THE END.
[THE VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLETRAP."]
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH.
XI.
"You're a miserable, sneaking, treacherous old equine scoundrel!" cried Jack, shaking his fist violently at Old Blacky. "You knew you were making us come the wrong road."
Old Blacky answered never a word, but turned, hit the wagon tongue a kick, and joined the other horses.
"Well, close down the front and let's talk this thing over," said Jack. "In the first place, we are snowed in."
"In the second place," said I, "we may stay snowed in a week."
"I don't think we're prepared for that," said Ollie, very solemnly.
"Let's see," went on Jack. "There are two sacks of ground feed under Ollie's bed. By putting the horses on rather short rations, that ought to last pretty nearly or quite a week. But for hay we're not so well provided. There's one big bundle under the wagon, if Blacky hasn't eaten it up. The pony won't need any, because she knows how to paw down to the dry grass. The others don't know how to do this, and the hay will last them, after a fashion, for about three days."
"Perhaps by that time the pony will have taught them how to paw," I said.
"Wouldn't be surprised," returned Jack. "Perhaps by that time we'll all be glad to learn from her. We've got flour enough to last a fortnight, so we needn't be afraid of running out of water pancakes at least. You don't grow fat on 'em, but, on the other hand, there is no gout lurking in a water pancake as I make it."
"No, Jack, that's so," I said, feelingly.
"We've got enough bacon for several meals, a can of chicken, and two cans of beans. Also a loaf of bread and a pound of crackers. Then there's three cans of fruit, a dozen potatoes, six eggs, a quart of milk, and half a pound of pressed figs. After that we'll paw with the pony."
"I wonder if we couldn't get some game?" inquired Ollie.
"Snow-birds, maybe," said Jack. "Or perhaps an owl. I've heard b'iled owl spoken of."
After all, the prospect was not so bad. Besides, it was so early in the season that it did not seem at all likely that we would be snow-bound a week. Still, we knew little about the mountain climate.
We got on our overcoats and went out and gave the horses their breakfast. Old Blacky was still cross, but Jack contented himself by calling him a few names. We also got up what wood we could and piled it against the wagon, for use in case our kerosene became exhausted, though we decided to cook in the wagon for the present. The snow was seven or eight inches deep, and still falling rapidly. After breakfast we took the pony down to a little open flat and turned her loose. The old instinct of her wild days came back to her, and she began to paw away the snow and gnaw at the scanty grass beneath.
"Perhaps," I said, "she can be induced to paw for the others."
After giving the other horses a little hay, we returned to the wagon, where we staid most of the day. I'm afraid we were a little frightened by the prospect. Of course, we knew that if it came to the worst we could leave the wagon and make our way back along the trail on foot, but we did not want to do that. But as for getting the wagon back along the narrow road, now blotted out by the snow, we knew it would be foolish to attempt it. It was not very cold in the wagon, and Jack played the banjo, and we were fairly cheerful. The snow kept coming down all day, and by night it was a foot deep. The pony came in from the flat as it began to grow dark, and we gave the horses their supper and left them in the shelter of the rocks. Then we brushed the snow off the top of the cover, as we had done several times before, and went in to spend the evening by the light of the lantern. When bedtime came, Jack looked up and said:
"The cover doesn't seem to sag down. It must have stopped snowing."
We looked out, and found that it was so. We could even see the stars; and, better yet, it did not seem to be growing colder. We went to bed feeling encouraged.
The next morning the sun peeped in at us through the long trunks of the pines, and Ollie soon discovered that the wind was from the south.
"Unless it turns cold again, this will fix the snow," said Jack.
He was right, and it soon began to thaw. By noon the little stream in the gulch was a torrent, and before night patches of bare ground began to appear. We decided not to attempt to leave camp that day, but the next morning saw us headed back along the tortuous road. In two hours we were again on the main trail. Just as we turned in, Eugene Brooks came along, having also been delayed by the snow, though the fall down the trail had not been nearly so great. 'Gene laughed at us, and told us that we had been following a trail to some lead-mines, which had been abandoned several months before.
THE DEADWOOD TREASURE COACH.
Half a mile farther on we came to the Thunder Butte Creek which we had sought. The water was almost blood-red, which 'Gene told us came from the gold stamp-mills on its upper course. If the water had been gray it would have indicated silver-mining. Just beyond we met the Deadwood Treasure Coach. It was an ordinary four-horse stage, without passengers, but carrying two guards, each with a very short double-barrelled shot-gun resting across his lap. The stage was operated by the express company, and was bringing out the gold bricks from the mines near Deadwood.
