Not understanding the danger, the boys could not help seeing that it was real, by the old man's manner, and the speed with which he darted back along the trail. As he passed 'Cradle,' Snap noticed that that intelligent beast turned of his own accord and followed his human companions. As they ran, another faint wind came, and another half-dozen great trees thundered down, and one of them right across the path between Dick and his friends. One of its boughs flew up and struck Frank across the face, leaving a long black mark and drawing a bright stream of blood.

For a moment the boys recoiled aghast; but Wharton's voice woke them to a fresh effort.

'Run, run, tear and ages! will you run?' he shrieked, and one after another the boys scrambled over the carcase of the great tree and reached Dick's side.

Dick was on his knees beside the hole from which he had extricated Snap. The good old fellow, though he knew the danger, meant to see everyone else safe before he thought of himself.

'Here, young 'un,' he cried to Towzer, 'get hold of my fist. Now then, down you go,' and he lowered the boy as far as he could into the hole.

'Let go and drop,' he cried. 'Are you all right?' he added.

'All right,' said Towzer's voice from somewhere beneath their feet.

'Now then, Frank,' said Dick; and one after another he let the boys down, and a moment after dropped down amongst them.

'Great Scott! how it shakes the wind out of you,' he muttered, picking himself up, 'I didn't know it was so far.'

Just then a peal of thunder drowned their voices, and after it came the rain in torrents, driven by a perfect gale of wind. Even where the boys were the rain came in bucketfuls, and the red lightning lit up their subterranean shelter until they could see the black logs above their heads, like the gigantic beams in some old English hall. But the loud thunder echoing amongst the cliffs beyond the river, and the hissing rain, and every other sound was drowned when the wind arose, for after the first rush of the wind it seemed as if the end of the world had come, or as if, at the very least, some great battle like Hohenlinden was being fought right over their heads. Tree after tree came crashing to the ground and, as it fell, dragged down others with it. Now they would fall one after another with loud reports as if a regiment of giants were file-firing, and again a great wave of sound, a very volley of the heaviest artillery, would make the ground rock with its awful roar.

'Thank God, we got here in time,' said old Dick reverently; 'I guess there won't be a tree standing when this storm stops, and those poor wretched ponies will be pounded small enough for sausage meat!'

'Do you think they can't escape, Dick?' asked Frank; 'our rifles won't be good for much, then.'

'No,' replied Wharton, 'except, maybe, for old iron or chips to light a fire with. By the way, who has the matches?'

'They are on the packs,' said Towzer.

'What, haven't any of you a match about you?' asked Dick.

'No, I haven't,' said Frank.

'Nor I,' added Towzer.

'Haven't you, Snap?' asked Dick. 'What are you thinking of, boy?' Dick added.

'No, I haven't a match, Dick. I was thinking what a cur I was to leave poor old Cradle, and how piteous he looked as I passed him; but I had no notion what I was leaving him to,' replied Snap sadly.

'Yes, it is a pity. He was a good horse, but there are plenty better, and, besides, we hadn't a rope strong enough to lower him into this hole, even if we had had time to try it; and then I'm not sure as he'd have let us do it,' said Wharton; adding, after a while, 'I guess the storm is stopping, but it's a poor camp we shall have to-night, without a fire.'

Before long the storm stopped; our friends down below could feel that the air was fresh and sweet, and that the evening sun was shining brightly over everything. By tying a little log on to the lash-rope and throwing it over one of the beams which formed the roof of their shelter, our friends made themselves a ladder, and one by one climbed up from the darkness to daylight again.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LOSS OF 'THE CRADLE'

When they did so, what a change had taken place! An hour and a half ago thousands of burnt trees, stretched upon all sides, blocked the view and formed a forest of skeletons. Now every high head was levelled, every tall grey spire laid low. Like a wheatfield beaten down in autumn lay the burnt forest, but, unlike that, no sun could ever raise it up again. When years should have passed and the dead trees returned to earth, another forest would spring up where the pines had stood—not a forest of bright larch and tall pines, but, oddly enough, a forest utterly alien to the one which had so long covered the ground. Beech and birch, and maple or poplar, would grow green in spring and shed their leaves in autumn where the winds once whistled and the snows lay amongst the great evergreens.

As Snap looked at the levelled forest the words came somehow to his lips, 'This is the Lord's doing; and it is marvellous in our eyes.' Lifting his hat, he looked up to the bright sun, and even the grim old cowboy was not ashamed to follow his example.

Picking their way with difficulty among the chaos of fallen trees, the boys' ears were greeted by a low whinny.

'It's the Cradle, poor old chap!' cried Snap. 'Can it possibly be that he is alive?'

