THE CANON TRAIL.
It was just four days later, the day before the Fourth, that Job, mounted on Bess, rode up to Camp Comfort, as Jane called the little spot where she kept house in the open air for her father, listening to the roar of the Yosemite Falls back of her, and prepared their humble meals over the camp-fire. Job was going home; the old man would expect him on the Fourth, and that keen sense of duty which was ever stronger than his longing to linger near Jane, impelled him to go. He had come to say good-by. Old Tom Reed, sick and selfish, had been blind to the new light in Jane's eyes and did not know the secret which the birds and trees and sky had learned and seemed never to cease whispering about to Jane. He did not like Job. That pride of poverty which hates success put a gulf between him and this noble young fellow, who looked so manly as he rode up on Bess. Tom Reed liked Dan and thought, of course, that matters were settled between him and his black-eyed daughter. He felt to-day like telling this young aristocrat from the Pine Tree Ranch that it would be agreeable to both himself and Jane if he would seek other company. Only physical weakness kept him from following as Jane walked away by Job's side patting Bess' neck. She would see him to the end of the valley, she said; she did not mind the walk. Well, if she would—and what did Job want better than that?—she must mount Bess and let him walk. How pretty she looked on Bess' black back, with her shining hair and flashing eyes and ruddy cheeks! Never had she looked handsomer to Job. Close at her side he kept as Bess slowly walked down across the river bridge, past the Sentinel House, and on close to the Bridal Veil Falls.
As the rainbow in the spray, with its iridescent colors, laughed at them through the trees, Job thought of the gala day coming, when he should claim this noble girl for his bride, and an honest pride filled his heart. At the foot of Inspiration Point they tarried for a full hour, it was so hard to say good-by. How he hated to take Bess from her! At last a sudden thought came to him. She should keep Bess in the valley till the autumn days came and Jane could return home. He would go back over the Merced Cañon trail, only twenty-six miles to his home; he had often wanted to try it and cross the river on Ward's cable. He could not go that way on horseback, and he would leave Bess. He would like to think of Jane and her as together. The girl protested, but she felt a secret joy. It would be next to having him. So she did not dismount, but through her tears saw Job vanish down the cañon, along the Rapids, towards the old, almost forgotten trail that leads for twenty miles by the river's roaring torrent, to where the South Fork joins the North Fork.
A sudden impulse seized her. She turned Bess' head toward the toll road and began to climb the steep three miles to Inspiration Point. Then she hunted for the Cliff Trail that leads away from the road out along the great left precipice of the cañon. She knew there must be some opening in the forest over there. She remembered it from the valley below, the day she had gone down by the Rapids. She would find it and catch one last glimpse of Job on the trail. She would wave to him, and perhaps he would see her. She had Bess, and it would not take long to return; father would not miss her.
Just as she turned into the trail a campers' wagon climbed the hill back of her and passed on over the road, but she did not notice it, she was so absorbed in her own thoughts. She must hurry. Would Job see her? Anyway she would surely see him—she would dismount and creep out to where nothing could hide her view.
Far below Job was already on his march homeward. With a swinging gait, and a determined will that said he must do it, though all the love in his heart said no, Job started off through the trees and on down the cañon trail. His eyes were misty and a lump was in his throat, as he caught one last glimpse of Jane. On he hurried. He was off now, and the sooner he got home the better. By rapid walking and some hard climbing he would reach Indian Bill's old cabin, ten miles down the river, by night.
He had just resolved on this, leaped over a creek stealing down far behind El Capitan, got full in sight of the roaring rapids, when he heard a step behind him and looked up to see Indian Bill himself coming. The old trapper was a well-known character in the mountains. His great brown feet looking out beneath torn blue overalls, his dark-skinned chest wrapped in a blanket of many colors, his long straight hair falling from beneath a well-worn sombrero, formed a familiar sight all over those mountains. Those feet had tramped every mountain pass and rugged trail and had climbed every lofty peak for a hundred miles about the Yosemite.
His approach was a glad surprise to Job. He could wish no better companion over that lonely trail which led along the precipitous sides of the cañon, with straight walls towering above it and steep descents reaching below to the Merced's angry waters, which dash for twenty miles over gigantic boulders with a fury unrivaled by Niagara itself.
