ON THE EVE OF THE ATTACK.
Cherokee Bill was ill at ease as regards the newcomers, and, whilst other scouts left the main body to discover what was the force approaching from the north, he took the almost opposite direction. But when a scout goes out thus "on his own hook," he makes sure of his way back being clear. A scout must return with news, that is his ruling motto. Besides, the Half-breed on the scouting path was very prudent. His line led him across a trail to Old Nick's Cutoff, and there he scrutinised the ground.
In a few minutes he frowned and stooped lower. He had perceived, scarcely more than discernible though, the mark of a human foot, invisible for other eyes. He gave some seconds' concentrated examination to it, for it was not an Indian's tread, nor a white man's in soft heelless shoes, but that of the wearer of pegged boots, such as are common on the border. They are too heavy and require too much reparation in dry weather to suit the hunters; they adopt the redskins' lighter and pleasanter footgear, as do the Canadian Half-breeds.
There was no doubt that one of Captain Kidd's crew had been here, and recently. Whence he came last and whither he was going now were the questions. That this was a spy of the gold grabbers was clear to Bill. Still, confirmation was far from easy. Except over a few square feet where a shallow rock basin had preserved moist soil, there was nothing but hard stone and dry rocks. The Cherokee chief was not disheartened for all that, being rather too experienced in desert tricks.
This solitary footprint was on the skirt of the woodland, the toe pointing thither.
"He's altogether too blamed cunning," muttered he, with an inward chuckle. "This might scoop in a white man, but not even half an Injin."
He dropped to the ground, and lying thereon like a geographer intently investigating a crabbedly written map, explored every inch of the soil. After a long while he caught sight, a couple of yards distant from the footmark—in the same direction—of a long thin scratch, made evidently by an iron instrument which had lightly slid along. That brought forth a smile, and he went back whence he came.
A huge old cedar rose at the wood border, and flung out protective boughs, so that one waved majestically above the lone footstep. He looked up at it without seeing anything out of the common. He shook his head and fell a-thinking. Then, going all around the tree, he picked out the best side for climbing, where weather had made it rugged, and was at the first branch in two or three minutes. There he stopped to have a look around. His lips curled in silent satisfaction. He crawled along the bough like a panther going to drop on a fawn, and reached a place where a cord had chafed half a ring on the round.
He could go down again—the mystery was solved.
One or more men had gone through the woods, monkey fashion, in the trees, and when at the edge had wound a rope, probably a lasso, to the bough by which to lower themselves to the ground, taking heed to land with their toes towards the course they had followed. Once afoot, they had used an ironshod staff to execute a giant's stride off the damp place under the sheltering tree upon the hard, dry stone. Hence the metallic line noticed by the hunter.
What they were and what their number little worried him. The main point was that he could find them readily. They might conceal themselves temporarily amongst the chaos of boulders, but escape was out of the question! Beyond was an immensely deep abyss, of which the adventurers were doubtless ignorant. They had entered into a no thoroughfare.
After overhauling his rifle, the hunter crept and glided among the large stones, looking in all directions, and stopping now and anon to listen avidly. He came to a spot where the whole of the rocky sea was comprehended in one view. A strange sight was offered him, which filled him with a kind of admiring surprise.
Two men had managed to throw a lasso over a jutting crag right over a large fissure serving as window to the Grotto. One had wound the rope about his middle, and with perfectly alarming boldness, was dangling over the fathomless abyss of the Cutoff with the hope to pry into the cavity.
At the nick when Bill Williams caught sight of this, the suspended man was about climbing up, and with the help of his comrade, was hastening to land on a ledge.
The Raven of the Cherokees allowed him to just get a footing, and whilst he was uncoiling the cord from his waist, Bill aimed at the second man and let the lead fly. It took him fair in the bosom, so that he leaped up in the air tremendously, and fell over into the gulf with an almost endless but more and more faint scream of agony.
Bringing another cartridge into readiness for an immediate shot, the Half-breed strode steadily towards the second bandit, who trembled all over in the greatest dread at his approach.
