CHAPTER XXIV. ON THE TRAIL.
"You're a pretty fellow, you are!"
This was the way in which Leon was greeted by his cousin the next morning when he awoke.
It was broad daylight. The hunter had arisen at the first peep of day, and the boys were alone in their room.
"What's the matter now?" asked Leon, as he sat up in bed, pulled his trousers from under his pillow, and thrust his hand into his pocket to make sure that his money was safe. "I haven't been doing anything!"
"No; you haven't made a blunder this morning, for you haven't had time; but you made two fearful ones last night," replied Frank. "What in the world induced you to tell that man that you had a pocketful of money? He is a stranger to us, and we don't know whether he is honest or not."
"Perhaps I did talk a little too much," said Leon reflectively. "But I wanted to give him to understand that, if he would let us go with him, we would be no expense to him."
"Well, another time don't be in such haste to take a person you don't know into your confidence."
Leon could make no defence, so he said nothing.
He lay for a long time thinking over the conversation he and his cousin had had with the hunter the night before, and there was one thing upon which he dwelt with no little satisfaction.
This new friend had not tried to turn them from their purpose. On the contrary, he had said all he could to encourage them. If his statements were worthy of belief—and Leon did not doubt them in the least—a hunter's life was one of ease and romance, and the only one that was all sunshine. It was true that a hunter was sometimes in danger of his life, but that was a matter of no moment in the opinion of Eben Webster. It only served to put him on his mettle, and to relieve the monotony of his existence.
Eben, according to his own story, was a typical hunter. He was of the same stamp as those doughty heroes who figure so extensively in cheap novels. He had, time and again, whipped all the hostile warriors that could get around him; and as for bears and panthers, he thought no more of shooting them than Leon did of bringing down a grouse or squirrel.
The boy could not help telling himself that Eben's stories differed widely from those to which he had listened in the bar-room, but still his faith in his new friend was not shaken.
He believed the latter, because he pictured life in the mountains just as he hoped to find it. It never occurred to him that the hunter had told him a pack of falsehoods, but he found out afterward that such was the case.
The loud ringing of a bell at the foot of the stairs interrupted Leon's meditations, and brought him and his cousin out upon the floor in a twinkling. They dressed with all haste, and, descending to the bar-room, found the guests loitering about, awaiting the call to breakfast.
Eben was there, and he sat beside the boys at the table. His tongue ran as rapidly as it had run the night before, and, among other things, he told the boys that he had been busy that morning looking up a mount for them, and had found just what they wanted.
A couple of gold-hunters who were stopping at the hotel, and were going to start for the States that day, offered to sell the horses they had ridden from the mines for a mere song—twenty dollars apiece, including saddles, bridles, and saddle-bags.
"They can't be good for anything if they can be bought as cheap as that," said Leon. "My father's horse cost six hundred dollars."
"They're good enough to carry you to Laramie," answered the hunter, "and when we get there you can trade 'em off to the Injuns for better ones. What I want to make you understand is, that you don't want to spend a cent more in this town than you are obliged to. Things are so dear!"
This was the burden of Eben's advice to the boys, and he repeated it so often while they were purchasing their outfit that they began to wonder at it. Perhaps we shall presently see why it was that the man was so anxious to have Leon take good care of his money.
Breakfast being over, the miners who owned the horses were hunted up, and Eben and the runaways accompanied them to the stable.
The animals were brought out for their inspection, but the boys knew no more about them after they got through looking them over than they did before they saw them.
They were mustangs, and although in very good condition they were by no means handsome, and Frank did not hesitate to say so.
"'Handsome is that handsome does,' pilgrim," said one of the miners. "These hosses have been through two or three fights with Injuns, and if it hadn't been that they're just a trifle faster'n chain lightning, me and my partner wouldn't be here in St. Joe to-day. If we wasn't going back to the States, we wouldn't think of parting with 'em."