'It's a pity if he is, my lad,' said old Wharton, 'for he'll only be calling you to shoot him out of his pain. He's most sure to have a leg broke or his back smashed.'

'But he hasn't, though, have you, old chap?' shouted Snap, who had scrambled breathlessly over the logs to the spot from which his old horse had called to him.

'But, Dick,' the boy added, 'how on earth are we ever going to get him out of this?'

And he well might ask. 'The Cradle' couldn't stir, and no wonder. He had seen the danger as well as his masters, and with that wonderful instinct which sometimes serves a beast better than our reason serves us had taken the best means he could to escape it. Finding himself deserted, he crouched down on the lee-side of the great pine which had fallen across Snap's path, and by tucking his knees under him had managed to crawl almost under its projecting side like a rabbit. Tree after tree had crashed over him, but the great butt against which he crouched was solid, and now when Snap found him he was absolutely untouched, but shut in as if in a cage by the great fragments of trees which had broken just over his head. By taking off his pack (which contained two out of the three rifles), and by the free use of an axe, which was also attached to his pack, our friends at last set the old pony free, and they all laughed heartily as they watched him crawling almost on his belly amongst the timber, even lying down and pushing himself under a log on his side, until the cunning old rascal was rubbing his head on his master's sleeve again.

The other pony they found later on, but, as Dick said, no one but Snap could have had such luck as not to lose his horse in the late storm. The second pony was crushed to pieces. The first tree that struck the poor brute had broken its spine as if it had been a dry twig, and crushed it as a cart-wheel would crush a rat. The pack, too, was crushed and buried under the trees, the only thing which had escaped being Towzer's rifle, which had got torn away from its lashings before the pony was killed.

'Well, we might have done a lot worse,' said Wharton; 'there are all the rifles safe, and old Cradle has the flour and a frying-pan, the axe and the kettle. We shall do very well.'

'Much good the kettle will be,' said Towzer; 'the tea is somewhere under that dead horse, and so are the beans and bacon.'

'Yes,' added Frank, who had been hunting about amongst the packs, 'and there isn't a match that will strike amongst us.'

'Never mind that,' said Wharton. 'You have the only muzzle-loader amongst us, haven't you, Frank? Hand it here. We'll camp just where we are.'

Frank obeyed, and the old man chose a spot where some fallen trees formed a kind of square, the centre of which he cleared from debris, and then, taking an axe, he just trimmed off the wet outside of one of the great trunks, and made a big hollow in the dry, half-burnt tinder. This done, he greased a piece of rag, and, having 'salted it over,' as he expressed it, with grains of gunpowder, he rammed it loosely into one of the barrels of Frank's muzzle-loader, and then fired it into the hollow he had prepared. After one or two tries he succeeded; the rag caught fire, and set fire to the dry wood, and it kept the boys very hard at work with their axes and a rope to cut off and separate the huge log which formed their camp-fire from the logs around it.

Whilst they were thus employed old Wharton had produced his knife and skinned part of the pony's quarters, which were still protruding from under the tree which had killed him.

'What are you at, Dick?' asked Towzer.

'Just cutting you a steak, my boy,' was the reply; 'it's a pity, though, that this pony was born so long ago.'

No one fancied his supper much that night, but, after all, the poor old Cradle was the only one of the party who did not share in it. He went supperless to bed; but all the boys confessed that Dick was not a bad cook, and that pony-steak was very good eating when you had nothing better.

It took our friends two whole days to get out of that ruined forest, and two days of such hard work that Dick, toughened by years of hardship, was the only one who had strength or courage to attempt to light a fire or cook at night. Indeed, if it had not been for Dick, I doubt if even hunger would have induced the boys to make the effort necessary to get themselves some food; and without a good meal at night none of them would have had strength to escape from that interminable tangle of twisted boughs and fallen trunks.

All this time 'the Cradle' had no food. There was nothing to give him, and, except for the rain-puddles, black and thick with charcoal, the party had no water. The men drew their belts and old Cradle's girth tighter every evening, and a more slender-looking or famished party, black and wearied and ragged, never came out of a burnt forest than the wanderers from Rosebud when on the morning of the third day they issued from among the timber and plunged into the welcome stream which made the north-west boundary of this land of desolation.

On the far side were green forests and a stretch of yellow grass, which seemed to revive all 'the Cradle's' worn-out energies. He needed no persuasion to make him plunge into the stream, no hobbles to keep him safe when he reached the further shore.

A bundle of matches, some of which had escaped the rain, had been found, so the men sat down, lit a fire, and as they baked themselves cakes upon the coals they watched with pleasure the steady, business-like way in which the old pony made up for lost time.

When they had all washed and fed they made another march of about fifteen miles, which brought them to the edge of that country in which Dick hoped to feed his cattle.