Soon Indian Bill was driving away Job's gloom as, in his queer dialect, he told one of his trapper stories while the two swung on at regular gait, close upon each other's heels. Over the steep grades, through the deep, shaded ravines, and along the bare cliffs on that narrow trail, they went. They had gone a mile down the stream, when Job noticed something moving, high on the opposite cliff. He called his companion's attention to it, and the keen-eyed Indian said it was a horseman mounted on a black steed. Job thought of Jane, but at once said to himself that it could not be she—she was back at Camp Comfort by this time. A little later, Bill said the horse was now riderless and standing by a tree, and that a bit of something white was moving on the face of the cliff.
Just then they heard a terrible roar, and both forgot all else in the queer sensation that seized them. All the world seemed to sway before Job's eyes. The mountains below, where the river bends, seemed a thing of life. His feet slipped on the narrow edge of a steep cliff he was crossing, the gravel beneath gave way, and Job found himself lying at the foot of a steep incline, while a whole fusillade of stones was flying past him. A moment, and it was over, and the Indian said:
"Ugh! Heap big earthquake! Great Spirit mad! Come."
But Job could not easily come. His foot was doubled up under him and sharp pains were darting through it. Indian Bill sprang to his assistance, fairly carried him up the steep side of the precipice, from whence, fortunately for him, he had fallen on soft earth, and put him on his feet on the trail. Oh, that long walk over the jutting points, down among the boulders, and up again on places of the trail that seemed suspended between earth and sky! Every step brought a groan to Job's lips. He grew feverish and thirsty. Bill parted a bunch of almost tropical ferns which grew against the rocks, and led Job in to a place where, through the stone roof of a dark cañon, the ice-cold water trickled down drop by drop. It was well toward dusk when Job dropped exhausted on the trail, and the hardy Indian slung him over his shoulder, bore him up a narrow cañon that entered the main gorge on the right, and laid him down on his own blankets in the little wick-i-up made of twisted limbs and twigs that he called home. Soon the crackling fire warmed the water, the sprained foot was bandaged, and Job was asleep.
It was a strange scene on which Job opened his eyes the next morning. He was lying on a bed of cedar boughs, wrapped in an old gray blanket, and with one of many colors under him. A roof of gray and green was over him, the forest's foliage woven into a tent. Through the parted branches he could see the brown-skinned Indian bending over a ruddy fire from whence the savory odor of frying trout stole in. Through an avenue of green down the narrow cañon, he could see the morning sun shining on the waters of the Merced which tumbled over the great rocks. He tried to rise, but a sharp pain shot through his foot. Far away he heard the call of a bird, and out by the fire the weird strains of a monotonous folk-song rose in the air. Job closed his eyes and sent up a morning prayer. In it he tried to pray for Jane, but somehow could not. She was safe, he knew; probably at the fire, too, in the beautiful valley from whence those rushing waters came.
The trout breakfast was over—Bill knew where to get the beauties, and, after he had got them, knew how to cook them—when Job learned from the old trapper that he was to be his guest for a week; that not before then would he be able to continue the journey home, and that Bill would do his best to care for him till the sprained foot was well again. At first he rebelled. He must get home, he said; Andrew Malden was expecting him. But the Indian only grunted and sat in silence, as Job tried to walk and fell back upon the blankets with the realization that Bill was right.
All day the Indian pottered about in silence, fixing his traps and guns, and weaving a pair of moccasins for winter's use, while Job lay half asleep, half awake, living over again the glories of the week just closing. Toward evening the old Indian came in and sat by his guest and began to talk. Far into the night hours, while the camp-fire flashed and crackled without, he kept up his stories, till Job, intensely interested, forgot his pains and his dreams. In quaint English, shorn of all unnecessary words, Bill talked on.
First he told bear stories, finishing each thrilling passage with a significant "Ugh!" The one that roused Job most and held him transfixed was of once when he suddenly met, coming out of the forest, a giant grizzly, which rose on his monster hind feet and advanced for the death embrace. "Me fire gun heap quick, kill him all dead, he fall, hit Bill, arm all torn, blood come, me sick. Ugh!" And turning back his blanket, he showed Job the scars from the grizzly's dying blow.
Then he told tales of adventure. Of scaling the Half Dome by means of the iron pegs some daring climber had left there, and how finally, reaching the summit and lying flat, he peered over and saw himself mirrored in the lake below. He told of a wild ride down the icy slope of the Lyell Glacier; of a night, storm-bound, in the Hetchy-Hetchy, where he slept under the shelter of a limb drooping beneath the snow, with a group of frightened mountain birds for bedfellows. He told of beautiful parks far amid the solitude of the high Sierras, great mountain meadows where shy deer grazed, of crystal lakes that lay embowered in many a hidden mountain spot, of Mount Ritter's grandeur and the dizzy heights of Mount Whitney, till Job's head reeled, and he fell asleep that night dreaming of standing on the jagged, topmost summit of a lofty peak, with all the mountains going round and round below him, till he grew dizzy and fell and fell—and found himself wide awake, listening to the hoot of a distant owl and the breathing of his tawny host stretched out under the sky by the dying embers of the camp-fire.
