CHAPTER VI.
A DOUBLE TRAIL.
On the prairie, alone by moonlight, there is a lonesome solemnity that startles, appalls. Look in one direction. For miles and miles there stretches away a tract of rolling land where the grass grows, the buffaloes graze, the coyotes howl, but no human form can be seen, no tree waving—a loneliness of nature that you think must somehow of necessity be interminable. Turn and look in another. Down from the tableland there stretches a long, grassy slope, where the foliage is more than ordinarily luxuriant, and at the foot of the declivity is the long line of timber which marks the course of some stream. There the broad elm flourishes, the lofty cottonwood shoots upward, and the white sycamore trees stand gleaming ghostlike under the mellow moonlight. Perhaps, further away to the left, where the rich bottom is broken by rising ridges of rocky bluffs, you see the gloomy spread of the cedar tree reaching upward its dismal-looking arms. Wherever the rolling prairie-fires have been unable to sweep, there you see the shade of timber and bush; everywhere else is the blue and red stem, the blue and bunch-grass or the short, crisp buffalo-grass; and far off in the distance, with a quiet grandeur of its own, you see the trace-line of the mountain range.
Some such grand and lonely scene would the reader have noted had he been standing in some favorable position on the high prairie near Back Load Trace, a few moments before the occurrence of the incidents just detailed.
It can well be imagined that Blaze was not the only one startled into action by the occurrences of the night. The shot, by one of Dick Martin's men on guard, aroused the Free Trappers, and also caused Charles Endicott and his companions the keenest alarm. Had their destined prey been seized by other human wolves? If so—who were those wolves?
As for Blaze he lost but little time. Almost Herculean in strength, he gathered on one arm the two rifles, while with the other he bore Harry toward the camp. On the way he met the negro, who relieved him of the rifles, and, upon reaching the side of the now smoldering camp-fire, produced a bottle of spirits and a canteen of water.
It was but a short time until consciousness returned to the fainting man. He opened his eyes, raised himself, sat upright, looked Blaze full in the face.
"You saw it all, did you? Now tell me, who was that woman?"
"That bit o' caliker, mister, tho' I dunno as I ever seen it afore, war most likely a woman that Dick Martin claims a sort o' relationship to, an' she's bin livin' round hyar fur some considerable time. Frum yer ackshuns I'd think yer must hev hed a priur morgidge on it, an', ef so, ye'd better be up an' stirrin', fur by the mitey the durned Blackfoot is goin' to foreclose."
"Ready, quick, quick," was Winkle's terse answer, looking from one man to the other. Then he turned, and burying his face in his hands lay stretched for a moment prone. When he sprung to his feet there was a new light in his eye, and redoubled strength in his arm. He vaulted into his saddle, gathered up his reins, and turning to Blaze, in a firm-set whisper, muttered: