CHAPTER VIII.
THE EMIGRANT TRAIN.
“Hurrah for you, Archie!” shouted Eugene, as he and Fred came galloping up. “You’ve made sure work this time, haven’t you?”
“I told you that if I got another fair chance at him he was mine,” replied Archie. “You had a suspicion that I was shooting with a long bow, last night, when I told you that I had seen a horse help his master catch cattle, didn’t you, Fred?”
“No,” returned Featherweight, quickly. “I only thought it something wonderful.”
“I told you I had seen a horse hold a steer down while his owner butchered him, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” answered Fred.
“Well, now you will see my horse hold this fellow down while I put a bit in his mouth. Look out, there,” he added, as the boys, having dismounted, ran up to watch his movements; “don’t come too near his heels, for he can out-kick a mule. Keep a good hold of your own horses too, or they’ll go off to join the drove.”
Archie’s nag, as his owner afterward declared, had shown himself to be a “perfect trump.” He seemed to know what the boy intended to do as well as the boy knew it himself. When the lariat settled down over the bay’s head and the latter was about to run off, he planted his fore-feet firmly on the ground to stop him, and the bay was thrown on his side, as we have described. Archie’s horse, without waiting for the word from his rider, quickly backed up until the lariat was drawn tight, and thus the bay was held as securely as if he had been tied to the ground.
Archie, finding that his horse could be depended on, quickly dismounted, slipped the bridle off his head, and when Fred and Eugene came up he was kneeling on the bay’s neck, trying to force the bits into his mouth.
“You’re not going to ride him now, are you?” exclaimed Fred, amazed at Archie’s apparent recklessness.
“Certainly I am,” was the reply. “He’s got to be backed some time, and it might as well be now as to-morrow.”
“How are you going to get a saddle on him? You can’t put the girth around him while he is lying down.”
“I don’t want any saddle!”
“Why, he’ll throw you and break your neck!”
“If he does it shan’t cost him anything,” answered Archie, as he buckled the throat-latch about the bay’s neck. “Now, Fred, slack up on that lariat, please, and give us room according to our size and importance. We shall need plenty of space to spread ourselves in!”
Fred, in compliance with the request, unfastened the rawhide rope from Archie’s saddle, and then he and Eugene, still holding fast to their horses and leading Archie’s, retreated quickly to the foot of the cliffs. As soon as Archie saw that they were out of the way, he removed his weight from the bay’s neck, and in an instant the captured horse was on his feet. How Archie managed to get upon his back as he was rising was a great mystery to the two boys who were looking on—it was done so quickly. But he was there, and he had secured a firm seat, too.
The bay was no sooner on his feet than he began to make the most desperate attempts to shake off his rider, but all to no purpose. When he reared, Archie pounded him between the ears with his clenched hand; and when he kicked, he used his spurs with such hearty good-will that the horse was glad to desist. During all the terrific struggle Archie was as cool as a cucumber and was never once moved from his seat. Failing in his efforts to throw his rider, the bay tried to run, and this Archie not only permitted, but encouraged. There were two well-beaten paths at this point, one running to the right and the other to the left around the valley, and when the bay showed a desire to try his speed his rider turned him into one of these paths and touched him gently with the lariat, which he had managed to gather up, and now held in a coil in his right hand. The horse responded on the instant, and with a few rapid bounds carried Archie out of sight behind the trees. The boys stood listening to the sound of his hoofs for a moment, and then turned and looked at each other.
“That is something I never saw done before,” said Eugene, at length.
“And if anybody had told me that it could be done, I wouldn’t have believed him,” added Fred. “He will probably go on around the valley, and as that is a good ten-mile ride, we shall have plenty of time to make the camp and get something to eat before he returns.”
The boys watered the horses at the little brook that ran from the spring, staked out their own animals (having no lasso with which to picket Archie’s horse they hobbled him with a halter so that he could not stray far away) and then went to work to prepare breakfast. From one of the bundles Fred brought to light a small sheet-iron camp-kettle, a coffee-pot and a hatchet. While he was undoing another, which contained the small supply of bacon and hard-tack they had remaining, Eugene picked up the hatchet, and in a few minutes had split up dry wood enough to start a roaring fire. The camp-kettle was filled with water from the spring, several slices of bacon placed around the fire on spits to roast, and then the two boys threw themselves on their blankets to take a few minutes’ rest after their twenty-four hours in the saddle, and to await Archie’s return.
