He Raised His Rifle Slowly.
144“Hooray! Maybe it was a chance shot, but it was a dandy just the same. Now I wonder if I am going to be able to find her. I think I know how.”
The boy took out his compass and got a bearing on the point where he had last seen the antelope. Noting the course he started down the mountain side, sliding and leaping in his haste. Crossing over the pass was more difficult, for a broad glacial stream was rushing through the center of it. Nothing daunted, Tad plunged in, but was swept off his feet almost instantly and carried several rods down before he was able to check himself by grabbing a rock.
The rifle had been held out of the water most of the way, though it got a pretty good wetting. The water was less swift from the rock on, and Tad essayed another crossing. He fell only once on the way over. This time he went in all over, rifle and all, but he got up grinning.
“It doesn’t matter much now. I can’t be any wetter, and I guess the gun isn’t any the worse off, though I shall have to give it a pretty thorough cleaning and oiling when I get back to camp.”
Having been thrown considerably off his course, Butler found some difficulty in picking it up again, but he found it at last, then guided by the compass made his way straight to where 145the antelope lay amid a thick mass of undergrowth. He examined her and found that the bullet had entered just behind the left shoulder.
“I couldn’t have done any better than that at fifty yards,” chuckled the boy. “The next question is, how am I going to get her to camp? I reckon I shall have to tote her.”
“White boy him make shoot,” grunted Anvik.
“He has shot?” questioned Ned.
“Ugh.”
“How do you know?”
“Hear um.”
“You must have pretty good ears. I haven’t heard anything,” replied the fat boy. “How do you know it wasn’t someone else?”
“Know um gun.”
“It is queer we didn’t hear him,” said the Professor. “Do you think he got some game?”
The guide nodded.
“We shall see how good a fortune-teller you are, but the joke will be on you if it should prove not to have been Butler at all.”
To this the guide made no reply. In the meantime, Tad Butler was having his troubles. The problem of how to get the antelope back to camp was not so easily solved. But Tad thought he knew a way. First he got a stick, which he sharpened at both ends. The stick, 147about six feet long, he thrust through slits he had made in the hocks of the animal, somewhat similar to what he would have done had he been going to string the carcass up.
First strapping his rifle over his shoulder, the Pony Rider Boy raised the stick to his shoulders also, and, stooping, lifted the animal. It was a heavy burden and he staggered. The head of the antelope was dragging on the ground, which made Butler’s labor still more trying.
The lad started away, keeping close to the stream in his search of a fording place, but he failed to find anything that looked easier than the portage he had used before, so he finally decided to go back to that. By the time he reached the former point he was obliged to drop his burden and sink down on the rocks to rest.
“Whew, but it’s hot. And the mosquitoes and the gnats! If it isn’t one pest in the wilds, it is sure to be another and a worse one,” he concluded somewhat illogically, measuring the width of the stream with his eyes. “I’ll try it.”
The weight of his burden was a help rather than otherwise in crossing the glacial stream, for the weight kept the boy on his feet, except on one occasion when stepping on a flat, slippery 148rock, they were whipped out from under him. Tad went in all over, with the antelope on top of him, and there he struggled and splashed, losing his foothold almost as fast as he gained it.
“Well, I am a muffer,” gasped Tad, finally getting to his feet. “I’m worse than Chunky. I deserve a worse wetting, but I guess that’s impossible.”
The journey to the other side was made without further mishap. Then began a hard, grilling tramp down through the pass, the ends of the pole on which the animal was suspended continually catching on limbs and brush, frequently throwing Butler down, tearing his clothes and scratching his face and neck. His dogged determination carried him through, however, but he was in the end considerably the worse for wear. The first his companions saw of him was when Tad fell out into the open in plain sight of the camp, flat on his face, with the carcass on top of him. At first glance they thought it was a live animal they had seen.
“Get a gun, quick!” bellowed Stacy.
“Him white boy,” answered the Indian. “Him git um.”
“What, Tad?” Ned uttered a yell and started on a trot for his companion who, by this time, was getting up slowly and with evident 149effort. Stacy and Walter followed. “What have you got there? We came near letting go at you.”
“Yes, yes, we thought you were a bear,” chuckled Stacy.
“It’s a deer,” cried Walter Perkins.
“Him antelope,” nodded the Indian wisely. “White boy heap much big hunter.”
“I’m afraid I am a better hunter than I am a toter. Stacy, I fell in.”
“Ye-e-e-ow!” yelled the fat boy joyously.
“Here, let us take him in,” offered Ned, reaching for one end of the carrying stick.
Butler shook his head.
“I said I was going to get him to camp alone and I shall.”
“But–” protested Ned.