'Of course,' said he, 'we shall have to come a long way round; you couldn't drive cattle through that wilderness,' pointing back to the brûlé; 'but it is a good country, isn't it?'

And it was! A few miles from where they were camped was a range of high, rocky peaks, with little or no timber upon them. These peaks were quite bare, and one in particular rose like a great pulpit high above the rest, the centre of the highest group of peaks. Up to the foot of this little group of mountains ran Dick's range, a succession of rolling swells of grass-land, studded over with groves and bunches of the red bull pines. It was a splendid, park-like country, and many a group of deer cantered away from them as they rode through it.

'You might as well shoot us something for supper, Snap,' remarked Wharton; 'I guess you're tired like the rest, but you won't have any trouble to speak of in getting a haunch of venison in this here Bull Pine Park of mine.'

'Of ours, Dick!' corrected Towzer, grinning.

'Right you are,' replied the old man; 'but I'm not a-goin' to have any sleeping partners in our firm, so just you get up off of your back, young man, and get some bread made while I cut wood for the night-fire.'

Towzer made a grimace and rolled over on to his face with a yawn, but eventually shook himself and began to make preparations for baking.

'Snap ought to make the bread, by rights,' he grumbled, 'he is such a stunner at the use of baking-powder.'

'Had you there, Snap,' said Frank; 'the young 'un has got "a rise" out of you this time.'

'Quite fair, too,' said Dick. 'I guess Snap got a pretty considerable rise out of the boys at Rosebud with that tarnation Borwick of his.'

But Snap pretended to be out of hearing, and was soon lost among the timber.

There was a good deal to do about the camp that afternoon. All the pack wanted overhauling and cleaning. Charcoal and wood-ash took too prominent a place in the composition of everything in the Cradle's load, from tea to tobacco. The frying-pans had lost their handles, and these had to be replaced by others extemporised from a split stick; the spoons had been lost, so others had to be made from birch-bark; the soup-kettle was lying as flat as a pancake under the dead pony in the brûlé, so another had to be made, and this, too, was of birch-bark.

'How are you going to boil that, Dick, without burning a hole in the bottom?' asked Frank.

'By putting the fire inside instead of out, my lad,' replied he.

'Oh yes, old boy, I twig, and the soup outside instead of in!' cried Towzer. 'Quite simple, isn't it, Frank?'

Dick laughed. Towzer's cheek amused him.

'Here is my heating apparatus, anyway,' he said, raking some red-hot pebbles out of the ashes. 'Now you fill the bark-kettle with cold water.'

Towzer obeyed.

'Now, you see,' said Dick, suiting the action to the word, 'in go the pebbles and the water begins to sing; as soon as the first lot get dark and cool, out they come, and in goes another lot. If you pour the water over your toes by accident, you'll find it piping hot, I promise you; and when you've done doing that and can spare time to look at the bottom of the kettle, you'll find that it ain't got no hole in it.'

'Bully for you, Dick,' assented Towzer, 'your youth doesn't appear to have been as much wasted as I thought it had been.'

'Why don't you give the brat a taste of the lash-rope, Dick? it would do him a world of good.'

'I make a practice never to squash a 'skeeter as long as it only buzzes,' replied Wharton, laughing; 'when it stings, I'm theer, you bet.'

'Snap doesn't seem to be having any luck with the deer,' Frank remarked after a while.

'No,' replied the other; 'I've not heard his rifle myself, but I reckon he's got a bluff between us and him, and then, like enough, we wouldn't hear with that chatterin' young jay-bird anywheres near.'

As the sun was setting, Snap was seen coming down a long glade towards the camp.

'Don't carry his tail in the air, does he?' remarked Towzer. 'I don't believe he has got a thing.'

'He can't have been out three hours here without getting a shot, I'll lay a wager,' said Wharton.

'He's all right, I can see something hanging on his shoulders,' said Frank.

'So can I now,' added Wharton, 'but it's not venison, it's only fool-hens, I'm thinking.'

'A jolly sight better too,' remarked Towzer, smacking his lips greedily.

'What sport, Snap?' they asked as he came up.

'Well,' replied the hunter, throwing down three big blue grouse by the fire, and leaning on his rifle, 'that's the bag.'

'Wal! but you don't mean to say you didn't see any deer?' exclaimed Wharton. 'Why, man, the park is full of them. Couldn't you hit 'ein?'

Snap put his finger in the muzzle of his Winchester, and held it up unsoiled.

'Never fired a shot, Dick,' he said. 'I stoned those fool-hens coming home, and my arm regularly aches with shying at them; but I can't understand about the deer.'

'Why, how do you mean?' someone asked.

'Well, going from here towards what you call the "Lone Mountain," the wind would be right for me, wouldn't it?'