These words raised the mustangs wonderfully in Leon's estimation. Without any further hesitation, he pulled out his roll of bills and paid for them on the spot.
The roll was still a pretty large one, although he had paid his own and his cousin's railroad and steamboat fare out of it. It was large enough to make Eben's eyes grow to twice their usual size, and if the boys had seen the expression that settled on his face, and could have read the thoughts that passed through his mind, it is possible that their own eyes would have been opened.
The horses having been purchased, but little remained to be done, and in an hour more the boys, accompanied by the hunter, were on their way to the plains.
Instead of their valise—for which the landlord had generously allowed them a dollar on their bill—the boys carried, strapped behind their saddles, two small meal-bags, which contained their clothing.
The saddle-bags were filled with provisions that the hunter had selected for them, and they were each provided with a lariat and picket-pin for staking out their horses at night.
Eben had protested earnestly against the expenditure of money for blankets, declaring that the boys' heavy overcoats would afford them all the protection they needed at night; but Frank declared that he had never read of a hunter lying before his fire wrapped in an overcoat, and so the blankets were purchased.
The first few days passed without the occurrence of any incident that is worthy of note. They travelled rapidly; for Eben declared that haste was necessary. It would not be many days, he said, before the cold winter storms would begin to sweep over the prairie—in fact, he had never known them to hold off so long before—and if they were caught out in a "blizzard," nothing but certain death awaited them.
So he had the boys up every morning before daylight, allowed them but a very short rest at noon, and kept them in the saddle long after dark.
It is needless to say that, not being accustomed to riding on horseback, they suffered severely; but the tireless mustangs on which they were mounted did not seem to mind it in the least. They were as willing to go at nine o'clock at night as they were in the morning.
During the first week the boys saw absolutely nothing along their line of travel, for their time was fully occupied in trying to find an easy position in the saddle; but their aches and pains gradually left them as they became "hardened to it," and then Leon began to take some interest in the new and strange sights that met his gaze on every side.
He was very jubilant, Eben was talkative, and Frank was frightened and homesick. And the fact was, he saw a good deal to frighten him.
Every mile of the road was marked by the bleaching bones of horses and cattle, telling of disasters that had befallen some unfortunate emigrant, and now and then the sight of a human grave or the ruins of a "dug-out" would make the cold chills creep all over him.
There was a good deal of travel on the trail for that time of the year. Every day they passed long lines of heavily loaded freight wagons, and they, in turn, were passed by the coaches of the Overland Stage and Mail Company, which, drawn by four fleet horses and escorted by cavalrymen—who galloped along on each side of them—whisked by at the rate of ten miles an hour.
They also saw trains going the other way—empty freight-wagons, which a few weeks before had gone out loaded with government stores, and others driven by disgusted gold-hunters and emigrants, who were making all haste to reach the States.
The hunter always made it a point to travel rapidly whenever he and his companions met any of these returning wagons.
He took particular pains, also, when they began to think of stopping for the night, to ride so far beyond any camp they might find on the trail that the boys could not go back to visit it.
He did not intend to allow his young companions an opportunity to converse with any of the emigrants, for fear that they might hear something discouraging; but, in spite of all his precautions, they learned something along the route which Eben himself had learned at a station near which they made their camp a few nights before, but which he studiously kept from the boys.
One afternoon, when they were about twenty miles from Julesburg, and 430 on their way toward Fort Laramie, one of the mail-coaches overtook them, accompanied, as usual, by four cavalrymen.
As the coach dashed by the sergeant who commanded the escort drew up his horse with a jerk, exclaiming:
"Where bound, pilgrims?"
"Fort Laramie," replied Leon, who was the first to speak.
"Laramie!" echoed the sergeant. "You will never see it this year. You'll do well if you get to Julesburg. You want to keep up with us if you can, because the reds have been jumping down on some of the coaches."
So saying, the officer touched his horse with his spurs, and galloped away in pursuit of the coach.