Frank in the Mountains

by Harry Castlemon

FRANK IN SEARCH OF HIS SUPPER.

"He's out!" shouted Frank, scrambling down out of his tree.

"I thought I could manage him," said Adam. "Don't you think my plan was the best? But I say, Frank," he added, as he joined our hero at the top of the hill, "we must fire the rifle once, at least, for we want some supper."

"If we could use a bow and arrow as well as the Black Fox, we would not need the rifle. Now, one of us had better stay here, and build a fire in the cave, and gather a supply of wood for the night, while the other goes out and knocks over a big-horn. The mountains about here are full of them."

"Well, seeing that you are the best shot, perhaps you had better go to market. By the time you get back, I will have every thing ready. You are not afraid to go?"

No, Frank was not afraid, but still he did not like the idea of wandering off alone among those mountains. He would have felt much more at his ease if the big-horn had already been killed, and was ready for the spit. Besides the danger of getting lost, there were the outlaws, who might hear the report of his rifle, and pounce down upon him before he could secure his game and make good his retreat to the cave. He and his companion might have gone without their suppers for that night without serious inconvenience, but they were still eighty miles from Fort Benton, and, while they were traveling across the prairie, they might not find any thing to shoot, for the Indians had doubtless frightened away all the game. If Frank succeeded in killing a big-horn, it was their intention to cook it all, and carry with them a supply of the meat sufficient to last them until they reached the fort.

Adam began looking about for dry wood with which to start the fire in the cave, and Frank shouldered his rifle and started down the cliff. He followed the same course which he, and Archie, and the trapper had pursued on a former occasion, when they went out to hunt big-horns, and presently found himself in the ravine in which his cousin had met with his first adventure with a grizzly. Dick had once told him that if the trees in that ravine could speak, they could relate many a thrilling story about him and Bill Lawson; and Frank thought that, if they could find tongues now, they might have something to say concerning himself that would prove interesting.

The deer-path which Frank was following ran through the ravine for about half a mile, and then led down the side of a precipitous cliff, and terminated on a rocky ledge, perhaps twenty-five feet square, in the center of which was a spring of water. When Frank reached the edge of this cliff, he looked over it very cautiously, and was gratified to see, about a hundred feet below him, a noble elk, with wide-spreading antlers, drinking from the spring.

"Our supper is all right," soliloquized the young hunter, after he had taken a good survey of the ledge, and calculated the animal's chances for escape in case he failed to disable him at the first shot. "That ledge juts out into a gorge which is much too wide for any deer to jump. If he tries it, I am sure of him, for he will fall on the rocks and be killed. He can't scale the cliff, unless he comes up the path; and, if he tries that, I'll be here to stop him."

Frank did not usually spend as many minutes in getting ready for a shot as he did on this particular evening. On ordinary occasions, his rifle was at his shoulder the instant the game appeared in sight; and one quick glance along the barrel made him sure of his aim. But this was not an ordinary occasion. He was working for his supper now, there were enemies all around him, and it was rapidly growing dark. He must kill the elk at the first shot, secure a portion of it (the animal was so large and heavy he knew he could not carry it all), and make his way back to the Old Bear's Hole without the loss of a single minute. He raised his rifle and took a long and deliberate aim at the buck, and just then the animal bounded across the spring and came leisurely up the path. For a single second his breast presented a fair mark; but that second was long enough for Frank. The rifle cracked sharply, and the elk, turning in his tracks, made one tremendous bound, and, leaping clear across the ledge, disappeared among the trees which lined the sides of the gorge. Frank's supper was not all right, after all.