Loe raamatut: «Gold», lehekülg 13

He did not hesitate, however, as to direction; only occasionally he had to stop and cast back and around for a way through. Often, at a low command from him, we dismounted and led our animals.

We proceeded thus for a long time–five or six miles, I should think. By the undefined feeling of dark space at either hand I judged we must be atop a ridge. Bagsby halted.

“It was somewhere on this ridge we left him,” said he. “I reckon now we’d just better set down and wait for dawn.”

Accordingly we dismounted and drew together in a little group. Over the top of the great ranges a gibbous moon rose slowly. By her dim light I could make out the plunge on either side our ridge, and the other dark ridges across the way. Behind us our horses occasionally stamped a hoof or blew softly through their noses.

I lay flat on my back, and idly counted the stars. Happening to glance sidewise, I caught the flicker of a distant light.

“Bagsby,” I whispered, “there’s a fire not more than a half mile away.”

He too lay down in order to get my angle of view.

“It’s not McNally,” he pronounced after a moment’s careful inspection, “for it’s too big a fire, and it’s a lot more than half a mile away. That’s a good big fire. I think it’s Injuns.”

“Probably the same gang that lifted our hosses!” cried Buck.

“Probably,” agreed Bagsby. He sat upright and peered at us through the dim moonlight. “Want to get after them?” he inquired.

“You bet!” said Buck emphatically, “They may have McNally, and if they haven’t, they’ve got our horses.”

“There’s six of us and we can shore make it interesting for that lot,” agreed Yank. “Can we get to where they are?”

“I think so,” said Bagsby.

We rode for another hour, slanting down the mountainside toward the flickering fire. Every time a horse rolled a rock or broke a dried branch it seemed to me that the mountains reverberated from end to end. I don’t believe I allowed myself to weigh over six ounces all told. Finally we left the slope for the bottom of the valley.

“I’d rather be below their camp than above it. It’s going to be hard to get out this way,” complained Bagsby, “but it’s the best we can do.” He dismounted us, and we crept forward another half mile, leading our animals.

“This is as close as I dare take the hosses,” whispered Bagsby. “Vasquez, you stay here with them,” he said in Spanish, “and when I yell twice quick and sharp, you answer so we’ll know where to find you. Come on!”

We stole forward slowly. The fire leaped and flared beneath the widespread branches of a tree. Around it lay a half dozen or so recumbent shapes wrapped in blankets. How many more might be lying beyond the light circle we could not tell. Beyond them we saw dimly the forms of dozing horses. Obeying a signal from the old trapper, we circled the camp until we were on the same side as the animals. They raised their heads and blew softly at us; but we lay still, and shortly they quieted down.

“Now,” breathed Bagsby, “when I give the word, fire. And each man grab a horse by the picket rope, stampede the rest, and hustle back to Vasquez. Ready!”

We raised our pieces, but before the command to fire was given, one of the sleepers threw aside his blanket, stretched himself and arose. It was a white man!

I confess that for a moment I turned physically sick.

“Hello!” called Bagsby, quite unmoved.

The white man seized his rifle, and the recumbent forms leaped to life.

“Who are you?” he demanded sharply. “Speak quick!”

“Keep yore ha’r on!” drawled the trapper, advancing into the light. “We’re perfectly respectable miners, out looking for a lost man; and we saw yore fire.”

The rest of us uttered a yell of joy and relief. One of the men who had been sleeping around the fire was McNally himself.

We drew together, explaining, congratulating. The strangers, six in number, turned out to be travellers from the eastern side of the ranges. They listened with interest and attention to our account of the Indian attack. McNally explained that he had been uncertain of his route in the dark; so that when he had caught sight of the fire he had made his way to it. We were still engaged in this mutual explanation when we were struck dumb by a long-drawn-out yell from the direction of our own horses.

“It is Vasquez,” explained Barry. “He wants to let us know where he is,” and he answered the yell.

But at that moment one of our own horses dashed up to the bunch of picketed animals and wheeled, trembling. Its rope bridle dangled broken from its head. Sam Bagsby darted forward to seize the hanging cord.

“It’s cut!” he cried. “Quick! Out across the valley, boys!”