"My poor brother is shaky with too much weariness," remarked he, when nearer. "It must be as near hard work as ever you tried to hang by the girdle on a rope—and highly risky, too, for the string might snap, and there's no telling how deep you might drop."
The man stared at him as though not understanding the bitter jest. It was Bill who laughed.
"After such a job, you ought to have a rest," he went on. "Don't you fret—you'll have plenty of rest before I get through with you."
Whilst uttering this promise he had disarmed the prisoner of the weapons which he tossed over the precipice; then he used the lasso to bind the man, who could not think of resistance on that perilous shelf, all with a skill and dexterity that a European hangman might envy. As soon as he was pinioned so that to shudder was almost an impossibility, Bill gagged him so that his breathing was confined to the nostrils, Indian mode, and shouldering him like a bale of furs, he carried him to a cleft in the stone whence he could see nothing, and dropped him down within.
"It's nigh as close a fit as a grave," said he ominously. "But the coyotes won't touch you, never fear! And nobody else will. I'd advise your putting in some sleep whilst awaiting my coming back; it will prepare you for the long sleep you are fated to enjoy."
He left the wretch. He let a glance trace the circuit of the landscape, and, carrying his valuable gun under his left arm in the savage's fashion, he returned to discover the trail of the horsemen from the southeast. He seemed to be fully pleased with the late incident.
"All the news those scouts bring to old Captain Kidd will not spoil his slumber," he remarked, chewing some checkerberry leaves as if to counteract the nauseating flavour of the gold hunter's name.
Having settled his object, he marched forward in the Indian style, as the crow flies, all the more recommendable, as path there was none. This plan has the advantage of considerably abridging the road; but in a broken mountainous land most people would rather be excused. It requires steel muscles and uncommon vigour, and the craft to employ them properly; no fear of giddiness—the gifts of the mountain sheep, in short.
Without appearing to give a second thought to the narrow squeaks he had, turning angles in midair merely to reach cornices goats would have evaded, the Cherokee went steadfastly on and on, though each fresh hindrance seemed less surmountable than the easiest before. On the whole he moved rapidly, so that in three half hours he had gone what must have taken anybody else three or, maybe, four full ones.
About eleven, he bounded down on a broadish clearing, where an extremely transparent rivulet ran shallowly, with a melodious murmur, over pebbles where Californian diamonds and agates glowed in all colours, between banks edged with lilies and other aquatic plants.
His piercing eye explored the scene till he was satisfied with the profound stillness. He collected dead wood in a pile a little off from the streamlet, and lit a fire. When it had taken good hold, he dug up some edible roots, which he had found by the leaves as well as if they were labelled, and put them in the ashes to roast. On a large bed of hot coals he laid some strips of deer meat, and lighting his pipe, sat down for a quiet smoke—his gun ever handy, however.
During twenty minutes he only shifted to turn the meat with the point of his knife; both meat and the substitute for potatoes were soon nicely cooked. But even after he dished the peeled tubers upon a leaf and the meat on a strip of bark, with its satin lining equalled by no Dresden china platter, he seemed to wait for the cue to eat.
Indeed, there was a faint rustle in the covert which he must have heard, for he smiled and turned his face fully that way. A hunter crept out of the brush, his gun barrel directed forward and his finger on the trigger.
"Friend!" said Cherokee Bill, without further emotion.
"Well, I am knocked endwise!—The chief!" exclaimed the stranger, in amazement. It was no other than Mr. Filditch.
"Just in time," said Bill Williams, waving his hands hospitably in a kind of welcoming grace over the edibles, "though you are not precisely the man or men I expected."
"Well, I hope he is not dying of hunger, as I am," answered the Yankee Californian, dropping down joyfully in front of his friend. "We have been pushing on with such forced marches that we don't know what eating, sitting still, means!"
"We!" ejaculated the hunter, with what was great astonishment for him.
"What we? When we parted company you were about the lonesomest man in the woods, I should allow."
"Lonesome and lost, chief! Well, I wandered about alone, but I came back a hundred strong!"
"With these horse from the south'ard? I was expecting them."