“Oh, let him carry the beast if he wants to. Tad likes to work,” laughed the fat boy.
“Which is a heap sight more than may be said of some persons we know of,” returned Ned.
Tad dragged the carcass into camp, casting it down a short distance from the tents.
“Him heap big little man,” reiterated the Indian.
“How much does the animal weigh?” asked the Professor.
“A good ton, I should say,” replied Tad, 150sinking down by the fire. “I’m all tuckered out.”
“You had better get on some dry clothes.”
“These will dry in a few minutes by the fire,” was the philosophical reply.
“Yes, that’s right,” bubbled Stacy. “When one side gets dry I’ll pry you over with the stick on which you brought in the carcass. You can’t say I don’t do my share of the work in this outfit.”
“I think I prefer to do my own rolling. I don’t dare trust you,” laughed Tad.
“That’s it, you see. When I try to do anything you won’t let me.”
“Perhaps Anvik will show you how to skin and cut up the antelope.”
“I don’t want to know how to skin an antelope. We don’t have that kind at home, so what’s the use knowing about it? I know how to ‘skin the cat,’ and that’s enough,” Chunky declared.
Anvik deftly strung up the carcass and in half an hour had it neatly dressed, the boys watching the operation with interest.
“Heap much good meat,” he nodded.
“Yes, heap,” admitted Stacy solemnly. “What are you going to do with it all?”
“Eat um.”
“All of it?”
151“Some of um. Mebby wolf eat um rest. Mebby bear eat um.”
“Mebby they don’t. Mebby Stacy Brown will eat um if there is any left when my hungry friends get through with it to-morrow,” jeered the fat boy. “I’ll have mine rare, if you please.”
“Huh!” grunted Anvik with the suspicion of a grin on his usually stolid countenance.
One by one the travelers were hauling the ponies up a steep mountain, over which their course lay, four days after Tad had brought in the antelope. They had eaten their fill of the meat, hiding the rest in case they should by any chance come that way again.
The going had been worse than before. It could not have been tougher for either man or beast. The mountain side up which they were struggling was rough and rugged. A short distance to the right of them the quartz rock was as smooth as polished marble save for a hummock here and there, some of the latter smooth, others rough. Neither Pony Rider Boy nor pony could have held his footing there for an instant.
After two hours’ toil they got the last of the stock up, which in this case was the pack mule. Ned pulled on the rope while Tad and Anvik pushed. They were safe in doing so, for the mule could not kick without going down altogether. 153Furthermore, it was as anxious as its helpers to get to the top and have the disagreeable job over with. The result was that all hands were pretty well fagged out by the time they got to a level space from which their way led around the base of the higher mountain.
“Now, Stacy, you haven’t done much except to give us the benefit of your advice, so take the mule over yonder and tether him where he can browse,” directed Butler. “Walter, did you tether the others?”
“I did.”
“Come on, you lazy mule. I’m not going to tote you. You’ll tote yourself if you want a feed,” growled Stacy, taking hold of the lead rope and slouching off to the right. The bushes where they had placed the ponies were about ten rods to the northward of the point at which the party had landed. Stacy was apparently trying to see how near he could walk to the edge without himself or the mule slipping down that glassy side of granite-like rocks.
“Come along, you lazy cayuse,” he yelled, giving the lead line a series of tugs. It was like pulling on a dead weight, the pack mule being too weary to hasten its lagging footsteps. Chunky turned around and taking firm grip on 154the rope with both hands began to pull with all his might. The mule braced himself. He resented this sort of treatment.
The halter suddenly slipped over the animal’s head, and the pack mule sat down heavily. So did the fat boy. Unfortunately for the mule it sat down with its haunches slightly over the edge of the slope, and down it went over the slippery surface.
“There goes the other mule!” yelled Walter Perkins.
“Fat boy him go, too,” grunted Anvik.
They had failed to observe Stacy. What they were most interested in was the sight of their pack mule sliding down the slope backwards in a sitting posture. Alarmed as they were to see their stores disappearing, the ludicrousness of the sight interested them. The mule came in contact with one of the high places–a rocky bump, which bounced him up into the air and turned him completely around. Down to the next obstruction the animal traveled, principally on its nose.
Stacy Brown was only a few seconds behind the mule. The two had sat down facing each other. The mule being the heavier had gone first and, when once under way, his momentum carried him along with greater force and speed.
With a wild yell, the fat boy, sprawling and 155struggling to catch hold of something to stop his progress, began the descent. Below him he could hear the rattle of tin cans, for the pack had broken open. It was raining canned goods down there, but Stacy was not particularly interested in this phase of the situation. He hit the bump over which the pack mule had leaped, was hurled up into the air, where he did a dizzy spin, then sat down with a force that for the instant knocked all the breath out of him, and once more he shot towards the bottom.
