A huge black timber wolf, the most savage of all the monsters of the mountain, crossed his path—stopped for a moment, and gazed upon him with bloodshot, fiery eyes and snapping jaws. The Elder raised his pistol and fired. The swift-winged ball cut a shallow furrow, and the beast bounded, howling, away, while up the crags and into the caverns leaped the report. There was more than one wolf traveling that path—more than one searcher after innocent kids. The many were the wolves of nature—the one that of unbridled passion.
The wounded beast sought its bone-strewed lair to brood in darkness over its pain. The pistol had been truly aimed, but its effects had proved far more fatal upon the man who fired it than on its intended victim. His horse sprung at the report, reared high, bounded upward with a desperate plunge, and threw the careless rider among the bushes that lined the narrow trail. Then, freed of his burden, and exempt from all controlling influences, he darted wildly down the mountain, his iron-armed hoofs ringing upon the flinty rocks, from which they sent forth a stream of flashing sparks.
The Mormon arose uninjured, and gazed wildly around him. Now he felt utterly alone!
Shaken in every limb—the victim of a double accident by his reckless horsemanship, and with his garments still wet and stiffened from the storm, he was forced to clamber up the rocks as best he might, with the dark shadows of coming evil gathering thickly around him. Weapon, save the one now partially discharged, he had none—the other was in the holsters; of food he had not a single mouthful, for the scanty remnant of his stores was also tied to his saddle. If he could not find the Indians—if his strength should fail him, he must abide that most horrible of all deaths—starvation!
The smoke that had lured him onward—where was it now? No trace of it was upon the air, as far as the eye could reach.
Still on he toils. The sun rises hot and blinding. Its fiery rays, concentrated in the prison-like opening of the cañon, fall with intense fury upon his head. The very rocks appear molten beneath his feet; and as he struggles on, almost bewildered, a burning thirst seizes him—a living flame is kindled in his vitals. Faint—fainter—yet still on! Is death coming on him now? Will the black buzzards feast upon him, and wild wolves wrangle for his bones? Like the miraculous outgush of water which leaped forth from the cleft rock smitten by the prophet, a crystal fountain came leaping from the hollows of a cliff just before him—leaping joyously over its shelf of mossy rock, and sending up its spray, shimmering in the sunshine like a network of golden lace.
The Elder crept to the base of the rock, over which this current leaped, and kneeling down, drank of its cool tide as it rushed off to a neighboring ravine, and lost itself among tangles of fern and forest-shrubs. The cool draught appeased his raging thirst, and he looked about more hopefully. He stood upon one side of a rocky hollow, into which the torrent dashed its waters, troubling them with flashing beauty. A little way off, on the broken edges of the basin opposite, a serpent, glittering in all its native splendor of burnished green, and red and gold, raises its crest, and looks on him with its glittering eyes. Man and reptile alike had tasted the waters. The one steals slowly away, rustling on its winding trail—a thing of fear, but innocent in its desires; while the other starts back in terror, and slowly resumes his uncertain, dangerous way.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOMEWARD TRAIL—THE STRANGE MEETING—FOEMEN.
Esther Morse slept long and refreshingly. When she awoke, a single glance at the form seated still at the entrance of the cavern brought all the circumstances of the present back to her mind, and she arose, flinging aside the heavy hunting-shirt with which the Indian had protected her from the chill.
“The daughter of the pale-face has slumbered well,” said the Indian, rising and coming toward her.