We followed him into the moonlight, grasping our rifles. A moment later a compact band swept toward us at full speed, our horses in the lead, their rope halters dangling, a dozen Indians on horseback following close at their heels and urging them on.

“Shoot, boys!” yelled Bagsby, discharging his own piece.

Our rifles cracked. It was impossible to take aim; and I am sure we hit nothing. But the horses swerved aside from the long fiery flashes, and so ran into the picketed lot and stopped. The Indians flew on through our scattered line without stopping, pursued by a sputter of shots from our Colt’s revolvers.

“A while ago I was sorry we had to stop above camp,” said Bagsby with satisfaction; “but it was a lucky thing for us. They had to come by us to git out.”

“And Vasquez?” Yank struck across our exultation.

CHAPTER XXV
BATTLE

We had a good deal of trouble finding the exact spot where we had left him, for we could get no answer to our calls. He was down in a heap, covered with blood, and quite dead. The savages had scalped him. In our long companionship we had grown very fond of him, for he was a merry, good-natured, willing soul.

“God!” cried Bagsby, deeply moved. “I’ll put a ball through the next one of those devils I meet!”

We returned slowly to the fire, carrying the body, which we laid reverently one side and covered with a blanket. In all our hearts burned a fierce, bitter anger. Sullenly we turned to prepare ourselves a meal from the supplies our hosts offered us.

The latter were the father and five sons of a backwoods family from the northwest–Pine, by name. They were all tall, heavily built men, slow moving, slow speaking, with clear, steady eyes, a drawling way of talking, and the appearance always of keeping a mental reservation as to those with whom they conversed. I suppose they were ignorant enough men, as far as education goes, but they always impressed me as being somehow a superior type. Possibly it was because of the fact that they perfectly corresponded to their environment, which was the wilderness.

In detail, the old man was upward of sixty, his beard long and grizzled, his hair about his shoulders. The oldest son would count about thirty, and the others went down in stepladder fashion to the youngster, a fine, big, smooth-faced boy of sixteen. They were named after old Pine’s favourite heroes, evidently. There was David Crockett Pine, and Governor Boggs Pine, and President Tyler Pine, and Daniel Boone Pine, and Old Hickory Pine, the youngest, an apparent contradiction in terms. They were called by their odd first names–Governor, President, Old–without the least humour.

Just now they stood tall and grim behind us as we ate; and the gray dawn and the rose dawn grew into day. Nobody said anything until we had finished. Then Yank rose to his full height and faced the attentive men.

“I want vengeance,” he announced in an even voice, stretching forth his long, lean arm. “Those devils have harried our stock and killed our pardner; and I’m not going to set quiet and let them do it.” He turned to us: “Boys,” said he, “I know you’re with me thar. But I’m going to git our friends yere to go with us. Old man,” he said to Pine, “you and yore sons help us with this job, and we’ll locate you on the purtiest diggings in these hills.”

“You bet!” agreed McNally.

“You don’t need to make my boys no offer,” replied Pine slowly. “Those divils were after our hosses too; and they’d have got them if you hadn’t come along. We’d been told by a man we believe that there wan’t no Injuns in this country, or you wouldn’t have seen us sleeping es close to our fire. Whar do you-all reckon to come up with them?”

Our old trapper interposed.

“Their rancheree is down the valley somewhars,” said Bagsby, “and we’ll have to scout for it. We must go back to camp first and get a ready.”

McNally and I murmured against this check to immediate action, but saw the point after a moment. The Pines packed their slender outfit; we bound the body of our poor friend across his horse, and mournfully retraced our steps.

We arrived in camp about ten o’clock, to find Johnny and Don Gaspar anxiously on the alert. When we had imparted our news, their faces, too, darkened with anger. Of us all Vasquez had been the only man who never lost his temper, who had always a flash of a smile for the hardest days. Hastily we threw together provisions for several days, and arranged our affairs as well as we could. We all wanted to go; and Don Gaspar, in spite of the remains of his malarial fever, fairly insisted on accompanying the expedition.

“Señores,” he said with dignity, “this was my own man from my own people.”