“They’ll both be killed!” cried the Professor in great alarm.
Tad, comprehending the scene in a twinkling, started on a run. Choosing a point where there were no bumps in the way, he crept over and, sitting on his feet, supported on each side by his hands, began a downward shoot. But the freckle-faced boy did not long maintain that position. A few seconds after starting he was flat on his back, going down feet first at a speed that fairly took his breath away.
Ere he was half-way down, the mule had reached the end of its journey at the bottom of the slope. Then Stacy Brown came along, but not much more gracefully than the mule, and landed feet first on the animal. What the slide and the bumps had failed to do for the unfortunate beast, Stacy Brown did. He was a 156human projectile and the mule, that had got to its fore feet, promptly lay down again under the impact. Chunky did a graceful dive over the body of his prostrate enemy, landing on his shoulders in a thicket.
“Stacy! Stacy!” yelled Tad as he reached the end of his own slide and got to his feet. Tad had not been in the least injured by the fall. “Stacy!”
“What do you want?”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Then come and help me get the mule up.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m strung up.”
Tad did not know what the trouble was, but he lost no time in getting to his companion. Butler gazed, then he burst out laughing. Chunky lay on his back on the ground, his eyes rolling. One foot was elevated as high as it could reach and still permit the boy’s body to remain on the ground. The foot was caught in the crotch of a dwarfed tree, and was wedged in tightly, too.
“Gracious! How did you ever manage to get into that scrape?” questioned Tad between laughs. “Hey, Ned, is that you?” as a crashing in the bushes was heard near at hand.
157“Yes. I’m coming. Is Stacy hurt?”
“No, but come here quick. Here’s a sight for you!”
Ned threshed his way to them, then he, too, burst out into a roar of laughter.
“Ha, ha!” mocked Chunky. “That’s right. Never mind me. I’m only the fat boy, taken along to do stunts to make the rest of you laugh. I’m quite comfortable, thank you. I can stand on my head here for any old length of time. Have your laugh out, then shoot me! I don’t want to die a lingering death.”
“I’ll lift him up. You get the foot out, Ned,” directed Tad.
This was not so easily accomplished. Butler tried different ways of doing this, but each time the fat boy’s yells made him stop short. Every attempt to lift Stacy gave his foot a wrench, bringing forth a howl.
“Let me have your hatchet,” demanded Tad. Ned passed it over.
“What are you going to do? Going to chop my leg off?” demanded Stacy.
“Don’t worry. It won’t hurt but a moment.”
“Pro-o-o-o-fessor!”
“Keep still, you ninny! We aren’t going to hurt you,” growled Ned.
Tad was already hacking at the tree, which 158was small, but very tough. Every blow brought a yell from the fat boy. He couldn’t have made much more racket had his companions in reality been amputating the leg itself.
At last Butler had chopped through. He grabbed the tree, but Stacy, jerking on his foot, pulled the tree right over on him, incidentally throwing Tad down. Then Chunky let out a fresh series of howls as the sharp sprouts smote him on the face and body. The foot, however, had come free with the falling of the tree, but the boy still lay there groaning, making no effort to help himself.
“Get up! You’re all right,” commanded Ned, jerking Stacy out by the collar. “See what you’ve accomplished now. You have done for our last mule. Had you not been along I don’t believe the other one would have fallen off the trail.”
“That’s right. Save the donk, but never mind a Stacy Brown. He’s a good joke, that’s all,” complained Stacy.
Tad had run to the pack mule which had got up, and was standing with nose close to the ground.
“He isn’t hurt,” cried Tad. “He is all right, Professor,” he called. “Both mules are all right. Hooray!”
“Eh?” growled Stacy, flushing hotly.
159Anvik, who had been making his way down by a more roundabout way, now made his appearance. He grunted upon discovering the disheveled Chunky, and shrugged his shoulders as he observed the display of tin cans strewn about.
“Much heap big fool!” ejaculated the Indian.
“Are you addressing your remarks to me or to the mule?” demanded Stacy calmly.
“Huh!” That was the only reply Stacy got, and Anvik began gathering up the stuff that had been lost from the battered pack. This was no small task, owing to the way the provisions had been scattered. Butler, in the meantime, had gone over the pack mule carefully to see if there were any serious injuries.
“He’s a lucky mule,” announced the lad. “There are no bones broken, but I’ll warrant he aches all over from the shaking up he has had. I shall have to sew up that gash on his side when we get him up.”
“Let’s get started and boost him up, then,” urged Rector.
