CHAPTER IX—ON THE TRAIL TO GRUB STAKE
But it was not all settled in a minute. The affair was of a much too serious nature. First of all the boys were sent away while the fathers privately discussed the journey and what had to be done when once the messengers reached the town of Grub Stake, which was fully two hundred miles from Silver Run.
Banished from the front of the house, Chet and Digby had an eager discussion of their own, while the former carefully skinned the hawk so that it could be mounted.
“Oh, Chet! we’ll have just the Jim-dandiest kind of a time if they only let us go,” sighed Digby Fordham.
“And we’ll get a shot at those buffaloes,” said Chet, his eyes sparkling.
“Oh, shucks, boy!” drawled Dig. “You’ve that big buffalo on the brain. I still declare that I don’t believe there is any such animal.”
“Just you take your heavy rifle along. It takes a sizable bullet to kill a bull buffalo. I am going to borrow father’s big rifle.”
“Say! they haven’t said we could go yet!”
“Who else can go?” returned Chet. “If you’ll only promise to behave—”
“Whew! how about you?”
“Well,” answered Chet, “they didn’t speak about me being scatter-brained,” and he laughed.
“I vow,” said Dig, “by all the hoptoads that were chased out of Ireland—”
“John Peep rather doubted if the toads went with the other reptilian species,” chuckled Chet.
“Oh—hum! Well, anyway, I vow not to let my brains be scattered,” Dig remarked. Then he added complainingly, “I think my father is rather hard on me.”
“By the way,” Chet said suddenly, “queer why John Peep left town to live up there in that shack.”
“Give it up,” said Dig. “Perhaps he wanted to be ‘heap big Injun.’ I reckon all redskins are queer.”
“Now, Dig! Don’t you talk that way. John made us hustle in school to keep anywhere near him in classes. You know it.”
“Well! Tell us the news. Never mind about ancient history.”
“I found out that John wanted to play on the school nine. You know, the club’s going to play all this summer; some of the storekeepers have put up money to back it. And the captain and coach wouldn’t let John play.”
“What? By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! I’ve seen him pitch—”
“I know. He’s a great little pitcher,” Chet interrupted. “He’s a southpaw and he can puzzle most of ’em, you bet! It’s a mean shame. John Peep got sore and left town. Maybe he was sick of his family, too. They’re a lazy and dirty lot.”
“Whew! Can’t blame him for that,” said Dig. “They’re an unhealthy looking crowd. Old Scarface whitewashes fences for a nickel an hour and they live in a dirty hole of a cabin down in Hardpan.”
“John always looked neat and clean when he came to school.”
“But see how he looked up there in the woods—like a reg’lar savage!” sniffed Dig. “Not half dressed—and living in that old shack. I wonder what he’s doing now that his outfit is burned.”
“I believe that stranger burned it—the one we saw talking with him when we rode by,” declared Chet earnestly. “And I never saw that man before— Oh, Dig!” and he suddenly made an excited grab for his chum’s arm.
“Well, goodness! Don’t scare a fellow to death. What’s got you now?” demanded Digby Fordham.
“That fellow is the one we saw with the lame Indian.”
“What fellow?”
“The man who butted in just now when I shot the hawk.”
“Whew! you don’t mean it?” said Dig.
“Yes, I do. I remember him now. I remember his hat. Now, who can he be?”
“Give it up! Hello! there’s father calling for us. Oh, Chet! I hope they let us go to Grub Stake,” said Dig, longingly.
Serious as was the errand to Grub Stake, Mr. Havens and Mr. Fordham were inclined to trust their sons more than ever before, and that because of one uncontrovertible fact.
When nobody else had thought of any way to rescue the entombed miners from the Silent Sue, Chet and Dig had remembered about the old Crayton shaft and the possibility of getting into the closed mine through its old tunnel.
“It showed a surprising amount of thought and initiative for boys of their age,” Mr. Havens said. “I don’t know whether it was my boy or yours who took the lead, Fordham. At any rate, the two in conjunction hunted us out.”
“Something is due the boys,” admitted Mr. Fordham, “and the trip will be a great lark for them.”
“It’s more than a lark. I shall impress that on Chet’s mind,” said his partner, shaking his head.
“Oh! your boy’s got a head on him,” agreed Mr. Fordham.
“I hope so,” concluded Mr. Havens, and it was then the chums were recalled to receive permission and instructions for the journey over the trail to Grub Stake.
Neither Chet nor Digby gave vent to any exuberance of joy at the prospect—not then, at least. They listened earnestly to what they were told, and then at once set about the preparations they had to make, for they were to start the very next morning.
Dig, who never went anywhere on foot if he could help it, brought his black horse, Poke, and all his outfit over to the Havens corral that evening. The boys proposed to camp in the open, there being no ranches at that date along the Grub Stake trail. So they were obliged to pack a good deal of camp equipment.
“We’d better hire one of Mexican Joe’s burros,” said Dig, “and then we can take our piano and your mother’s sewing machine and washtubs.”