Nevertheless somebody had to stay in camp, although at first some of us were inclined to slur over that necessity.

“There’s a strong chance that Injuns will drift by and take all our supplies,” Bagsby pointed out.

“Chances are slim–in only a day or so; you must admit that,” argued Johnny. “Let’s risk it. We can scratch along if they do take our stuff.”

“And the gold?”

That nonplussed us for a moment.

“Why not bury it?” I suggested.

Bagsby and Pine snorted.

“Any Injun would find it in a minute,” said Pine.

“And they know gold’s worth something, too,” put in Yank.

“This is a scout, not a house-moving expedition,” said Bagsby decidedly, “and somebody’s got to keep camp.”

“I’ll stay, fer one,” offered old man Pine, his eyes twinkling from beneath his fierce brows. “I’ve fit enough Injuns in my time.”

After some further wrangling we came to drawing lots. A number of small white pebbles and one darker were shaken up in a hat. I drew in the fourth turn, and got the black!

“Hard luck, son!” murmured old man Pine.

The rest were eager to be off. They leaped upon their horses, brandishing their long rifles, and rode off down the meadow. Old man Pine leaned on the muzzle of his gun, his eyes gleaming, uttering commands and admonitions to his five sons.

“You Old,” he warned his youngest, “you mind and behave; and don’t come back yere without’n you bring a skelp!”

We spent the next two days strictly in defence, for we dared not stay long from the stockade. I was so thoroughly downcast at missing the fight that I paid little attention to Pine’s well-meant talk. My depression was enhanced by the performance of the duty the others had left to our leisure. I mean the interment of poor Vasquez. We buried him in a grassy little flat; and I occupied my time hewing and fashioning into the shape of a cross two pine logs, on the smoothed surface of which I carved our friend’s name. Then I returned to the stockade, where old man Pine, a picturesque, tall figure in his fringed hunter’s buckskin, sat motionless before the cabin door. From that point of vantage one could see a mile down the valley, and some distance upstream; and one or the other of us occupied it constantly.

About three o’clock of the second day Pine remarked quietly:

“Thar they come!”

I was instantly by his side, and we strained our eyesight in an attempt to count the shifting figures. Pine’s vision was better and more practised than mine.

“They are all thar,” said he, “and they’re driving extry hosses.”

Ten minutes later the cavalcade stopped and the men dismounted wearily. They were, as the old man had said, driving before them a half dozen ponies, which Governor Boggs herded into the corral. Nobody said a word. One or two stretched themselves. Johnny seized the cup and took a long drink. Yank leaned his rifle against the wall. Old man Pine’s keen, fierce eye had been roving over every detail, though he, too, had kept silent.

“Well, Old,” he remarked, “I see you obeyed orders like a good sojer.”

The boy grinned.

“Yes, dad,” said he.

And then I saw what I had not noticed before: that at the belt of each of the tall, silent young backwoodsmen hung one or more wet, heavy, red and black soggy strips. The scalping had been no mere figure of speech! Thank heaven! none of our own people were similarly decorated!

So horrified and revolted was I at this discovery that I hardly roused myself to greet the men. I looked with aversion, and yet with a certain fascination on the serene, clear features of these scalp takers. Yet, since, in the days following, this aversion could not but wear away in face of the simplicity and straightforwardness of the frontiersmen, I had to acknowledge that the atrocious deed was more a product of custom than of natural barbarity.

Old Pine, of course not at all affected, bustled about in the more practical matter of getting coffee and cutting meat; and after a moment I aroused myself to help him. The men lay about on the ground exhausted. They drank the coffee and ate the meat, and so revived, little by little, arrived at the point of narration.

“It’s sure one hell of a ride down there,” remarked McNally with a sigh.

“Good deal like the foothills of th’ Snake Range, pop,” put in President Tyler Pine.

“We been riding purty nigh every minute sence we left here,” agreed Bagsby. “That rancheree was hard to find.”

Little by little the tale developed. No one man, in the presence of all the others, felt like telling us the whole story. We gathered that they had ridden the cañon for several hours, past our first camping grounds, and finally out into the lower ranges. Here they lost the trail left by the Indians when they had first visited our camp; but in casting in circles for it had come on fresher pony tracks. These they had followed persistently for many miles.