He came much sooner than they expected, and they saw at a glance that that ten-mile gallop had taken considerable of the wild spirit out of the bay. He looked as if he had been driven through a stream of water; his breast was flecked with foam, and, although he still kept his ears laid back close to his head and showed a good deal of the white of his eye, he did not kick and plunge as he had done at starting, and seemed quite willing to stop when his rider gave him the word.
“Well?” said both the boys at once.
There was a good deal of meaning in that little word, and Archie rightly interpreted it. Fred and Eugene were anxious to know if their new horse was swift enough to beat the black.
“I don’t know,” replied Archie, drawing his shirt-sleeve across his forehead; “I am not yet prepared to say. The horse was tired when he got here, and as the path around the valley is rocky and full of logs and brush, he didn’t have a chance to show himself. But he moves as if he were set on springs and clears a good stretch of country at a jump, and there is no telling what he may do after he has had a good rest. Want to try him, either of you?”
“Well, n—no,” replied Fred, with so comical an expression that Archie and Eugene laughed outright. “I believe I’ve ridden far enough for one day.”
“Then I’ll walk him up and down till he gets cooled off a little,” said Archie. “After that we’ll tie him to a tree and blanket him. In the meantime, if you don’t know what else to do, you might cook some breakfast.”
“We’ve cooked one breakfast and eaten it,” said Eugene. “We were too hungry to wait for you.”
“We’ll have to send somebody out on a foraging expedition pretty soon,” said Fred, holding up all that was left of the bacon. “To-morrow will see the last of our provisions, unless we put ourselves on short rations.”
Fred set about his cooking operations again, while Eugene reclined on his blanket and watched Archie as he rode the bay slowly back and forth. Having once been thoroughly broken to saddle, the animal was still “bridle-wise,” but, although he understood every command of his rider, he did not like to yield obedience. He preferred freedom to slavery and needed constant watching, for he was ready to take advantage of the smallest chance that was given him for escape. He was a very handsome, stylish animal, and it was no wonder that Colonel Gaylord did not like to give him up. When the bacon and coffee were ready, Archie hitched his horse in a thicket of evergreens, where he was effectually protected from the cold wind that was blowing, threw a blanket over him and went to breakfast.
The boys spent one day and night in their camp in the valley, during which the bay received the best of care and fully recovered from his fatigue, although he did not appear to become reconciled to captivity. He was a vicious brute, and so quick with his heels that it was a matter of some difficulty to handle him, and Archie was the only one who cared to attempt it. The wild horses seemed to miss him. They frequently came about the camp and called to him, and at such times he struggled so desperately to escape that the boys were alarmed lest he should injure himself.
Early on the morning following their arrival in the valley, they packed their bundles and took to their saddles for the return journey, Eugene leading Archie’s old horse, and Archie himself riding the bay. They now had a good view of the gorge, and it was so full of obstructions—tangled thickets, fallen trees and boulders that had tumbled from the cliffs above—and the path was so narrow and winding, that it was a mystery to them how the horses could have found their way through there in the dark. They stopped once for a short rest and lunch, and about three o’clock in the afternoon arrived within sight of the prairie. They thought of the wild man, but saw no signs of him.
The way was now clear, and being impatient to reach the Fort and exhibit their prize, they put their horses into a lope, and by the time the sun began to dip behind the mountains they had made fifteen miles farther on their journey. They followed a course a few miles to the eastward of the route they had first travelled, in order to find water. They knew just where to look for it, for the trapper had been very explicit in his instructions, and Eugene had communicated them to his companions while they were yet fresh in his memory, so that there might be no chance for any mistakes. The willows, which pointed out the position of the stream, came in sight at last, and then the boys halted and held a consultation. A thin cloud of smoke slowly rising above the tops of the trees showed them that their camping-ground was already occupied.
“Ask me something hard,” said Archie, when his companions, after looking at the smoke through their field-glasses, turned to him as if to inquire what he thought about it. “I am sure I don’t know who they are.”
“What shall we do?” asked Fred. “I don’t like the idea of going into a stranger’s camp, for I have not forgotten Frank’s experience with Black Bill and his party.”
“But Dick assured me that we had nothing to fear from any one we might meet,” said Eugene. “He told me, too, that if we got into any difficulty he and old Bob would be around.”
“Perhaps Dick and Bob are there now,” said Archie.
“That’s so. We can go down and see, and if they are strangers we need not intrude upon them. We can go a mile or two farther up the stream.”