'Slap in your teeth; couldn't be better, what there is of it,' replied Dick.

'Well, and yet every deer I saw had its head up; almost every one was going at a canter; and, though, I dare say, at one time and another, I must have seen forty, I never got what I should call a fair shot. You see, we've no cartridges to waste, and I wanted to kill clean, so as to get back at once to camp.'

'Didn't see no sign of bar or painter about, did you?' asked Wharton.

'No,' replied Snap; 'I suppose that is what must have been the matter, but I saw no sign.'

Old Wharton looked grave for a minute or two, but presently, after lighting his pipe, seemed to think better of it.

'No,' he muttered, 'it can't be. This is Blackfoot territory if anything; and, besides, them Crows could never have got here by this time. If it's Blackfeet, they'll not hurt old Dick Wharton.'

'Who will take the first watch?' asked Wharton two hours later, when the last grouse-bone had been cleaned, and the old 'Cradle' hobbled for the night. 'Perhaps I had better; I smoke and you lads don't; and, besides, your young eyes are heavier than mine, I reckon,' he added good-naturedly.

The boys made no objection. Towzer, for one, never heard, having gone to sleep some minutes before with a grouse-bone in one hand and a chunk of slap-jack in the other.

'Let the young 'un sleep until he wakes,' said Wharton; 'put him to watch for an hour about midnight, and then one of you take the morning watch, and let him sleep. He's very nearly played out, and he's a game little chap,' said the grey old cowboy kindly.

It was midnight before any one of the boys opened his eyes again, to find old Wharton still watching and still smoking. Towzer had got up, wakened by the chill night-air, to re-arrange his blanket.

'Let me take a turn now, Dick,' he said; 'I've had my beauty sleep and feel as fit as a flea.'

'All right, I'll help you make up the fire,' said Dick, 'and when you have watched for a couple of hours, wake your brother. Let Snap sleep right away until dawn, if he will. He has done more than we have—stalking deer, and so on.'

In ten seconds Wharton was asleep. His tough old form seemed to settle down as easily on to the turf as if it had been a feather-bed. If there were roots or stones about, they didn't seem to incommode him in the least. 'I guess I hurt the roots' is what he once said, when Frank pointed out to him a peculiarly knotty point on which he had been sleeping.

Towzer thought he had never known a night so still. He could hear 'the Cradle' cropping the grass quite plainly.

'What an appetite you have got for a late supper!' thought he as he turned and saw the old pony hopping about in his hobbles.

By-and-by the pony gave a snort, and, looking up with a start—for, truth to tell, he had been nodding sadly—Towzer saw 'the Cradle' standing, with ears keenly cocked, staring into the gloom by the river. Gazing intently in the same direction, Towzer made out the cause of Cradle's alarm. A big grey wolf was sneaking along by the river's edge. The beast seemed to know that he was seen, for, sitting up on his haunches, he gave a low howl and then slipped back into the bushes.

'I'd better drive the pony in,' thought Towzer, and he rose to carry out his project. Just then the grey wolf cantered across the moonlit space in which the pony was feeding, the pony made a furious plunge to get away, and then it seemed to Towzer's startled eyes that the wolf rose on its hind-legs, caught 'the Cradle' by the head, stooped for a moment while something glistened in the moonlight round the pony's fetlocks, and then sprang on to its back and dashed off into the gloom, whilst a red flash came out of the darkness, and something sent the white wood-ash and red embers of the fire right and left over the sleepers.

In a moment all were on their feet. Towzer's mind seemed a blank. Surely the old German stories of were-wolves were not true in this nineteenth century! Hurriedly he told Wharton what he had seen.

'And why, in thunder, didn't you shoot when you saw him by the river?' cried Dick savagely.

'Well, I didn't think it was worth while waking you all for a wolf,' replied Towzer.

'A wolf, man! don't you know now it were an Injun?' asked Dick.

'But I heard him howl,' persisted the boy.

'And don't you suppose an Injun can howl as well as a wolf? Listen to that.'

As he spoke a long-drawn wailing howl reverberated through the gloomy pines, and from far away by the river came an answering note.

'Crows on the war-path, but not many of 'em, or they would have wiped us all out by now,' muttered Dick. 'Out with the fire, lads, pull them big logs round in a square, and get inside and lie down with your rifles, until we see if they mean to come back for our scalps.'

