and the fear that neither would get through in time. He kept trying to pass the message on to us; so finally I took it.
"All right. I've got it, major," I told him. "We'll carry it on. We can make Green Valley easy, from here. We'll start as soon as we can. To-morrow's Sunday, anyway. You go to sleep."
That half-satisfied him.
We found that we couldn't eat much. We drank some milk, and stuffed down some bread and butter; and by that time Fitz and Scout Ward had the horses led out. We heard the hoofs, and in came Ward, to tell us.
"Horses are ready," he announced.
Out we went. No time was to be lost. They even had saddled them—Fitz working with his one hand! So all we must do was to climb on. The women had told us the trail, and they had given us an old heavy coat apiece. Nights are cold, in the mountains.
"You know how, do you?" queried Fitz of me.
"Yes."
"That gray horse is the easiest," called one of the women, from the door.
"Let Jim take it, then," spoke Van.
But I had got ahead of him by grabbing the bay.
"Jim is used to riding," explained Fitz.
"So am I," answered Van.
"Not these saddles, Van," put in Ward. "They're different. The stirrups of the gray are longer, a little. They'll fit you better than they'll fit Jim."
Van had to keep the gray. It didn't matter to me which horse I rode, and it might to him from the East; so I was glad if the gray was the easier.
We were ready.
"We'll take care of Tom till you bring the doctor," said Fitz.
"We'll bring him."
"So long. Be Scouts."
"So long."
A quick grip of the hand from Fitz and Ward, and we were off, out of the light from the opened door where stood the two women, watching, and into the dimness of the light. Now for a forty-mile night ride, over a strange trail—twenty miles to the mines and twenty miles back. We would do our part and we knew that Fitz and Ward would do theirs in keeping the major safe.
That appeared a long ride. Twenty miles is a big stretch, at night, and when you are so anxious.
We were to follow on the main trail for half a mile until we came to a bridge. But before crossing the bridge there was a gate on the right, and a hay road through a field. After we had crossed the field we would pass out by another gate, and would take a trail that led up on top of the mesa. Then it was nineteen miles across the mesa, to the mines. The mines would have a light. They were running night and day.
We did not say much, at first. We went at fast walk and little trots, so as not to wind the horses in the very beginning. We didn't dash away, headlong, as you sometimes read about, or see in pictures. I knew better. Scouts must understand how to treat a horse, as well as how to treat themselves, on the march.
This was a dark night, because it was cloudy. There were no stars, and the moon had not come up yet. So we must trust to the horses to keep the trail. By looking close we could barely see it, in spots. Of course, the darkness was not a deep black darkness. Except in a storm, the night of the open always is thinnish, so you can see after your eyes are used to it.
I had the lead. Up on the mesa we struck into a trot. A lope is easier to ride, but the trot is the natural gait of a horse, and he can keep up a trot longer than he can a lope. Horses prefer trotting to galloping.
Trot, trot, trot, we went.
"How you coming?" I asked, to encourage Van.
"All right," he grunted. "These stirrups are too long, though. I can't get any purchase."
"Doesn't your instep touch, when you stand up in them?"
"If I straighten out my legs. I'm riding on my toes. That's the way I was taught. I like to have my knees crooked so I can grip with them. Don't you, yours?"
"Just to change off to, as a rest. But cowboys and other people who ride all day stick their feet through the stirrup to the heel, and ride on their instep. A crooked leg gives a fellow a cramp in the knee, after a while. Out here we ride straight up and down, so we are almost standing in the stirrups all the time. That's the cowboy way, and it's about the cavalry way, too. Those men know."
"How do you grip, then?"
"With the thigh. Try it. But when you're trotting you'd better stand in the stirrups and you can lean forward on the horn, for a rest."
Van grunted. He was experimenting.
"Should think it would make your back ache," he said.
"What?"
"To ride with such long stirrups."
"Uh uh," I answered. "Not when you sit up and balance in the saddle and hold your spine straight. It always makes my back ache to hunch over. We Elk Scouts try to ride with heel and shoulders in line. We can ride all day."
"Humph!" grunted Van. "Let's lope."
"All right."
So we did lope, a little way. Then we walked another little way, and then I pushed into the same old trot. That was hard on Van, but it was what would cover the ground and get us through quickest to the doctor. So we must keep at it.
Sometimes I stood in the stirrups and leaned on the horn; sometimes I sat square and "took it."
We crossed the mesa, and first thing we knew, we were tilting down into a gulch. The horses picked their way slowly; we let them. We didn't want any tumbles or sprained legs. The bottom of the gulch held willows and aspens and brush, and was dark, because shut in. We didn't trot. My old horse just put his nose down close to the ground, and went along at an amble, like a dog, smelling the trail. I let the lines hang and gave him his head. Behind me followed Van and his gray. I could hear the gray also sniffing. (Note 65.)
"Will we get through?" called Van, anxiously. "Think we're still on the trail?"
"Sure," I answered.
Just then my horse snorted, and raised his head and snorted more, and stood stock-still, trembling. I could feel that his ears were pricked. He acted as if he was seeing something, in the trail.
"Gwan!" I said, digging him with my heels.
"What's the matter?" called Van.
His horse had stopped and was snorting.
"Don't know."
It was pitchy dark. I strained to see, but I couldn't. That is a creepy thing, to have your horse act so, when you don't know why. Of course you think bear and cougar. But we were not to be held up by any foolishness, and I was not a bit afraid.
"Gwan!" I ordered again.
"Gwan!" repeated Van.
I heard a crackling in the brush, and my horse proceeded, sidling and snorting past the spot. Van's gray followed, acting the same way. It might have been a bear; we never knew.