“No, let the beggar rest. I haven’t the heart to drag him up that mountain again until he recovers from the shock. We’ll tether him and help Anvik get the provisions up first. Stacy, are you able to work?”
“What you want me to do?”
160“Carry some of these stores up.”
The fat boy shook his head.
“My weak heart won’t stand it,” he answered. Thrusting his hands in his pockets he strolled off.
The two boys looked at each other and Tad shook his head hopelessly. Ned picked up a stone and savagely shied it at a tomato can. It hit the can and split it wide open.
“If you must give vent to your emotions I wish you would throw stones at a tree, or at something that won’t deplete our stores,” suggested Butler. “Now see what you’ve done.”
Stacy had promptly rescued the split tomato can and carefully holding it before him stepped gingerly over to a rock on which he sat down and began eating of the contents of the can.
“I don’t want to see. Stacy riles me so that I want to thrash him. I’ll do it some day, too!” threatened Ned.
Stacy paid no attention to Rector’s threats, but having finally emptied the can, he threw it at Ned, then began climbing the mountain to rejoin the outfit.
It was all of two hours ere they finished their work of bringing the damaged supplies up the mountain side. Then came a tug of war in getting the mule up once more, the brute hanging back, the boys pulling and pushing. The Professor 161had a new pack cover all cut and sewed by the time they had finished. The boys decided to camp where they were for an hour longer, then go on, making a late camp that afternoon, the days being so long that this could be done without night traveling, which was very perilous in that rugged section.
They finally took up their journey, making camp on a high plateau where Tad was destined to make an important discovery before they set out on the following day.
It was an hour past daylight on the following morning when Tad, who had got up early, shouldered his rifle and stalked out of camp, returned. The other boys were just out of their beds, heading for a spring to “wash their eyes open.”
Tad did not show himself to them at once. There was no real reason for his caution, save that he was a woodsman and therefore always cautious as to the moves he made. Anvik caught sight of him instantly, and Tad beckoned. The guide did not appear to have observed the signal, but taking up his hatchet as if going out for wood, he strode from the camp also, and Butler seeing that the guide was coming, turned and walked briskly away from the camp.
The freckle-faced boy led for a short quarter of a mile straight over the plateau, a thickly wooded, rugged plain. Then he halted, waiting for the guide to come up. Tad pointed to a heap of ashes, the remains of a campfire.
“Huh!” grunted the Indian.
163“Someone has been here before us,” nodded Tad. “And not so very long ago, I should say. What do you make of it, Anvik?”
“You see um?”
Butler nodded.
“What you see?”
“A dead campfire.”
“Huh. Heap much. What else you see?”
“I see a few things, Anvik. Of course I can’t see as much as you do, but I should say this camp was not more than a day old. This fire was blazing yesterday. The ashes aren’t the right color for a very old one.”
“One sun,” grunted the Indian.
“It looks to me as if there had been two men here. Am I right?”
“Heap good. Two men. Leave, big hurry. Him go that way. Stay here two hour. Wonder why big hurry?”
“Perhaps they wanted to get somewhere, some place for which they had set out in a hurry. They had two ponies and pretty heavy packs.”
Anvik nodded.
“White boy much wise. Him see almost like Indian. My father him shaman. Him teach Anvik see many thing. White boy him see almost as much as Anvik.”
“Where do you think they are going?”
“Perhaps they are miners prospecting for a claim.”
Anvik shook his head.
“Too much big hurry. No prospect. Mebby go get claim. Mebby see um again.”
“I hope we do. It would be pleasant to have some company in this wild place. They went in that direction when they broke camp. Is that the way we go?” asked Tad.
“We follow um trail.”
“Then let’s go back and get ready to move.”
The pair strode back without another word, the Indian’s admiration for the freckle-faced boy having increased greatly since Tad had beckoned him from the camp.
Shortly after noon as they were casting about for a favorable place in which to make their mid-day halt, Ned Rector, who was riding to the right of the others, uttered a shout.
“What is it?” cried Tad.
“There has been a campfire here.”
“How did you find it?” wondered Tad.
“My pony walked through it and kicked up the ashes. Who do you suppose it could have been?”
“I am sure I don’t know. See anything about the remains of the fire that tells you anything?”
165“No. What is there to see, Tad?”
“It takes a woodsman to see things,” declared Stacy Brown, getting from his saddle and gravely strolling to the heap of ashes, into which he thrust one hand.
“Well?” grinned Tad.
“Ashes warm. Haven’t been away from here very long.”
“Great!” cried the boys.
“You are a wonder,” nodded Butler approvingly. “But you all missed the other one.”
“The other what?” demanded Ned.