During the next two days Job was much alone. Bill came and went on many a secret, stealthy errand to where he knew the largest, most toothsome mountain trout had their home. Busy with his own thoughts, Job lay and dreamed the long hours away.
"Make Bill feel bad. Want hear it? Ugh! Me tell it; me there. No brave; little boy. Bad day, bad day!"
It was the fourth day and Job was trying to persuade Bill to tell him about the dreadful massacre of the Yosemite in the years gone by. The fitful firelight played about the solemn face which showed never a quiver as that night Bill told the story which made Job's blood run cold.
Sentinel Rock.
It was in the long-gone years when the miners first came into the mountains. Living quietly in the beautiful valley to which they had given their name, his tribe dwelt. Wild children of nature, they had for many a century had the freedom of those hills. Far and wide on many a hunting expedition they had roamed, and none had said nay. But the pale-face, the greedy pale-face, came and stole the forests and creeks yonder. Twice, enraged at their depredations, the Indians had sallied forth from their homes and rent the hills about Gold City with their war-cries, then retreated to the mountain fastnesses of which the pale-face knew nothing. Once more they had gone on the war-path, and started back, to find the whites at their heels. To the very edge of the cliffs they had been followed, and their refuge was no longer a secret—the world had heard the story of the giant's chasm in the Sierras.
When they had gone up on the great meadows back of Yosemite Falls and El Capitan to live, there came a great temptation. The Mono Lake Indians, far over the pass, had stolen a lot of fine horses from the miners of Nevada. They hated the Mono Lake Indians. They watched their chance, and, while they were off on a great hunting trip, the Yosemites stole over the crest of the Sierras and brought a hundred head of horses back with them. Then the aged Indian went on without a tremor. He told how, one summer day, he was playing with the other boys around a great tree, when he heard the wild war-whoop of the Monos; he saw them coming in their war-paint, mounted on mad, rushing horses; heard the whirr of arrows about him; ran and hid in a cleft of the great rocky cliff, out of sight but not of seeing; saw his mother scalped and thrust back into the burning tepee and his father pushed headlong over the cliff; heard the death-cries of the Yosemites; saw the meadow bathed in blood; saw the end of the Yosemites; and crept down with a few survivors late that night to the valley and escaped to the whites. "'Bloody meadow,' white man call it. Him good name. Wish Mono come now—I kill! I kill!" and, with dramatic gesture that almost startled Job, the old man waved his arms and was silent.
Somehow after that the conversation drifted to religion. Bill talked of the Great Spirit, Job talked of God. The old story of the Incarnation—how this Great One came down to live among men and love us all—Job told as best he could, till the hard heart of the child of nature was touched, and he wanted to know if Job thought He loved poor Indian Bill. It was very late, when Job came back to the awful massacre, and tried to show Bill that the manly thing was not to cry, "I kill, I kill," but "I forgive."
The old man listened in silence. He walked out under the stars, then came back and sat down by Job's side and said, "Bill heap bad. Bill hate Mono Indian." Again and again he paced back and forth.
Job was almost asleep, weary with watching the heart-struggles of the wronged old man, when at last he came and said, "Boy, ask Great Spirit forgive Bill. Bill forgive Mono Indian." And there, at midnight, the love that transfigured Hebrew Peter, German Luther, English Wesley, that had changed Job Malden, transformed Indian Bill.
It was fully two weeks after the old trapper had borne him into his humble tent that one afternoon Job walked off, strong and brave, to finish his journey home. Bill saw him down to the river, where you swing across on a board hung on a cable, helped pull the return ropes that carry the novel car across, shouted as Job clambered up the other bank, "Bill heap glad! Love Mono! Love Job! Good-by!" and was off out of sight through the woods as swift and lithe as a deer, bound on another of his hunting trips far back of El Capitan.
Job saw him vanish; and, turning with a light heart and a merry song, climbed the ridge that separates the North Fork from the South Fork, fairly ran down past the old tunnels of the Cove Mine, skipped over the iron bridge, and began the steady climb of six miles home.