It was all done in a few seconds. The boys worked as men can work when they know that their lives depend on their own promptitude. Old Dick's face and Snap's were worth studying now, if only anyone had had time to study them. The old man snapped out his sentences short and sharp, had an eye for everything, and worked with the quiet, business-like promptitude of an old hand. Snap's eyes were gleaming like coals, and if the light was not playing strange tricks with his face that tightly shut mouth had more than a suspicion of a smile on it. Old Wharton noticed it, and put his hand on his arm, kindly, but firmly:'

'I knows what you're thinking, lad; but mind, I'm boss to-night. If they should come, you keep inside here and pot away until I give the word. This sort of fighting isn't like "the ring." If someone hits you once from behind a tree, the best plucked one in the world can't hit him back.'

But they did not come, and, when daylight lit up all the long glades of Bull Pine Park, Wharton gave the boys leave to get up from their impromptu fort.

'Keep your rifles in your hands, and get back the moment a shot is fired, but I reckon we are safe now until nightfall,' said he.

After a while he called to Towzer. 'This is where you saw your wolf, isn't it, young 'un?' he said.

'Yes,' replied Towzer, going towards him.

'Wal! I reckon you never saw a wolf make a track like that afore, did you?' he asked, pointing to the soft mud by the river-bank, in which, plainly visible, were the outlines of a man's hands and feet—a full impression of the former, and just the toe-marks of the latter. 'An Injun on all fours, with a wolf-skin on, that's the sort of animal that was,' remarked Dick; 'but,' he added, as he noticed Towzer's miserable expression, 'never mind, laddie, I've known deer let an Injun walk among 'em in a stag's hide and antlers, so perhaps we ought to forgive a tender-foot for being took in by the crafty devils.'

As soon as the pack which the lost 'Cradle' should have carried could be divided amongst the party, Wharton led the way to the river. Wading in knee-deep, the old man led them up stream for nearly a couple of hours. The boys had thought struggling through the brûlé bad enough, but this was a vast deal worse, and they were ready to drop from fatigue. At last they could go no longer, and implored old Wharton to choose some easier road.

'Well, I guess this will do,' said he; 'it is pretty stony here, and I don't think even our friends the Crows could pick up our trail on this stuff.'

So they landed, and stepped out as briskly as their numbed limbs would let them over a stony slope on which hardly a blade of grass grew, so hard it seemed to Frank that cart-wheels wouldn't mark it, much less mocassins.

The course which Wharton took led them towards the Lone Mountain, within a short distance of which they camped that night, making for themselves a rough fortress of boulders, and (intensely to Towzer's disgust) doing without fire and tea.

'Cold tommy after a day like this!' ejaculated he mournfully, holding up a chunk of heavy dry bread as he spoke.

'Better anyway than cold steel for supper!' said Dick, a little grimly.

CHAPTER XIX

THE GAMBLERS 'PUT UP'

'Towzer, my lad, you mustn't take it unkindly, but I think you and Frank had better watch together to-night. You see you ain't as used to camping out as Snap and me, and there's a good deal of risk to-night,' said Wharton.

'Quite right, Dick!' said Frank; 'I know we're duffers, but Rome wasn't built in a day.'

'No, no, lad, I know that, and you'll be as good as any of us by-and-by. Will you and Snap take the first watch till midnight?'

'All right; wake up, young 'un!' cried Frank.

'No fear of us both sleeping at once,' said Towzer sulkily to his brother, 'you snore so.'

After an hour or two spent in watching all the mysterious shadows which begin only to move and live in the forest after the moon comes up, Towzer noticed something which seemed to him more substantial than the shadows creeping slowly up a glade towards the camp. Towzer gripped his brother's arm and pointed silently towards it.

'A hind feeding up this way, isn't it?' whispered Frank.

'I don't know; that Indian was a wolf last night, it's likely enough he'll be a hind to-night; but, hind or Indian, I'm going to put a bullet into him as soon as he comes close enough to make certain,' answered the boy savagely, and he sank slowly on to his stomach to get a steady shot with his rifle.

Just then the thing, whatever it was, came out into the moonlight.

'Hold hard, Towzer, it's "the Cradle"; I can see his white fetlock as plain as the nose on your face.'

'Might be an Indian in his skin,' answered Towzer, only half convinced.

'No, no, I can see him quite plainly, can't you? And he is alone and unsaddled. Let's see what he'll do.'

Slowly the pony came along, smelling every now and then at the ground, and at last walked boldly into the camp, and, bending his neck, hung his wise old head over Snap's sleeping form, and rubbed his velvet muzzle against the boy's cheek.

Snap was on his legs in a minute.

'Why, old chap, where have you come from?' he cried, and the pony laid back his ears and whinnied ever so softly. It was a regular pony whisper.

Frank and Towzer came up and by this time old Wharton was sitting up too, his hand upon his rifle.

'Slipped them durned Redskins, hev you, old fellow?' laughed Dick softly. 'Well, I've known you get rid of better men than they'll ever be, before now; but bust me if I can guess how you found us out. You haven't brought Frank's rifle along, I suppose,' he added, for the shot fired the night before had been from Frank's rifle, which the Indian had somehow managed to steal from the bough from which it was hanging. Unfortunately, even 'the Cradle's' 'cuteness had not gone as far as this.