"I suppose," said Ollie, musingly, "if anybody tried to rob the coach, those fellows would shoot with their guns?"
"Oh no," replied Jack. "Oh no; they carry those guns to fan themselves with on hot days." But Ollie did not seem to be misled by this astonishing information.
As we went on, the road grew constantly more mountainous. Sometimes the trail ran along ledges, and sometimes near roaring streams and waterfalls, and the great pine-trees were everywhere. We passed two grizzly old placer-miners working just off the trail, and stopped and watched them "pan out" a few shovelfuls of dirt. They were rewarded by two or three specks of gold, and seemed satisfied. 'Gene told us afterward that one of them was an old California '49er, who had used the same pan in every State and Territory of the West.
It was a little after noon when we drove in to Deadwood—the last point outward bound at which the Rattletrap expected to touch. It was a larger town than Rapid City, and was wedged in a little gulch between two mountains, with the White Wood Creek rushing along and threatening to wash away the main street. We noticed that the only way of reaching many of the houses on the mountain-side was by climbing long flights of stairs. We drove on, and camped near a mill on the upper edge of town.
In the afternoon we wandered about town, and, among other places, visited the many Chinese stores. We also clambered up the mountain-sides to the two cemeteries, which we could see far above the town. It seemed to us that on rather too many of the head-stones (which were in nearly every case boards, by-the-way) it was stated that the person whose grave it marked was "assassinated by" so-and-so, giving the name of the assassin; but these were of the old days, when no doubt there were a good many folks in Deadwood who left the town just as well off after they had been assassinated. "Killed by Indians" was also the record on some of the boards. Ollie was greatly interested in the Chinese graves, with dishes of rice and chicken on them, and colored papers covered with curious characters—prayers, I suppose. We climbed on up to the White Rocks, almost, at the top of the highest peak overlooking Deadwood, and had a good view of the town and gulch below, and of the great Bear Butte standing out alone and bold miles to the east. We were tired, and glad to go to bed as soon as we got back to the wagon.
The next day we decided to visit Lead City (pronounced not like the metal, but like the verb to lead). Here were most of the big gold-mines, including the great Homestake Mine. It was only two or three miles, and we drove over early. It was a strange town, perched on the side of a mountain, and consisted of small openings in the ground, which were the mines, and immense shedlike buildings, which contained the ore-reducing works. The noise of the stamp-mills filled the whole town, and seemed to drown out and cover up everything else. We soon found that there was no hope of our getting into the mines.
"They'd think you were spies for the other mines, or something of that sort," said a man to us. "Nobody can get down. Nobody knows where they are digging, and they don't mean that anybody shall. They may be digging under their own property exclusively, and they may not. For all I know, they may be taking gold that belongs to me a thousand feet, more or less, under my back yard."
"If I had a back yard here," said Jack, after we had passed on, "I'd put my ear to the ground once in a while and listen, and if I heard anybody burrowing under it I'd—well—I'd yell scat at 'em."
We found no difficulty in getting in the stamp-mills, and a man kindly told us much about them.
"The Homestake Mills make up the largest gold-reducing plant in the world," said the man. "Where do you suppose the largest single stamp-mill in the world is?"
We guessed California.
"No," he said. "It's in Alaska—the Treadwell Mill."
We decided that the stamp-mills were the noisiest place we were ever in. There were hundreds of great steel bars, three or four inches in diameter and a dozen feet long, pounding up and down at the same time on the ore and reducing it to powder. It was mixed with water, and ran away as thin red mud, the gold being caught by quicksilver. The openings of the shafts and tunnels were in or near the mills, and there were the smallest cars and locomotives which we had ever seen, going about everywhere on narrow tracks, carrying the ore. Ollie walked up to one of the locomotives and looked down at it, and said:
"Why, it seems just like a Shetland-pony colt. I believe I could almost lift it."
The engineer sat on a little seat on the back end, and seemed bigger than his engine. As we looked at them we constantly expected to see them tip up in front from the weight of the engineer. There was also a larger railroad, though still a narrow gauge, winding away for twenty miles along the tops of the hills, which was used principally for bringing wood for the engines and timbers for propping up the mines.
"WHAT A BASEBALL PITCHER THAT MAN WOULD MAKE!"
We were walking along a connecting shed, and happened to look out a window, when we saw a four-foot stick of cord-wood shoot up fifty feet from some place behind us, and after sailing over a wide curve, like a "fly-ball," alight on a great pile of similar sticks on the lower ground, which was much higher than an ordinary house, and must have contained thousands of cords.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Jack. "Wish I could throw a stick of wood like that fellow."