“The other campfire. There was another right near where we camped last night. In that case the ashes were cold. The travelers haven’t made as much progress to-day as I should have thought they would, and it looks to me as though they thought they were moving rather too rapidly and had slowed down a little. What do you say, Anvik?”
“Huh!” grunted the Indian, which Tad interpreted as meaning that he was right.
The Professor was much interested in the discovery, and asked Tad and Anvik many questions about the earlier discovery. Still, there was not much to be learned. A stranger in this wild place was something to attract the attention and cause speculation and discussion, so during the rest hour they talked of little 166else. Tad thought they would come up with the two strangers, but the guide shook his head.
“Him go north. Anvik go northwest. No see.”
“We shall see by to-morrow. I have an idea that we are going to catch up with our friends before we get across the mountains,” averred Tad confidently.
“Lunch is ready,” announced the Professor.
“And speaking of food, I’m a little hungry myself,” said Tad with a laugh. “I really am glad there is no one in our outfit with a delicate appetite. Walt, do you remember what a dainty picker you were when we first went out together?”
“Yes. I have changed since then, haven’t I?”
“I should say you have. From a delicate little chap you’ve gotten to be a regular whopper.”
“Yes, I reckon we’ve all grown some,” agreed Chunky. “But if this kind of going continues we’ll all shrink away to nothing.”
“You will be able to lift a house after you have finished this journey,” laughed Tad.
“I don’t want to lift a house. I’ve got all I can do to lift myself.”
Soon after, the party started on, to meet with a surprise ere they had gone far on their journey.
The surprise did not come until just before night closed in, shortly after ten o’clock that night.
A hard, grilling day had been spent on the trail, with little relief from their labors, which were divided between hauling the ponies up dangerous slopes, down almost sheer walls, across glacial streams cold as ice, and last but not least the fighting of giant mosquitoes and black gnats.
“There is only one thing lacking to make this country the limit,” declared Stacy after they had made camp and settled down to warm themselves while the guide was getting supper.
“And what might that be?” questioned the Professor.
“Snakes!”
“Thank goodness there aren’t any such things here,” exclaimed Rector. “It is bad enough as it is. Hark! What’s that?”
“Him wolf,” grunted the Indian.
“I should say there were several of ‘him,’” 168laughed Tad Butler. “They seemed to be stirred up about something. Are they timber wolves, Anvik?”
The guide nodded and grunted.
“Are you afraid of wolves?” demanded Rector.
“No ’fraid wolves. Mebby ’fraid Ingalik.”
Tad drew from this that the Indian had something in mind that he had not spoken to them about. The freckle-faced boy eyed the Indian keenly, but Anvik’s impassive face told him nothing. The guide had discovered something else. Tad was sure of that, but what that something was the boy had not the slightest idea.
Tad’s gaze roved about over the landscape, traveling slowly from mountain to mountain, from peak to peak. Twice he went over the rugged landscape spread out before them with his searching glances. Suddenly his gaze halted and fixed on the peak of a low mountain off to the northwest of them. Butler shaded his eyes, and Anvik, observing the action, followed the direction of the boy’s gaze.
The guide made no move, nor did he change expression, but Tad saw that Anvik saw. A tiny ring of smoke was rising slowly from the low mountain peak, swaying lazily as it rose in the quiet air. It was almost white. One 169might have taken it for a cloud did he not know better, and only a mountaineer would have known better.
A moment and a second ring ascended in the wake of the first one, then after another interval a third ring rose.
“What are you looking at?” demanded the Professor sharply.
“Smoke,” answered Tad.
“Where?”
“On that low peak. Where are the glasses?”
Ned hurriedly fetched the glasses. He took the first look, but saw no smoke. Tad reached for them. By this time another ring was rising. It, like the first one he had seen, was followed by two others.
“It’s a signal!” announced Butler quietly. “Now what can it mean?”
“It means trouble for us,” spoke up Stacy. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“Who would desire to make trouble for us here?” demanded the Professor.
“I don’t know,” replied Tad. “I don’t believe that smoke has anything to do with us. It must be an Indian signal.”
“No Indian,” grunted Anvik. “Him white man smoke.”
“How do you know?” questioned the Professor sharply.
“Then perhaps you may be able to tell us whose smoke it is?”
“Him white man. Mebby same man, mebby not. White man all same. Him call other white man. Him say some along, by jink.”
“Let’s make a smoke and answer him,” suggested Ned eagerly. “That would be a joke on him, whoever he is.”
Tad said “no,” and said it emphatically.
“No make smoke,” agreed the Indian. “Smoke want white man off yonder”–pointing to the southwest.
“How do you know that?” asked Butler.