“Don’t begin to kick,” Chet said calmly. “You’ll be glad to have all this stuff before we’re half-way to Grub Stake.”
“And we’ll sound like a procession of junkmen when we pass by,” grumbled his chum. “Talk about shooting game! Why, unless all the game is stone deaf, we won’t get within shot of a crippled mine rat!”
“No. I’ll pack this outfit so the tinware won’t rattle,” laughed Chet. “And we couldn’t take a burro. That would delay us. We want to be comfortable when we camp. After a long day’s ride, you’ll be the first one to call for a square meal.”
“Say! how long’s the trip going to take?” demanded Dig. “We’ll be back by the time school opens next fall, I suppose?”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” responded Chet. “It’s a rough trail, and if we go right on with no delays, but for sleep and meals, it will take all of three days.”
“Whew! my Poke can do it in a day and a half.”
“But why rush like that?” cried Chet. “We want some fun, don’t we? This is no horse-race, I hope! And father says we can take our own time—especially coming back.”
“I know what you’re thinking about, Chet Havens!” cried his chum, in response. “You’re thinking of those buffaloes.”
“Well! and if I am?”
“Huh!” grunted Dig. “If any buffaloes ever see us with all this tinware and stuff aboard they’ll hike out for the north and never stop running till they reach the Arctic Circle!”
Chet only laughed at him. He showed Dig how to pack the cooking utensils and the like in his blanket-roll so that they would not rattle. When they set out right after breakfast the next morning the compass of their outfit did not seem so great as Digby supposed it would.
Chet carried in an inside pocket of his woollen outing shirt the deeds in duplicate which he was to get Mr. John Morrisy to sign. The old prospector who had never sold his interest in the Crayton claim was a queer, illiterate character, well known about Grub Stake.
Mr. Havens had instructed Chet just how to proceed with the business in hand, and the boy was quite sure he could do it all without a hitch. The money to be passed in exchange for Mr. Morrisy’s signature was already on deposit with the Wells Fargo Company in Grub Stake; and of course Chet had no expectation of losing the deeds.
The horses were in fine fettle, and so were the boys, when they rode out of Silver Run. Each of the chums carried a heavy rifle slung over his shoulder and under his arm, the muzzle pointing down his bootleg. And you may be sure they were not loaded so that the hammer rested on a cartridge. The boys had long before been instructed as to the danger of that piece of carelessness.
They were well supplied with loaded shells, for the day of the muzzle-loading rifles, with the cumbersome shot-pouch and powder-horn was long past. Their revolvers were loaded, too, and each boy wore a keen hunting-knife in a sheath.
They expected to kill most of the meat they ate on the trail. Canned beans did not greatly appeal to the trail boys; especially when they were sure there must be plenty of small game along the way.
They aimed to take a trail which wound through the hills to the west of the town and would lead then by mid-afternoon to the open plains. In going this way they passed through the poor suburb known as Hardpan. It was here the family of Lame John, the Cheyenne Indian, lived.
On one side of a littered lane were grouped a dozen lean cabins, with barren yards divided from one another by pickets, eked out with hogshead hoops, gate-bars of old wagons, hoopskirts, and like rubbish. Here and there an attempt had been made by some of the Hardpan women or girls to make flowers grow; but they were sorry gardens.
Across the lane the ground was open—part of it a dump for the refuse of the neighborhood. As Chet and Dig rode into the head of the driveway they heard a shrill chorus of cheers, intermixed with which was the “E-i! e-i! e-i!” of the Indian yell and the “Yee-ee-yip!” favoured by the cowpunchers of the ranges.
“Something doing, boy!” cried Dig to his chum, at once interested.
“Must be that attack on Silver Run by the Comanches you were telling your Cousin Tom about,” said Chet, chuckling.
“I reckon it’s a Cheyenne attack. Whew! Look at that! It’s a ball game.”
“No,” said Chet. “It’s Lame John pitching to his grandfather. Oh, look at that! Old Scarface has put on a glove and John is trying out his fast one.”
“Whew!” blew Dig. “I must take a peep at that. Some little old southpaw, John is. He can show ’em!”
It was a spectacle worth watching. The inhabitants of Hardpan were out in force to see it.
There was a level diamond and surrounding “garden” cleared in the open lot. The spectators were gathered back of the foul lines, and among them were the boys who had recently been playing.
Now John Peep had stepped into the box to throw a few exhibition balls. The governors of the school nine had refused to accept the lame Indian boy as one of their pitching staff; to the Hardpanites he was, nevertheless, something of a hero. He was winding up for another drive just as Chet and Dig appeared, and the spectators held their breath.
Behind the plate stood a gnarled, lean old man in ragged, fringed leggings and a miner’s cast-off shirt, with moccasins on his feet. His hair was as white as could be; but he was as alert and his eyes as bright as though he were a young man. Old Scarface, once a brave of the Cheyenne tribe, was over eighty years of age. When the ball smashed into his glove he threw it back to his grandson as smartly as any boy. His muscles were still supple and his eye true.