'I say, Snap,' said Wharton, coming out of a very brown study, in which he had remained for nearly five minutes, 'it's a very bright moon to-night, isn't it?'

'Never saw a brighter,' said the boy.

'That isn't the way "the Cradle" kem along, is it now?' asked Wharton, pointing down the glade.

'Yes, that's where I first saw him,' said Towzer, pointing.

'Ah!' continued Wharton. 'Now, did it ever strike you that that haze down theer wasn't altogether nat'ral, not on a night like this, anyway?' and he pointed to a thin vapour which hung about the trees some three miles away.

The boys looked in the direction indicated, and saw the vapour plainly enough.

'Well?' said Snap, and waited.

'Wal!' returned Dick, 'that's them durned Redskins. They don't think we'll dare to follow them; the pony has slipped 'em, that shows they are pretty careless, and' (with a vigorous slap on his thigh) 'if you're game I'm going the way that theer Cradle came, and am goin' to have Frank's rifle and an Injun's hair in camp right here before daylight.'

Here, in the heart of civilisation, Dick's speech, sounds bloodthirsty, and his programme of amusement for that autumn night anything but attractive. Out there, in those wild forests, the boys only remembered that grey wolf changing in the moonlight into a thieving savage; they remembered the rifle-ball that luckily scattered the ashes of their camp-fire and not their brains; they remembered the lost pony and lost rifle, and nothing more. Rising, they stood, tall, silent, young figures in the moonlight, ready to follow Dick Wharton anywhere.

'Towzer, my lad,' said Dick, 'I am going to give you the worst work of all. You must wait with "the Cradle"; and if anything happens to us, if we aren't back in six hours' time, get on the pony's back, turn his head for the river, and let him lead you. He'll take you back to Rosebud somehow, and then you bring the boys on our trail. Keep your rifle; I've got my six-shooter, and you'll, may be, want it. Good-bye, lad, there's not much fear, but we'll see you again soon.'

There was a lump in Towzer's throat. It was hard to be the youngest and miss all the fun; to be left alone, and have perhaps that terrible ride home; but he could not help feeling that Dick was right, for all that. Either of the others was twice the man that he was for fighting, and then, too, if it came to a long ride, he was three stone lighter even than Snap, and Frank was heavier than either. So he shook hands as heartily as he could, and stood watching his brother and his friend glide noiselessly down the glade after old Wharton.

What fine fellows they looked, to be sure! Snap was a perfectly built athlete, if there ever was one—tall and wiry, with not an ounce of spare flesh anywhere. Frank was the biggest of the three, a huge bull-necked Englishman, a man who could have killed even Snap as a terrier kills a rat if he got him in a railway-carriage or a corner, but no match for his active friend in the open. As for Dick, he was tough and old, 'old, with the might and breath of twenty boys.'

In a few minutes they had all mingled with the shadows, and Towzer and 'the Cradle,' alone, stood craning their necks after them in vain.

But we have the fairy cap, and, my boys, with your leave, will follow those three silent forms. Old Wharton had a true woodman's instinct for direction, and, having once ascertained for what point he wanted to steer, he kept his course truly and with no apparent effort. Now and again he bent down as he crossed 'the Cradle's' tracks, but he did not depend upon them for guidance. At last he paused, and, beckoning the boys to his side, whispered:

'Their camp is close to here. I'll creep on and have a look at it first, and come back to you when I've seen how the land lies.'

The two young Englishmen crouched down and waited. By some instinct, when the old fellow had slid away like a snake in the grass, Snap held out his hand silently to Frank, who gripped it hard in silence. It was an Englishman's oath. They had silently sworn to do or die.

It seemed hours before anything more happened, but at last a part seemed to detach itself from one of the pine-trees at which Frank was looking, and came gliding into the moon-lit space. It was old Wharton returning.

'They're all right,' he whispered; 'couldn't be better!'

'What, are they all asleep?' asked Snap.

'Better nor that, pard,' the old frontiersman chuckled; 'they're gambling for all they're worth; come along!' and, signing to them to follow, he glided away again from tree to tree, until at last the boys could see the red gleams of a camp-fire on the pines in front of them.

Another half-dozen yards and the whole scene was presented to their eyes. In a little hollow of grass burned the camp-fire, and in its light sat half a dozen Redskins in a group, three facing the other three. They were all squatting on their hams when Snap caught sight of them, and all chanting a kind of song which sounded like a witch's incantation more than like a decent expression of merriment, such as a song should be. The fire lit up their ugly faces, painted with bars of vermilion and black; gleamed on their long, snaky tresses, and glittered in their bead-like black eyes. Much to old Wharton's delight, too, it flickered back from a pile of rifles stacked under a pine a good twenty paces from the group of gamblers.