“Smoke him go that way. Want us, smoke him go this way.”
“I never knew that before,” reflected Tad. “You see, boys, they make these signal smokes by building a smudge, then holding a blanket over the smudge. By removing the blanket and replacing it they can make a definite number of smokes, long smokes or short smokes; in fact, they can almost make words, like the telegraph. It is a wonderful thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if those signals could be made out twenty or thirty miles away, if one had eyes sharp enough to detect them.”
“But what are they signaling for?” demanded Stacy.
171“I don’t know. Anvik says it is white men. I can’t tell you anything about that. Smoke is just smoke to me. They are communicating with someone. We shan’t see them, as they must be all of ten miles away.”
“Fifteen,” corrected the guide.
“That shows how poorly a novice judges distances in this country,” nodded Butler. “They may see our fire to-night. If they are friendly we shall no doubt meet them. If they are not, we may never see a sign of them again. That is the way I reason it out.”
Anvik grunted and nodded. The Indian understood a great deal more of what was being said than one would have supposed. In fact, to look at him one would not think he had even heard anything of what was being said about him. He was the silent, impassive-faced stoic of his race.
After darkness had set in the boys scanned the mountains for the light of a campfire, but there was no light to be seen. The Pony Rider Boys’ campfire, however, was blazing up brightly, they having built up a large fire on purpose to attract the attention of the men who had made the smoke signals from the low mountain peak, low in comparison with the ten and fifteen thousand feet ranges about them. The boys turned in at midnight, a late hour for 172them, and were sound asleep within two minutes thereafter. They were aroused an hour later by the most terrifying roar they had ever listened to.
“What’s the matter?” cried Tad, springing from his tent, trying to pierce the darkness with his gaze.
“Is–is the world coming to an end?” yelled Ned.
“I guess the mountain is falling down,” shouted Stacy.
“Guide, guide!” roared the Professor.
Anvik, drawing his blanket still more closely about him, stepped over and threw some fresh sticks on the fire. The roaring by this time had become a thunderous, crashing noise that fairly deafened them. One had to shout to make himself heard. Fine particles, like sharp stones, began raining down upon them, stinging the faces, causing the boys to shield their eyes with their arms. Stacy, in alarm, ran and hid in the tent; the others stood their ground, yet not knowing what second they might be caught in what seemed to them to be a great upheaval of nature.
“It’s an earthquake,” shouted Ned Rector.
Stacy heard the words in a brief lull. The fat boy burst from his tent yelling like a wild Indian.
173“An earthquake! Oh, wow, wow, wow! We’ll all be shot to pieces. Oh, help!”
Tad grabbed the boy by a shoulder, giving him a good shaking.
“Stop that noise!” he commanded. “Don’t yell until you are hurt.”
“I want to yell now. Maybe I can’t yell after I’m hurt,” returned Chunky.
“Guide! What is it?” roared the Professor, the perspiration standing out over his face, as Tad observed when the fire blazed up.
Anvik finished what he was doing before he answered. Then he spoke without looking up.
“Him mountain fall down.”
“Is it an ice slide?” shouted Tad.
“Ugh!”
“An avalanche, do you mean?”
“Yes; an ice-avalanche,” explained the Professor. “I have seen them in other parts of the world.”
“Sun make him ice weak; ice fall down,” explained Anvik.
“How about danger for us?” asked Walter.
For answer the Indian shrugged his shoulders and went on poking the fire. Then, of a sudden, there came a crash like a salvo of artillery. A crushing, grinding mass shot by them, snuffing out the fire as it passed.
Darkness and a terrifying silence followed.
After the roar of the passing avalanche had ceased, and the awed silence became oppressive, Stacy Brown’s voice was heard.
“Ow-wow!” he wailed.
“Are we all here, and safe?” called Tad. “Professor, Ned, Walter, Anvik!”
Each answered to his name.
“You didn’t call for me,” Chunky protested indignantly. “Don’t I count in this outfit?”
“That’s easy,” answered Tad. “When you’re not making a noise we know you’re somewhere else. Let’s see what the ice did to our camp.”
“Heap one piece ice fall,” grunted the guide. “Him sit on fire. Innua him mad, by jink!”
“Is Innua the scoundrel who has been throwing sections of mountains at us?” demanded Walter.
“He means the mountain spirit,” explained Tad. “Don’t you recall that Anvik wouldn’t start out with us the first day because he said 175the mountain spirit was in a blue funk, or something of the sort?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Old Innua must have been in a rage to-night then, and we are lucky that we weren’t in range of his projectiles,” chuckled Tad.