“I couldn’t see the sign of a track for a mile at a time, on that hard ground,” interpolated Johnny.

At length the tracks had struck into a beaten trail.

“And then we knew we were on the way to the rancheree,” said Bagsby.

The village they found located in a flat by the side of a stream, and they halted to determine just what to do. It was finally decided that while an attack on horseback would undoubtedly strike more instant terror, yet the difficulty of shooting accurately from a gallop would more than offset this effect. Therefore nine of the party crept up afoot, leaving three to lead forward the horses some distance in the rear.

“I was one of them,” said Johnny. “They evidently have seen me shoot. I seem to be always out of it.”

The men had wormed their way to within a hundred yards of the flimsy huts, or tepees, when they were discovered by the dogs. The Indians immediately rushed out pell-mell, in a crowd, and were met by a deadly volley from the white men’s rifles. Caught absolutely by surprise, they turned and fled. Some few loosed random arrows. Their horses coming up at a run in convoy of the rear guard, each man threw himself into his saddle and started in pursuit, shooting right and left with the Colt’s revolvers whenever they caught up with the fugitives. Johnny told admiringly how the backwoodsmen had reloaded their rifles while galloping.

“All I could do to shoot mine off, let alone loading!” he confessed.

There was no resistance, and little mortality after the first volley. The Indians bolted like rabbits into the brush. The white men then returned leisurely to the village, which they proceeded to burn to the ground.

“It made a grand bonfire,” interrupted Johnny. “Went up like gunpowder. And the Indians yelled and howled at us from the sidehills all the time.”

The raiders had fired a few defiant and random shots in the direction of the howling, and then, after collecting the ponies that had not stampeded, rode slowly back the way they had come.

“Didn’t see anything of our three horses?” I asked.

“Nary hoss,” said Buck Barry. “I figger they jest nat’rally stampeded off when the row started.”

“Are you sure those were the same Indians?” I asked.

A long silence fell.

“Well, what if they wasn’t–and that’s by no means sure,” demanded Buck Barry at last, a little defiantly. “The whole lot is thieves and murderers; and if they’d had a chance at us, you bet they’d have taken it. And we showed the red devils they can’t monkey with us!”

I looked toward the cross over Vasquez, murdered as wantonly as ever man was murdered for plunder, and could find nothing to say. Whatever the eternal equities of the case may be–and long since I have given up trying to guess what they are–the cold, practical fact remains, that never during our stay on the Porcupine did any Indian come near us again. And I am convinced that if the initial stealing of horses and murder had gone without reprisal, we should have been a second time and more boldly attacked. But if that was the wrong village, what a train of reprisals and reprisals again in turn we may have laid!

“Only we didn’t start it, and never would have!” persisted Johnny stoutly.

CHAPTER XXVI
WE SEND OUT OUR TREASURE

Though these Indian troubles had nothing to do with it, nevertheless they marked the beginning of our change of luck. We suffered no definite misfortunes; but things did not go well. The slight malarial attack of Don Gaspar was the first of an annoying series. I suppose we had all been inoculated on the marshes of the Sacramento, and the disease had remained latent in our systems. The hard work in the open air had kept us healthy; but the fever only awaited the favourable moment of depression or of overwork. The combination of ice cold water around our legs and burning sun on our heads was not the best in the world. Fortunately Yank, who came from an ague country, had had foresight enough to bring a supply of quinine. For two months one or the other of us was ailing; and once for a few days five of us were down!

Then, too, I think the zest of the game was palling on us a little, strange as it may seem. We could dig gold from the soil almost at will. It would seem that this single fact would keep normally acquisitive men keyed to a high pitch of endeavour all the time; but it was not so. I suppose we needed a vacation. We began to discuss what we would do when we should see the city again. No one for a moment dreamed that we should quit these rich diggings. We were here to make our fortunes; and the fortunes seemed to be ready for the making. Only the novelty having passed, it had become hard work, just like the making of any other kind of a fortune.