The boys rode down the swell, and in a few minutes reached the willows that lined both banks of the stream. No sooner had they entered them than a chorus of angry yelps and growls arose in advance, and three or four gaunt, savage-looking hounds came toward them with open mouths.
“Begone, you brutes!” shouted a voice. “Begone, I say! Come on, strangers, whoever you be. They won’t pester you.”
The boys kept on, and when they reached the other side of the willows, came in sight of the camp. Two covered wagons were drawn up, one on each side of the fire, and a span of small, shaggy mules and a yoke of very poor oxen were grazing close by on the prairie. About the fire were gathered a party of men, women and children, half a score in number, all but two of whom the boys at once put down as emigrants. Three of these emigrants were men—one an old gray-headed patriarch, and the others sturdy young fellows, one of whom must have been some relation to the old man, if there was any faith to be put in the resemblance they bore to each other.
The two who were not emigrants reminded the boys of that brace of worthies who had ridden into their camp on the night Walter was spirited away—Parks and Reed—who were now safe in irons in the Fort. The dress and accoutrements of these men proclaimed them to be hunters, but their faces told a different story. They did not seem at all pleased to see the boys, but the old man welcomed him cordially.
“How do, strangers?” said he. “Alight and hitch.”
“We’re obliged to you,” said Archie, “but we have no wish to intrude. We thought, when we saw the smoke of your fire, that perhaps we should find some of our friends here. We’ll make our camp a little farther up the stream.”
“No intrusion at all,” said the old man. “You are almost the only white folks we’ve seen for weeks till we fell in with our friends here——” nodding his head toward the two hunters—“and we’d like to talk to you.”
Archie hesitated. If the old man wanted him and his companions to camp with him, it was plain that the hunters did not, and he was well enough acquainted with men of their class to know that it was sometimes a dangerous proceeding to act in opposition to their wishes. But then these men did not belong to the train. Archie judged by what the old man said that he and his company had fallen in with them accidentally during their journey across the prairie, and if that was the case, they had nothing to say.
“Better get down,” urged the emigrant. “We’ve got grub enough to feed you. We’re on our way to Fort Bolton; where might you be a travellin’ to?”
“We’re bound for the same place.”
“Then camp with us to-night and to-morrow we’ll travel in company.”
The promise of a good supper was a very tempting one to the hungry boys, whose commissary would have been exhausted long ago if they had given their appetites full swing, and they knew that if they accepted the emigrant’s invitation their wants would be abundantly supplied. There was a coffee-pot on the coals, something that looked like biscuits in a pan beside the fire, and from one of the trees hung a joint of fresh meat, from which had been cut a sufficient number of steaks to fill a large frying-pan. The fact that the tin plates and cups that were scattered around were not as clean as some they had seen, and that the emigrant’s wife went about her domestic duties with a pipe in her mouth, did not take the sharp edge off their appetites, as it might have done a few months before. So they decided to remain. The old man took their bundles, accompanied them when they went out to picket their horses, asked them more questions than he would give them time to answer, and finally went back to camp to make sure that his wife had obeyed orders and added more steaks to those already in the pan.
Fred and Eugene, having picketed their own horses, went to assist Archie, the bay having suddenly taken it into his head that he would not allow himself to be staked out. The boys had a lively battle with him, and while it was going on, one of the hunters came out.
“Look a yer! who be you an’ what brought you yer?” he demanded.
Archie, who had quite as much on his hands as he could attend to, was not in just the right mood to answer such questions, especially when propounded, as this one was, with all the insolence the man could throw into his tones. He paid no attention to it until the man said, pointing his finger at him:
“You heard me, I reckon! What’s your name, an’ what brought you yer?”
“There, he’s safe enough,” said Fred, when he had driven down the iron picket-pin with the hatchet.
“We’ll not trust to that alone,” said Archie. “We’ll hobble him, too. Now, my friend, in reply to your question I have to say that I left all my cards at Fr’isco; but when I return there, as I expect to do in the course of a month or so, I will send you one, if you will be kind enough to give me your address.”
The man stared, and then looked down at the ground in a brown study. He could not make head or tail of what Archie said; but when Eugene spoke, he began to have a vague idea that the boys were making game of him.
“We’ll send it by special train, too,” said Eugene, who was highly indignant over the man’s insulting manner.
“I don’t want no sass,” said the latter. “I axed you a fair question.”