As the boys reached their point of view Buck Rabbit seemed the chief actor in the game. He had his back to them, but there was no fear of mistaking even his back, with its high, broad shoulders, heavy with knots and lumps of muscle, and that great bullet-shaped head, which seemed set right between them, with nothing but one great wrinkle of fat to show where the neck should be. His hands as they looked at him were the only moving things in the firelight, and they flitted and flashed backwards and forwards until you grew dizzy as you watched them, the old droning song rising and falling with the pace of the hands. The three men facing him had their eyes fastened on Buck Rabbit's hands all the while with an intensity which reminded the spectators of a cat watching a mouse or a snake trying to fascinate a bird. Suddenly, quick as a snake's stroke, one of the Indians opposite to Buck Rabbit shot out his arm and laid a long dark finger upon one of the chiefs hands. For a moment the song dropped. As his hand was touched Buck Rabbit stretched it out across the firelight, palm uppermost and empty! One of the three opposite to him without a word stooped down, and, taking one from a bundle of short sticks beside him, threw it across to Buck Rabbit's party, when the song again rose and the hands again dashed backwards and forwards in the firelight.

'I wonder, now, what that stick were worth? A blanket or a beaver-skin, you bet,' whispered Dick; 'or, may be, it's scalps they're playing for!'

'I don't understand the game,' answered Frank in the same low murmur.

'Oh, it's simple enough. That handsome old friend of ours has got a piece of bone in one of his hands. They've got to tell him in which hand it is. If they are right, he pays. If not, they do,' replied Dick. 'They'd go on at that game until this time to-morrow if we let them,' he added; 'but I guess we'll rise the winners this journey.'

'Now,' he whispered after a pause, 'you just be here and cover those Crows with your Winchesters. You, Snap, draw a bead on a spot about halfway between Buck Rabbit's shoulders, and you, Frank, cover that old villain with a little tuft of hair on his chin and only one eye. That's Teeveevex, the medicine-man, and the biggest scoundrel in the whole lot. If one moves before you hear me speak, fire and keep shooting as long as an Indian is left to shoot at.'

This last sentence the old man hissed out with an energy which impressed his hearers, and before it was well finished he had gone again. The boys could hear their hearts beat, and the only wonder to them was that the Indians could not hear them too, so loudly they seemed to thump against their ribs.

This time, it seemed, Teeveevex had been too many for old Buck Rabbit. His long, skinny claws clutched the chief's wrist like a vice, and when his palm was turned up the little ivory disc gleamed in it. All the shiny, evil-looking heads were bent together, when a voice rang out clear and hard in the stillness, 'Hands up! the man who moves dies!'

The boys were as much startled as the Redskins. Looking up they saw the Indians sullenly and in silence lift their hands above their heads, red statues of wrath glaring fiercely but helplessly at a tall, rigid figure in the moonlight, standing between them and their rifles, its right arm raised, its vigilant eyes noting their every breath, and in its ready right hand a revolver, on which the moonlight rested cold and chill. That little weapon held the lives of six men. If one dared to move, that one died before he could draw another breath. They knew that. At ten yards old Dick Wharton could not miss. How they must have cursed the madness which had riveted their eyes on that glancing bone whilst this avenger stole between them and their weapons! If all rose and dashed at him he would not have time to kill more than one or two, but then he who led that movement must die, and, even so, would the others back him up? It was a hard question. No one was ready to make that first move and pay the price, and so, as men always do when 'put up' by a resolute man who 'has the drop upon them,' they sat still.

'Boys,' said the voice again, 'you can git up now and take these here rifles from behind me. Look sharp.'

Frank and Snap needed no second bidding, though they felt the six men's eyes following their movements. Their eyes were all they dared to move, for they knew that even while he issued his orders Dick Wharton's eyes never left them for a moment; like the muzzle of his revolver, they rested on them unceasingly.

'There's a Redskin tied up to a tree and gagged behind them rifles,' the voice continued; 'cut his thongs and set him free; give him a rifle and see as it's loaded; pick a rifle for me and see as that's loaded; take all the cartridges as you can get your claws on, and then smash up them other rifles against the handiest bull-pine. Do you mind me?'

'All right, Dick,' answered Snap, his knife already hacking at the leather thongs which bound the captive Indian, a fine-looking fellow, whose eyes glistened, but whose tongue said nothing even when Snap took away the gag.