The Pine family camped below us, used our corral, at our invitation, and set placidly to work. They were typical frontiersmen, and settled down in the well-built cabin which they quickly ran up as though they meant to make of it a permanent home. For two months, which brought us up to the end of July, they lived a regular and leisurely life. Then one morning, without any warning at all, they rode over to our cabin, leading their horses, fully packed. Old man Pine explained, while his five tall, steady-eyed sons sat their horses quite immobile in the background, that they had dug enough gold for their necessities, and that they were now going down to the lower country to pick out some good land. These men were the very first I happened to meet who had come into the country with a definite idea of settling.

After the departure of this strong force, began our discussions as to the safeguarding of our gold. It had now reached a very considerable sum–somewhere near thirty-five thousand dollars, as I remember it. Bagsby was very uneasy at its presence in camp.

“The Injuns are beginning to know it’s wuth something,” he pointed out. “They don’t know yet how much, but they know it will buy beads and buttons and paint and whiskey and everything else an Injun wants. And they know that’s what we’re yere for; and that we must have a lot of it. I don’t calc’late that lot we licked will bother us ag’in; but they’ll spread the news we’re yere. And there’s lots of bandits and scoundrels glad to take a chance at us. And while we come out all right before, they’ll git us in the long run if we keep at it. I’d like to git rid of the stuff.”

Don Gaspar agreed with him, as did also Yank, Buck Barry, and Missouri Jones. McNally, Johnny, and I inclined to the belief that we would do better to keep our wealth by us until we finally left the diggings, maintaining always a proper guard. We could not quite see how the sending out of the gold would much reduce the likelihood of attack; but the others seemed to think the gold would then be safe anyhow, and that the news of its delivery at Sutter’s Fort would soon spread abroad.

About this time the discussion took a more practical turn from the fact that our provisions had run so low that we had put ourselves on half rations. As we did not believe it desirable nor healthy to drop down to an exclusively game diet, it would soon become necessary to go for more flour and coffee.

Buck Barry now brought up again strongly the advisability of sending our treasure out to a safe place. His argument was given point by the arrival in camp one evening of three evil-looking Mexicans, shabbily clothed, but well-armed, and mounted on beautiful horses. We fed them well, but saw to the caps of our revolvers and the security of our corral before turning in for the night. In the morning they departed before we were stirring, without so much as a word of thanks. These mysterious visitors had given us no faintest inkling of their business or destination. Don Gaspar stated flatly that they had come to spy us out, having heard of our presence in the valley from the Indians.

“And I told them,” said he triumphantly, “that essoon we would be sen’ out for the food.”

He went on to argue that thus he had prepared their minds for the fact that pack-horses would soon be going out. By distributing the gold its presence would be unsuspected.

I suggested a strong guard, but both Bagsby and Don Gaspar opposed me.

“There’s enough of these yere robbers to git us anyhow, even if we all went,” said Bagsby, “and that’s why I want to send the stuff out now. The place they’ll tackle will be right yere, if they tackle anything at all─”

I will not weary you with the pros and cons. At the time I thought, and I still think, the whole arrangement most ill advised; but against me was the united opinion of nearly the whole camp, including the most level-headed members of my own party. It was finally agreed that Yank, Buck Barry, and Don Gaspar should take out the gold.

They started very early in the morning, carrying the treasure in saddle-bags and across the horns of the saddle. I argued that Yank rode much the lightest and had the strongest horse, and managed to get the others to confide to him a full half of the metal. At the last moment we had modified the original plan to suit everybody. The horsemen encumbered by pack-animals were to push on as rapidly as possible in order to reach by nightfall the settlement where dwelt the Italian friend. Once there they could feel themselves reasonably safe. Johnny, Missouri Jones and I would ride with them until noon as a sort of escort for the uninhabited portion of the journey. By that hour we figured we should have reached the outskirts of the regular diggings, where, our experience told us, our companions would be safe.

Accordingly we pushed our mounts hard. Unhampered by pack-animals, and aided by knowledge of the route, we made great progress. By noon we had passed the meadow of our night’s camp. After a hasty lunch we accompanied our men a few miles farther, then said farewell and godspeed, and hurried back in order to reach home before sunset.