Beyond destroying their fire, no damage had been done to the camp. However, after the excitement no one felt like sleep, so the boys sat about the fire discussing the ice avalanche for an hour or more. Then, at the Professor’s urgent insistence, they turned in. Anvik long since had wound himself up in his blanket and gone to sleep.
Just as the dawn was graying, Tad got up, and shouldering his rifle slipped from the camp unobserved by anyone except the Indian. Anvik opened one eye, regarded the boy inquiringly, then closing the eye, dozed off. He was by this time too well used to Tad’s morning excursions to ask any questions. He knew the boy was well able to take care of himself.
Tad had a two-fold purpose in view in going out this morning. He wanted to get some fresh meat for the outfit and he also was curious to know what the smoke of the previous evening had meant. While he did not expect to come up with any strangers, he thought that, perhaps he might discover something.
176Tad did. He had proceeded less than a mile from camp when he smelled smoke. At first he thought the odor must come from his own camp, then he saw that the slight breeze was from the opposite direction.
“That means that someone isn’t far ahead of me. It means I am going to find out who it is if I can.”
After floundering about for fully half an hour, with the odor of smoke becoming more pungent all the time, the boy was on the point of confessing that he was beaten, when all at once he caught the sound of a human voice. The voice was not loud enough to enable him to distinguish the words, but he was quite sure it was the voice of a white man and not far away at that.
“They have masked their camp. That’s why I haven’t been able to find them,” muttered the boy, starting ahead again. After creeping forward cautiously for some time, a wave of suffocating smoke from burning wood smote him full in the face.
Tad uttered a loud sneeze. Two men suddenly appeared in the haze of smoke, and the boy heard the sound of hands slapping pistol holsters. He was able to make the men out faintly, but not with sufficient clearness to see who or what they were.
177“Hold on, boys–don’t shoot!” warned Butler, as he stepped around the smudge to enable him to get a better view of the men whom he had come upon so unexpectedly, to them.
Before him stood Curtis Darwood and Dill Bruce, the latter known among his companions as the Pickle. Each man held his revolver ready for quick action.
“Why, how do you do?” smiled Tad. “I hadn’t the least idea I should find anyone I knew.”
“Well, suffering blue jays, if it isn’t old Spotted Face!” exclaimed Bruce. “Howdy?”
“Very good. How are you?” Tad stepped forward. Bruce shook hands cordially with the boy. Tad turned to Darwood, who had not said a word. The latter’s face darkened, and he appeared not to have observed the hand that Tad extended toward him.
“Aren’t you going to shake hands with me, Mr. Darwood?” asked the lad.
“I reckon you ought to know better than to ask it,” returned the gold digger. “I reckon, further, that if you know what’s good for you you’ll be mushing out of this as fast as your legs will carry you, unless you are looking for trouble. Git!”
Tad gazed at the gold digger in amazement.
“I–I don’t understand, Mr. Darwood.”
“Don’t you understand plain English? I said ‘git.’ We don’t want anything to do with you, and if we find you fooling about our outfit after this we’ll try something else to keep you away,” warned the prospector.
“I don’t know why you appear to have taken such a dislike to me. I am sure I have done nothing to merit it. However, I am equally sure that I don’t want anything to do with you. If you change your mind and can act like a man, instead of a kid, I shall be glad to see you. But don’t get funny. We may be boys but we are quite able to take care of ourselves,” answered Tad, turning away.
“Stop!”
Darwood’s voice was stern. Tad halted and turned towards the two men.
“You reckon you’re mighty smart, I know, 179but you must think I’m a natural-born fool not to know that you have been following us all the way up here.”
“What?”
“Oh, you needn’t play the innocent dodge. You know what I mean.”
“You–you think we have been following you?” questioned the boy, scarcely able to believe that the prospector was in earnest.
“I don’t think. I know. You’re like all the rest of them. We have had this thing happen to us before. There are plenty more like you, and they’ve followed us, hoping they will be the first to discover the bear totem and the claim that we are in search of.”
“Taku Pass?” asked Butler with a half smile on his face.
Darwood’s face flushed angrily.
“What did I tell you, Bruce?” he snapped. “Are you going?” he demanded, turning towards Tad.
“Yes. I don’t care to stay where I’m not wanted. But before going I am going to tell you something. We are not prospecting, nor following prospectors. We are taking our usual summer vacation on horseback. All I know about your affairs is what Captain Petersen of the ‘Corsair’ told me, and what I overheard from Sandy Ketcham. If you will recall 180I told you about that. The Captain gave me your history as far as he knew it, and I was much interested. How could I help being? I love adventure and so do my companions. We wanted to know more about it, but did not think it was any of our business until I overheard Ketcham plotting against you. We hadn’t the least idea we ever should see you again. My finding you this morning was a pure accident.”
