“Go, then, friend, and if you do not come back within three days I myself will follow, and never rest until I have found you if alive, and if dead, which kind heaven avert—make for you a grave.”
Again a tear stood in the eye of Waltermyer. He strove to speak, but the words were lost in his throat. A strong, hearty shake of the hand was the only thanks he was able to return, then, as if fearing to trust himself further, he whistled his horse to his side, sprung upon his back without touching the stirrup, and with a wave of his hand dashed toward the frowning steeps and disappeared.
The disconsolate parent followed his advice, and just as the guard was changed at midnight, reached the train—there to relate the story of their wanderings—hear of the attack and repulse of the Indians, and then, after partaking of food and drink, to fall into the dreamless, all-forgetting slumber that follows arduous toil.
Waltermyer reached the rocky bed of the cañon, muffled his horse’s feet so as to deaden as much as possible the sound of his footsteps without lessening his speed or rendering him liable to fall. He stripped his steed of every thing except his bridle, making his load easy as possible, then again mounting urged him forward. The twilight was just beginning to gather around him when he parted from his comrades, and soon the shadows settled thickly in his path. Blacker still they became until night had enveloped the earth in a starless, moonless vail.
“Black as a mounting of black minks,” muttered the lone rider to himself, and then, as if pleased with the idea, he continued: “and I reckon them reptiles are e’en a-most as black as you are, Star,” and he patted the neck of his horse. “How I pity any one that has to ride in such a night. Ef that gal is abroad now she will—as I live ef it hain’t a-goin’ to rain, too. Thar fell a drop—a great, big drop pat on my hand. Hark! that rumblin’ way up in the hills means thunder and nothin’ else. Waal, waal, we’re goin’ to have a night of it, and I allow it’s lucky that I didn’t bring them green boys along with me. Softly, pet—steady, boy.”
A sudden flash—a living chain of fire that flashed before the horse, dazzling and blinding, had for an instant startled him, and it needed both voice and rein of the master to control him for a moment; but when another followed and the rolling thunder shook the very rocks beneath his feet, he was calm, and, unmoved, felt his way along the dangerous path. Felt, for even the eyes of the quadruped will fail when the flood-gates of a night storm are suddenly thrown open and the lurid glare of lightning fills earth and sky.
The slowly-dropping rain became a torrent, and the wind, aroused from its slumber in the hills, came raving through the rain, and howled a terrible anthem among the mountains. Moaning it crept among the crevices in the rock, and howling it swept through the high-walled cañon, and wrestled with the tortured trees and shook the granite portals of the mountain. Catching the huge drops in its embrace, it whirled them in fleecy mist aloft—ragged, torn, drifting away into the black darkness. The deep-worn gulleys in the gray old rocks were aflood with water—the cañon’s floor a roaring river, and still the pitiless wind-driven sleet fell deluge-like. Along the inky sky the lightning played, flashing its red bolts—twining in many a fantastic link its burnished gold—tinging the cloudy rifts with shining white, and lighting up cavern and crevice as with shooting star-light. Oh! it was grandly sublime!—a panorama of light and blackness—of gloom and brightness—of blackest chaos and of burning light, and shown to such music as the world can only know when the fingers of Jehovah plays upon the lightning-strings, and the thunder-gun of heaven is fired from the murky battlements of the whirlwind. Such was the mountain storm in which the frontiersman found himself.
“Oh! night, and storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,” sung he of the gloomy lyre years ago, and there, where Jura answered, came such sounds and flashing bolts as rung around the head of that brave frontiersman as he bowed his head to the storm, thinking, save now and then of the little one that was above, of the one below, who might even then be forced by savage warriors to struggle with the tempest as he was doing.
But there was little of written poetry in Waltermyer, and if there had been, custom had blunted his taste for the beauty of a night thunder-storm in the wilderness. He knew the danger of the path that he was traveling at any time—even in the daylight—but now? Death was lurking beneath every footfall. And yet, knowing this, he gave no thought to his own safety or made any effort to escape the beating force of the storm. The mad rushing of the rain, the roaring of the angry thunder or the blinding glare of the lightning was nothing to him. A girl, a feeble girl, was waiting for him to rescue her from the hands of savage warriors, and all the fiends of the storm could not have forced him to pause for his own safety. Besides, he knew that Indian warriors would not travel on a night like that, and if she was still in their hands, he could gain upon them. Shrewdly surmising at what point and under what shelter they would pause, he kept on his dangerous way.
His horse stumbled; he sprung to the ground—if such a flinty floor could so be called—in an instant, and removed the mufflings from the animal’s feet. Then, as the path became more steep, he led him carefully—trying every step before he ventured his weight upon it. And thus, brave heart, he moved still slowly along, while the sky was ablaze and the thunder boomed in his ear, mingled with the shrill whistle of the wind, the rattle of the falling rain, and the crash of tree-boughs beating against each other.