"Perhaps Don Gregorio telegraphed to you overnight that he was about due?" cried Filditch, jestingly, as well as a mouth full of food would permit.
"Don Gregorio? That's all right, then! They are friends, for sure. That's a weight off my mind!"
"They were glad to have me as guide. They might have had a better. But you can take my office now. I resign with the utmost pleasure. But how has my uncle and the rest been getting on?"
"They are beautifully posted, as you will see."
From the tone, Filditch did not press; he knew that Bill was not communicative unless he pleased.
"What makes you prowl about alone?" inquired the hunter in a little while.
"I thought I recognised a landmark, and wanted to verify it. The troop is only a little beyond."
"Well, this is a good spot for the camp; but Jim and the boys are clean 'way up by the Yellowstone, where we must scoot in hot haste as soon as your band is recruited. Go, fetch 'em up smart!"
Filditch had "gobbled" his share of the unexpected repast. He felt ever so much better physically from that, and morally because he was assisted out of his dilemma as an inexperienced pilot by the proffered guidance of the Cherokee. He darted away in a delighted spirit.
In the meantime, Bill finished his pipe, muttered some remark on the Mexicans wanting to pick their way for the horses' sakes, and leisurely gathered fuel, of which he made a number of fires.
There was great glee among the four or five score Mexicans who rode into the break in the wooded and rocky land at this brilliant token of welcome. In another moment, old Gregorio Peralta, alighting with a briskness hardly anticipated from his silver beard, shook hands with Bill Williams cordially. Several of these Southerners knew Bill by sight, and nearly all by hearsay. It was Hail-fellow, well met! And the camp seemed in a festival.
Don Gregorio had been partly dispossessed of his prejudice against all whose blood was intermixed, by Mr. Filditch's glowing account of Bill Williams' excellences. He at once cast prejudices aloof, and felt genuine sympathy and admiration as he understood him better. He had pictured all reds to be savages fond of rapine and strong drink, with no clear notion on good and evil; essentially devoted to a brutish life, and only human in externals. In brief, ferocious bipeds incapable of generous sentiments.
The sight of the Cherokee, more than ever an Indian since he was on the warpath, so calm, fond of his comrades, handsome of his kind, able, loyal, and wise, his natural gifts added to, not enhanced, by his college training—these aspects made him believe that the Raven was an exception to all the race hitherto seen by him. As time passed over the meals, Don Gregorio learnt that the new guide was very human, with the same passions, virtues, and vices as others of the great human family.
The rest being over, the column formed anew, directed by the mixed-blood hunter, who "handled" them like a ship at sea with the deepwater pilot at the helm. The night made no difference to him, and he pressed them on. After two halts, he brought them to a point whence all was plain riding. It was desirable, perhaps, that this reinforcement should be kept a secret, from the gold grabbers in particular. Such a body of cavalry was invaluable for a final charge, or to pursue the fugitives after a defeat.
Don Gregorio impatiently expressed the wish to ride over towards the Elk's Leap, and confer with Jim Ridge.
"I do not catch what the guide says," remarked he, interrogatively.
"Oh, he says that white folks are very knowing theoretically, but lamentably fail in practice. I quite coincide."
"As how?"
"Well, we are not so near the camp of the Mountain Men and the united Indians as you fancy. The air is very different here from that of the southern plains. In the highlands the large masses absorb the lesser and merge all asperities into smoothness. You are three days off from the Yellowstone Basin, however fast your horses might scramble along." Thus the Cherokee.
"Well?"
"You must wait till Jim comes or otherwise meets you and assigns your place for the combat. Meanwhile, Don Gregorio, as you are eager to see your grandniece Rosario, take a couple of men, an extra mule, and lend me a horse. We will ride to where she is ensconced."
"What! You are never going to take her out of a place of shelter and bring her into the fighting place," cried the old Californian, whilst Filditch echoed the exclamation.
"Not so. I want the pack animal to bring my prisoner along to show Jim."
"A prisoner?"
"You shall see," answered Bill, curtly, turning away to select a horse among the several offered him; whilst Filditch, who, of course, went with them to see his daughter, despatched a messenger to Ridge's command with the gladsome news.