“How’d you happen to do it?” interjected Dill Bruce.
“I saw your smoke signs last night.”
“What!”
Darwood snapped the word out like the crack of a whip.
“I saw your smoke signs. At least I suppose they were yours. This morning I started out, as I frequently do, in search of game. I smelled your smoke and out of curiosity hunted you up to see who our neighbors were. That’s all there is to it. If you can get anything out of that you are welcome to it. I wish you luck in finding Taku Pass. If I should stumble on it, I’ll look you up and let you know. We aren’t looking for gold mines especially. ’Bye.”
“Well, what d’ye think of that?” grinned the Pickle after Tad had left them.
“I think somebody will get hurt if they don’t leave us alone,” growled Darwood, caressing 181the butt of his revolver. “I’m getting tired of this kind of nagging.”
“That outfit isn’t nagging you,” answered Bruce.
“How do you know?”
“They are nothing but boys. At least one of them is the right sort. Spotted Face did us a favor. He isn’t a crook.”
“I haven’t said he was. But you don’t know who is in their outfit now. Besides, there isn’t one chance in a thousand that they’d be so close on our trail unless they had followed us on purpose. No, this business must be stopped. We may be on the right track, and if we are we must protect ourselves, and we’ll do it, even though we have to kill a few curious hounds who are following the trail. The boy business may be merely a mask for the operations of some other persons.”
“Why don’t you find out, then?”
Darwood bent a keen gaze on his companion.
“What do you mean?”
“Hunt up their camp and see what is going on?”
“I’ll do it,” answered the gold digger with emphasis. “What’s more, I’ll do it now.”
“That’s the talk! If you hurry, you may be able to find the boy and follow him in. Shall I go along?”
182“No. You stay here and look after things. I may be away for some time. I don’t know where they are, but I’ll find them if it takes all day. If our two comrades come in, you hold them here. Needn’t tell them where I am.”
Darwood shouldered his rifle and strode from his camp without another word. Bruce replenished the fire in order to make a smudge that could be smelled for some distance away, which was for the purpose of directing their companions to them, and also had served to call Tad Butler into their camp in advance of the other two gold diggers.
Tad was out of sight by the time Curtis Darwood got out, but Darwood was able to follow the boy’s trail, though it was not an easy one. Tad had made no effort to mask his trail, but his natural instincts taught him to leave as few indications of his progress as possible. Darwood saw this. Instead of lessening his suspicions this fact served to increase them. The gold digger was using his nose more than his eyes, sniffing the air for the smoke from the camp of the Pony Rider Boys’ outfit. He caught the scent after half an hour or so of trudging over the hard trail. From this time on it was easy so far as finding his way was concerned. Butler, knowing the way, had made much better time back to his own camp.
183Breakfast was ready by the time he reached there. Tad did not mention his experience, not having decided what he would do in this matter.
“You find big smoke?” questioned the Indian as Tad stood over him by the fire.
“Yes,” answered the lad carelessly. Anvik shrewdly deduced that Butler had made some sort of discovery, but he asked no further questions. Perhaps the guide also had discovered that they had near neighbors. If so he kept that fact to himself.
The boys sat down to breakfast. They discussed the day’s ride and talked of their further journeyings, though Tad had little to say that morning. He was thinking deeply on what had just occurred.
The breakfast was about half finished when the lad flashed a quick, keen glance in the direction from which he had entered the camp. The others did not observe his sharp glance of inquiry. Tad had seen something. A movement of the foliage had attracted his observant eyes. He glanced at Anvik, who was sitting with his back to the party, gazing off over the mountains to the rear of them and through which they had worked their way to the present camping place.
Tad casually reached over for his rifle that was standing against a rock.
184“What’s up?” demanded Ned sharply.
“I want to examine my gun,” replied the boy.
“Funny time to examine it when eating your breakfast,” spoke up Walter.
“I prefer to eat,” said Stacy.
“We know that,” chuckled Ned. “No need for you to tell us.”
The Professor was eyeing Tad inquiringly, observing that the boy’s face was slightly flushed.
“What is it, Tad?” he asked.
“Nothing, except that I am going to take a pot shot at an intruder,” replied the boy calmly, suddenly leveling his rifle on the bushes where he had observed the movement a few moments before.
He pulled the trigger. A deafening crash brought the boys to their feet, yelling. The shot was followed by a shout from the bushes.
“Stop that shooting, you fool!” roared a voice. Tad put down his gun, grinning broadly, the others dancing about excitedly.
“Come out of that or I’ll give you something to yell at,” commanded the Pony Rider Boy.