Although Chet and Dig did not know it, ball playing was not a strange sport to the American Indian. Most of the tribes were playing ball before Columbus discovered the New World. Only, of course, the rules of the game were entirely different from those of our own baseball.
“Say! the old man is great,” declared Chet, reining in Hero.
“But look at that ball whiz!” murmured Dig, as John Peep sent in another one. “Why didn’t the other fellows want him to play on the team? He could have somebody run for him; and he can bat, even if he has a short leg.”
“Just didn’t want him, that’s all,” said Chet. “But I notice that our nine has got licked in almost every game they’ve played. And it’s particularly weak in the pitching—Say! look at that one, will you?”
“E-i! e-i! e-i!”
“Yee-ee-yip! Yee-ee-yip!”
The crowd went wild. A boy had stepped up to the plate and tried to hit the ball. John Peep’s curve seemed fairly to dodge the bat as the boy swung at it.
Old Scarface—as serious as a deacon—slammed the ball back to his grandson and squatted for the next one. The old Indian took the matter as seriously as he took everything else in life. Nobody ever saw the ancient Cheyenne “crack a smile,” as Dig expressed it.
Two more balls followed the first in quick succession, and the batter tossed away his stick in disgust. He had only fanned.
Then John saw the two boys on horseback, and he tossed the ball to another boy. Scarface stepped out of the catcher’s place and stood with folded arms beside the field. It was beneath his dignity to play ball save when his grandson wanted to pitch. Nobody in Hardpan but Scarface could “hold” the young Cheyenne’s delivery.
The Indian lad ran over to the horsepath and asked Chet:
“You going to take trail?”
“Yes,” said Chet. “We’re hiking for Grub Stake.”
“A-i! So I hear. You’re not going near that shaft I showed you—that way into the old mine?”
“No,” replied Chet. “We’re not taking that trail.”
“All right. You much better keep away from there,” said John, and turned away.
“Say!” cried the too curious Digby, “who burned out your shack, John?”
“Never you mind,” returned the Indian lad, and he showed anger in the expression of his face at this reminder of his loss. “I’ll get my pay for that.”
“I hope you do,” commented Chet soothingly, and preparing to ride on. “We’re all very thankful to you, John. My father would like to see you, if you’ll go up to the house. You know, he’s laid up for a while.”
John Peep looked back at him sharply. “Ugh!” he grunted, in what Dig called his “red Indian style.” “Ugh! Your father give Indian cast-off suit of clothes. Your mother give Indian meal of victuals. Then shake hand, say, ‘Good-bye, Injun!’ I don’t need those things, Chet Havens.”
“Well! by all the hoptoads that were chased out of Ireland!” murmured Dig.
But Chet said calmly: “That isn’t the way my parents will treat you, John.”
The Indian boy was still flushed and angry. “That isn’t even my name!” he exclaimed. “‘John’ is white boy’s name. They make me give it when I go to school. But it does not belong to me.”
“Say! what is your name?” demanded Dig, his curiosity getting the better of his courtesy.
“Never you mind,” responded the Indian boy sharply, and turned away again.
But Chet called after him: “Do think better of it, and go to see my father.” Then he let Hero have his impatient head and he and his chum went on their way.
That which rose out of this advice of Chet’s to the Indian lad could scarcely be foreseen by either of the boys; but it was of much importance.
The chums rode on, soon leaving the last of the scattered cabins behind them. They met timber wagons from the hills, but nothing else for the next hour. The lumbermen looked curiously at the chums’ weapons, for their guns were too heavy for an ordinary hunting expedition.
“What you goin’ out after?” one timberman drawled. “Grizzlies—or is there an Injun uprisin’?”
“We expect to bag a brace of humming-birds,” Dig told him gravely. “Have you seen any?”
“No; but I’ve heard ’em snorin’, sound asleep, in the tops of some of them cottonwoods,” was the reply. “But, say! They ain’t been a trace of Ole Ephraim in these hills, since Methuselah was put inter trousers.” “Ole Ephraim” was the nickname the old-time hunters and trappers gave to the grizzly bear.
“Nor I didn’t know of any redskins goin’ on the warpath. Has Blacksnake’s band of dog soldiers broke loose from the reservation?” pursued the man cheerfully. “Say! ’tain’t old Scarface and his fam’bly begun crow-hoppin’—has they? If so, we sure will have a tumble mas-a-cree.”
“That’s all right,” laughed Chet. “We’re going to bag all the game in the territory—you see.”
“Leave me a mess o’ Molly Cottontails,” said the timberman, driving on. “I ain’t had a rabbit with fixin’s yet this season.”
“And I shouldn’t think he’d want it,” grumbled Dig, as they left the man behind. “Who wants to eat rabbit this time o’ year? I told you how it would be if we took these heavy guns, Chet. Folks will rig us to death. Huh! Buffalo! A fat chance!”
Chet only laughed at him. He had a deal more faith in the existence of the buffalo band that had been reported as roaming upon the plains, across which the trail to Grub Stake lay.