While they were seeking for a pass (their eyes still eager to mark the least trace of the Buenaventura), a strange figure came running down a draw. While his legs worked steadily, he held up an arm as signal. He was an old Indian, partially naked. He did not slacken until, out of breath, he had seized with one hand the first hand that he could reach, while with the other he extended a little skin bag, as an offering.
When he was done panting, and had been assured that he would not be killed, he accepted presents for the bag of pine seeds; and after a talk in sign language he was hired by scarlet cloth and beads and brass to act as guide for two days. He stated that he knew of a good pass, westward.
The pass was not a pass over the range; it was only a pass over the first foot-hills. More Indians were induced by friendly signals to come close. They immediately held out their little skin sacks of pine seeds.
In council with them the lieutenant asked for guides, again, over the mountains to the country of the whites. But the Indians, squatting like rabbits and murmuring together, refused. Their spokesman, standing, pointed to the snow, and raised his palm to his chin, and then raised it above his head, to show how deep was the snow. He signed that the company should travel southward more, where there was another pass over a lower range; and here, in one day’s journey, lived a people who would guide through the pass of the great mountains themselves.
For bright cloth and goods the Indians agreed to supply a guide as far as the people of the first pass. Supplied with pine seeds oily and well-flavored and as large as small nuts, the company pressed southward once more, among the snowy foot-hills of the eastern base of the giant Sierras.
Mr. Preuss and party came toiling up the trail, from a secondary camp where they had remained in charge of the baggage, and reported that the howitzer was stuck fast. Even Samuel Neal, the blacksmith of the expedition, admitted that the battered cannon was beyond rescue. Many times had he repaired its carriage, during the months; it had been his pet; but now he could do nothing for it. Sergeant Zindel concurred.
“Ach, a goot gun,” he grunted. “I would not leave it in battle; but such snow and hills——!”
Therefore, after its 3000 miles of service, from St. Louis of the State of Missouri to the Salt Lake, and to the Columbia, and down into the desert, here upon the upper West Walker River of the Nevada-California border was left the brass howitzer.
Snow fell heavily, the cold increased; and all the shivering Indians, except the young man guide, dropped away, to return to their village. Frowning indeed appeared the stormy mountains, where awaited the first pass, and the guide himself seemed ready to desert.
“Kit, you and Godey put him between you,” directed the lieutenant. “Show him your rifles, so he’ll understand.”