The Night Riders: A Romance of Early Montana

by Ridgwell Cullum

And the object, the reason, of that hidden road. A small hut crushed into the side of the sheer cliff. A dugout of logs, and thatch, and mud plaster. A hut with one fronting door, and a parchment window; a hut such as might have belonged to some old-time trapper, who had found it necessary to set his home somewhere secure from the attacks of marauding Indians.

And what a strategic position it was! One approach to be barred and barricaded; one laborious road which the besieged could sweep with his rifle-fire, and beat back almost any horde of Indians in the country. He led his horse on toward the hut. The door was closed, and the parchment of the window hid the interior.

The outside appearance showed good repair. He examined it critically. He walked round its three sides, and, as he came to the far side of it, and thoughtfully took in the method of its construction, he suddenly became aware of another example of the old trapper’s cunning. The cliff that rose sheer up for another two or three hundred feet slightly sloped backward at the extremity of the shelf, and here had been cut a rude sort of staircase in the gray limestone of which it was composed. There were the steps, dangerous enough, and dizzying to look at, rising up, up, to the summit above. He ventured to the brink where they began, but instantly drew back. Below was a sheer drop of perhaps five hundred feet.

Turning his eyes upward, his fancy conjured up a picture of the poor wretch, hunted and besieged by the howling Indians, starving perhaps, creeping at dead of night from the little fort he had held so long and so valiantly against such overwhelming odds, and, in desperation, availing himself of his one and only possible escape. Step by step, he followed him, in imagination, up the awful cliff, clinging for dear life with fingers worn and lacerated by the grinding stone. Weary and exhausted, he seemed to see him draw near the top. Then a slip, one slip of his tired feet, and no hold upon the limestone with his hands would have power to save him. Down, down——

He turned back to the hut with a sick feeling in his stomach. Securing his mare to an iron ring, which he found driven firmly into one of the logs, he proceeded to investigate further. The door was held by a common latch, and yielded at once when he raised it. It opened inward, and he waited after throwing it open. He had a strange feeling of trespass in thus intruding upon what might prove to be the home of some fur-hunter.

No sound followed the opening of the door. He waited listening; then at last he stepped forward and announced himself with a sharp “Hello!”

His only answer was the echo of his greeting. Without more ado he stepped in. For a moment the sharpness of the contrast of light made it impossible for him to see anything; but presently he became used to the twilight of the interior, and looked about him curiously. It was his first acquaintance with a dugout, nor was he impressed with the comfort it displayed. The place was dirty, unkempt, and his dream of the picturesque, old-time trapper died out entirely. He beheld walls bare of all decoration, simply a rough plastering of mud over the lateral logs; a frowsy cupboard, made out of a huge packing-case, containing odd articles for housekeeping purposes. There were the fragments of two chairs lying in a heap beside a dismembered table, which stood only by the aid of two legs and the centre post which supported the pitch of the roof. A rough trestle-bed occupied the far end of the hut, and in shape and make it reminded him of his own bed in the bunkhouse. But there the resemblance ended, for the palliasse was of brown sacking, and a pair of dull-red blankets were tumbled in a heap upon its foot. One more blanket of similar hue was lying upon the floor; but this was only a torn fragment that had possibly served as a carpet, or, to judge by other fragments lying about, had been used to patch shirts, or even the well-worn bedclothes.

It was a squalid hovel, and reeked of the earth out of which it was dug. Beyond the bedding, the red blankets, and the few plates and pots in the packing-case cupboard, there was not a sign of the owner, and Tresler found himself wondering as to what manner of man it was who could have endured such meanness. It did not occur to him that probably the very trapper he had thought of had left his eyrie in peace and taken his belongings with him, leaving behind him only those things which were worthless.

A few minutes satisfied his curiosity. Probably his ride, and a natural desire to return to the ranch as quickly as possible, had dulled the keenness of his faculties of observation. Certain it is that, squalid as the place was, there was an air of recent habitation about it that he missed. He took it for a deserted shack merely, and gave it no second thought.