On we went, winding through the black timber again. We were on the trail, all right; for by looking at the tree-tops against the sky we could just see them and could see that they were always opening out, ahead. The trail on the ground was kind of reproduced on the sky.
It was a long way, through that dark gulch. But nothing hurt us and we kept going.
The gulch widened; we rode through a park, and the horses turned sharply and began to climb a hill—zigzagging back and forth. We couldn't see a trail, and I got off and felt with my hands.
A trail was there.
We came out on top. Here it was lighter. The moon had risen, and some light leaked through the clouds.
"Do you think we're on the right trail, still?" asked Van, dubiously. "They didn't say anything about this other hill."
That was so. But they hadn't said anything about there being two trails, either. They had said that when we struck the trail over the mesa, to follow it to the mines.
"It must be the right trail," I said, back. "All we can do is to keep following it."
Seemed to me that we had gone the twenty miles already. But of course we hadn't.
"Maybe we've branched off, on to another trail," persisted Van. "The horses turned, you remember. Maybe we ought to go back and find out."
"No, it's the right trail," I insisted, again. "There's only the one, they said."
We must stick to that thought. We had been told by persons who knew. If once we began to fuss and not believe, and experiment, then we both would get muddled and we might lose ourselves completely. I remembered what old Jerry the prospector once had said: "When you're on a trail, and you've been told that it goes somewhere, keep it till you get there. Nobody can describe a trail by inches."
We went on and on and on. It was down-hill and up-hill and across and through; but we pegged along. Van was about discouraged; and it was a horrible sensation, to suspect that after all we might have got upon a wrong trail, and that we were not heading for the doctor but away from him, while Fitz and Ward were doing their best to save Tom, thinking that we would come back bringing the doctor.
We didn't talk much. Van was dubious, and I was afraid to discuss with him, or I might be discouraged, too. I put all my attention to making time at fast walk and at trot, and in hoping. Jiminy, how I did hope. Every minute or two I was thinking that I saw a light ahead—the light of the mines. But when it did appear, it appeared all of a sudden, around a shoulder: a light, and several lights, clustered, in a hollow before!
"There it is, Van!" I cried; and I was so glad that I choked up.
"Is that the mines?"
"Sure. Must be. Hurrah!"
"Hurrah!"
The sight changed everything. Now the night wasn't dark, the way hadn't been so long after all, we weren't so tired, we had been silly to doubt the trail; for we had arrived, and soon we would be talking with the doctor.
The trail wound and wound, and suddenly, again, it entered in among sheds, and the dumps of mines. At the first light I stopped. The door was partly open. It was the hoisting house of a mine, and the engineer was looking out, to see who we were.
"Is the doctor here?" I asked.
"Guess so. Want him?"
"Yes."
"He has a room over the store. Somebody hurt? Where you from?"
"Harden's ranch. Where is the store?"
"I'll show you. Here." He led the way. "Somebody hurt over there?"
"No. Sick."
We halted beside a platform of a dim building, and the engineer pounded on the door.
"Oh, doc!" he called.
And when that doctor answered, through the window above, and we knew that it was he, and that we had him at last, I wanted to laugh and shout. But now we must get him back to the major.
"You're needed," explained the man. "Couple of kids." And he said to us: "Go ahead and tell him. I'm due at the mine." And off he trudged. We thanked him.
"What's the trouble?" asked the doctor.
"Appendicitis, we think. We're from the Harden ranch."
"Great Scott!" we heard the doctor mutter. Then he said. "All right, I'll be down." And we waited.
He came out of a side door and around upon the porch. He was buttoning his shirt.
"Who's got it? Not one of you?"
"No, another boy. He was sick on the trail and we took him to the ranch. Then we rode over here."
"What makes you think your friend has appendicitis?"
We described how the major acted and what Fitz had found out by feeling, and what we had done.
"Sounds suspicious," said the doctor, shortly. "You did the right thing, anyway. Do you want to go back with me? I'll start right over. Expect you're pretty tired."
"We'll go," we both exclaimed. We should say so! We wanted to be there, on the spot.
"I'll just get my case, and saddle-up." And he disappeared.
He was a young doctor, smooth-faced; I guess he hadn't been out of college very long; but he was prompt and ready. He came down in a moment with a lantern, and put his case on the porch. He handed us a paper of stuff.
"There's some lump sugar," he said. "Eat it. I always carry some about with me, on long rides. It's fine for keeping up the strength."
He swung the lantern to get a look at us, then he went back toward the stables, and saddled his horse. He was in the store a moment, too.
"I've got some cheese," he announced, when he came out again. "Cheese and sugar don't sound good as a mixture, but they'll see us through. We must keep our nerve, you know. All aboard?"
"All aboard," we answered.
That was another long ride, back; but it did not seem so long as the ride in, because we knew that we were on the right trail. The doctor talked and asked us all about our trip as Scouts, and told experiences that he had had on trips, himself; and we tried to meet him at least halfway. But all the time I was wondering about the major, and whether we would reach him in time, and whether he would get well, and what was happening now, there. But there was no use in saying this, or in asking the doctor a lot of questions. He would know and he would do his best, and so would we all.
Just at daylight we again entered the ranch yard. Fitz waved his one arm from the ranch door. He came to meet us. His eyes were sticky and swollen and his face pale and set, but he smiled just the same.
"Here's the doctor," we reported. "How is he?"
"Not so bad, as long as we keep the cold compress on. He's slept."
"Good," said the doctor. "We'll fix him up now, all right."
He swung off, with his case, and Fitz took him right in. Van and I sort of tumbled off, and stumbled along after. Those forty miles at trot and fast walk had put a crimp in our legs. But I tell you, we were thankful that we had done it!
And here was our second Sunday.