“But you didn’t ask it in a fair way,” said Archie. “Now, then, stand clear of his heels and I will let him go,” he added, as Eugene buckled the halter-strap around the bay’s leg below his knee. “I think we shall find him here when we want him.”
The horse was doubly secured now. He was fastened by a lariat to an iron pin, which was driven as deeply into the ground as repeated blows from the hatchet could send it, and his head was tied down to his feet, so that even if he succeeded in pulling the pin out he could not run away. The boys had found that these precautions were absolutely necessary. They had been so long about this work that the fresh steaks had had plenty of time to cook, and when they went back to camp the host told them that supper was ready, and backed up his welcome announcement by grasping the frying-pan by its long handle and passing it to each of his guests in succession, who helped themselves by using their hunting-knives in lieu of forks. The host, not being so particular, fished his share out with his fingers. The emigrant’s wife passed them each a biscuit with a hand which looked as though it had never seen water; a tin cup, with which one of the youngsters had been amusing himself, was filled with coffee and handed over with the remark: “I reckon you three haint afeared of one another;” and everything being thus satisfactorily arranged and everybody provided for, the host found a seat and applied himself to the task of learning a full history of everything our heroes had done since they were born. After asking a few questions he suddenly paused, having thought of something.
“I declare, I’m losin’ all my manners since I left the settlements,” said he. “I’m Reuben Holmes, gentlemen, all the way from Pike, Missouri. That chap there,” he added, pointing to one of the young men, “he’s Reuben Holmes, junior. He’s my son. Know him, strangers.”
The boys, with great difficulty controlling their desire to laugh, bowed to Reuben Holmes, junior, who did not know enough to acknowledge it in any way, and the old man went on.
“This ’yer’s my old woman; that big gal is my darter, and them’s my young children. That chap is Simon Cool, my hired help. He’s going out to the mines to run a quartz-mill for me. Them two,” waving a biscuit toward the two hunters, “are Zack and Sile. I don’t know their other names, but they’re friends of our’n. They met us on the prairie, and finding that we were a trifle out of our reckoning, they took us in tow and are going to show us the way to where we want to go. We’re bound for the mines, and I am going to set up a quartz-mill there.”
Having thus, as he imagined, placed our heroes quite at their ease, the old man took a bite out of his biscuit, first dipping it into the frying-pan, and went on with his questioning. The boys good-naturedly replied, paying no heed to the winks, nods and grunts of disbelief which the two hunters constantly exchanged with Simon Cool, and finally the emigrant came down to their recent exploits.
“Where you been lately and what a doing?” he asked.
“We have just come from the mountains,” was the reply of Archie, who acted as spokesman.
“Humph!” grunted Zack.
“What were you doing there?”
“Hunting wild horses.”
“Did you ever hear tell of the like of that, Zack?” asked Silas.
“I never did,” was the answer. “They’re nice lookin’ chaps to go a huntin’ wild hosses, haint they now?”
“An’ the mountains is a likely place to find ’em, too,” added Silas.
“Is that frisky critter of your’n out there a wild hoss?” asked the old man.
“He is.”
“Well, I do think in my soul! And you did ketch him, didn’t you? You say you’re going to Bolton to-morrow?”
“Yes.”
“How far is it from here?”
“About three days’ journey, the way you will travel. We, on horseback, could accomplish it in less time.”
“Which way is it from here?”
“Off there.”
“Why how does that come?” said the emigrant, with some surprise. “We’ve been travelling that way for the last two days,” pointing in just the opposite direction.
“Then you have lost your course, or else somebody has been misleading you.”
“Don’t listen to ’em, old man,” said Zack. “Tain’t noways likely that me an’ Sile could get lost.”
“We don’t suppose you could,” said Eugene, who had been made so angry by the hunters’ sly winks and nods that he could scarcely restrain himself. “You know where the Fort is as well as we do.”
“I reckon we do, an’ better,” said Zack.
Simon Cool, for some reason or other, had been making persevering, but unavailable, efforts to turn the conversation into another channel, and Archie, seeing that Eugene was treading on dangerous ground, joined in with Simon, and finally succeeded in getting the old man started on the subject of mining, on which he could talk like a book. Archie listened until he had finished his supper, and then went out to look at his horse. He glanced over his shoulder as he went, and saw that Simon and the two hunters were sitting with their heads close together, as if engaged in consultation.
“There’s something afoot,” thought Archie, “and I have half a mind to saddle up and clear out. Here comes Eugene. I’ll see what he thinks about it.”