Another and another shot after the first one in quick succession. Sometimes there were two almost together, and we noticed the bigger and heavier the stick the higher and farther it was shot. We saw some almost a foot in diameter soaring like straws before the wind.
"What a baseball-pitcher that man would make!" went on Jack, enthusiastically. "Think of his arm! Look at that big one go—it must weigh two hundred pounds!"
"Let's get out of this shed and investigate the mystery," I said.
Outside it was all clear. The narrow-gauge wood railroad ended on the edge of the steep hill overlooking the mills. Down this was a long wooden chute, or flume, like a big trough, which for the last thirty or forty feet at its lower end curved upward. Men were unloading wood from a train at the upper end. Each stick shot down the flume like lightning, up the short incline at the end, and soared away like a bird to the pile beyond and below the shed. A little stream of water trickled constantly down the chute to keep the friction of the logs from setting it on fire.
"That's the most interesting thing here," said Jack. "I'd like to send the Blacksmith's Pet down the thing and see what he would do. Bet a cooky he'd kick the wood-pile all over the town after he alighted."
We spent nearly the whole day in wandering about the stamp-mills. The great steam-engines which operated them were some of the largest we had ever seen.
"And think," observed Jack, "of the fact that all of this heavy machinery, including the big engines and the locomotives and cars, and, in fact, everything, was brought overland on wagons, probably most of it nearly three hundred miles. No wonder people got to driving such teams as Henderson's."
Toward night we returned to Deadwood by the way of Central City. Here were more great mines and mills, but they did not seem to be so prosperous, and part of the town was deserted, and consisted of nothing but empty houses. Just as the sun set we drove in through the Golden Gate, and cast anchor at our old camp near the mill.
The next morning was wintry again, with snowflakes floating in the air. The ground was frozen, and the wind seemed to come through the wagon cover with rather more freedom than we enjoyed.
"It's time we began the return voyage," said Jack. "We're a long way from home, and we won't get there any too soon if we go as fast as we can and take the shortest cut." So we started that afternoon.
The shortest cut was to return to Rapid City, and then instead of going south into Nebraska, to go straight east, through the Sioux Indian Reservation, crossing the Missouri at Pierre, and then on across the settled country of eastern Dakota to Prairie Flower, over against the Minnesota line.
We followed the same road between Deadwood and Rapid City, with the exception that we turned out in one place, and went around by Fort Meade. Here we found a beautiful camping-place the first night near a little stream, and great overhanging rocks, and not far from Bear Butte. We reached Rapid late the next night, which was Saturday, and stopped at the old camp near the mill-race. Here we staid over Sunday, but Monday noon saw us under sail again. As we went through the town we stopped at the freighter's camp, and told 'Gene Brooks good-by, and then drove away across the wide rolling plain to the east.
'Gene had warned us that we had a lonesome road before us to Pierre, one hundred and seventy miles, nearly all of it across the reservation.
A STATION IN THE SIOUX COUNTRY.
"You'll follow the old freight trail all the way," he said, "but you may not see three teams the whole distance, because since the railroad got nearer it isn't used. You'll find an old stage station about every fifteen or seventeen miles, with probably one man in charge. You may see a horse-thief or two, or something of that sort. S'ciety ain't what it ought to be 'round a reservation gen'rally."
Just before the sun sank behind the mountains, which lay like low black clouds to the west, we came to a little ranch standing alone on the prairie. The door was open, and it seemed to be deserted, though there was a rude bed inside. There was a good well of water, and we decided to camp near it for the night, especially as the grass was good. There was no other house in sight. Bedtime arrived, and no one came to the ranch.
"I think I'll just sleep in that house to-night," said Jack, "and see how it seems. I'll leave the door open, so as not to have too much luxury at first."
I must have been asleep three or four hours, when I was awakened by the loud barking of a dog. I started up, and began to unfasten the front end of the cover. As I put my head out, Jack called, excitedly:
"Some men were trying to get the pony. They'd have done it, too, if Snoozer hadn't barked and scared them away."
I was out of the wagon by this time, and found the pony trembling at the end of her picket-line as near the wagon as she could get. Snoozer kept barking as if he couldn't stop.
"Did they shoot at you, Jack?" I asked.
"No, I guess not. I think they just blazed away for fun. They went off toward the reservation. Some of 'Gene's poor s'ciety, I suppose."
It took half an hour to get the frightened pony and indignant dog quieted; and perhaps it was longer than that before we again got to sleep.