He stretched his arms stiffly, and bent the joints of both legs and arms backwards and forwards once or twice as if uncertain whether or not he had lost the use of them, and when first set free he almost fell from weakness or stiffness—and no wonder, for his bonds had cut deep into his flesh and were dark with his blood.

Crash! crash! went the butts of the good rifles against the bull-pine. It seemed a sad waste, but they were Dick's orders and he was in command.

'Are you through there?' cried the voice again.

'Yes,' cried Frank.

'All the rifles broke, mine loaded, the Indian free and armed, and the cartridges pouched?' he inquired again.

'Yes, Dick,' they replied.

'Very well; now keep your rifles ready if they try to rush me,' said Wharton, and then added, to the figures by the fire:

'Now, gentlemen, I'll not detain you any longer; you can skip;' and, dropping his revolver, he turned on his heel and joined the boys. As he did so a report rang out, and then another. The next moment Dick Wharton had wrenched the smoking rifle from the hands of the Indian whom Snap had released; but it was too late, one of the gamblers had a bullet through his skull, and the great hare-lipped chief himself reeled for a moment as the second bullet cut through the muscles of his arm. With a curse, however, he recovered himself, and, dripping with blood, followed his comrades into the forest.

'Why does my brother spare these dogs?' cried the Blackfoot; 'we should have taken six scalps to-night, and my brother has but one.'

'We don't set much store by scalps, exceptin' our own, Warwolf,' replied the cowboy; 'and whites don't care about shootin' men without arms in their hands.'

It took all Dick Wharton's eloquence, however, and tried Warwolf's gratitude for his deliverance to the uttermost, before he could be persuaded not to pursue the five unhappy Crows that night. It was a clear waste of the good gifts of Providence, he thought, and, though Dick Wharton might be a good fellow and a mighty warrior for a whiteskin, he could not help feeling that he was something quite out of the common as a fool. He followed his old friend Wharton back to camp, however, and there dressed his wounds, and gave his deliverers some account of what had been happening lately in Bull Pine Park and its neighbourhood.

Needless to say that for a night or so, at any rate, the three boys and the old foreman, with Warwolf for an ally, had no fear of attack from the disarmed Crows. Still they kept a good look-out, from habit.

CHAPTER XX

LONE MOUNTAIN

When night closed in round the little camp in the forest, Warwolf lit the pipe of peace, and after gravely puffing away in silence for a few minutes began to tell his story.

'It was when this moon was young, my brother, when it was no more than a thin silver boat sailing through the dark night, that Hilcomax, the medicine-man of the Blackfeet, warned the chiefs in council of great events about to happen. Hilcomax the healer had been away from the camp of his tribe for many suns, collecting herbs and preparing great medicine against Okeeheedee, the evil one, when one morning he saw the sky darkened by great wings, and, looking up, he saw the destroyer pass over him far, far up among the shuddering clouds of heaven. Slowly the great wings came down until their shadow darkened the forest, and Hilcomax saw them glide towards the burial-grounds of our fathers on the Lone Mountain.

'In the darkness of night Hilcomax crept back towards the home of his people, and warned the chiefs in council of what he had seen.'

Here Warwolf paused for a moment or two, blowing out a great cloud of blue smoke from his pipe, and watching it thoughtfully as it melted away in the night air.

'Youth, my brothers,' he continued, 'is light as that smoke, and every wind carries it away. I would not listen to the medicine-man's warnings, but came to the foot of the "Lone Mountain," trapping. For my folly the Crows caught me—the white-hearted, hare-lipped chief of the Crows—and would have taken me to his squaws to torture, had not my brothers rescued me. He, too, has seen the bird which hovers over the graves of the Blackfeet, and his woman's heart froze at the sight.'

'And has the chief seen this bird himself?' asked Dick Wharton.

'Warwolf has seen it,' he replied.

'And that is about all he means to tell you,' muttered Snap aside, and Snap was right.

In spite of all Wharton's ingenious pumping the Indian would tell no more, except that the Lone Mountain was accursed, that the white spirits of dead chiefs were wandering about it, bewailing the trouble that was to come, and that far up above the graveyards of the Indians brooded this great white bird. As to what the bird was like, though he had seen it, he would say nothing. Indians are always very loth to discuss what they call medicine, i.e. magic and things relating thereto, and this bird was the spirit of evil incarnate.

'All gammon, I suppose, Dick?' asked Frank later on.

'Well, no, not altogether,' replied he; 'of course I can't explain what he is driving at, but you may bet there is some truth at the bottom of his story—a trick, most likely, of his own rascally medicine-man; but, whatever it is, neither Crows nor Blackfeet will be about here as much as usual for some time, and that's bully for us.'

The next three days were spent in looking for the most suitable spot on which to erect the hut in which to pass the winter, and in hunting and drying the flesh of the beasts they killed. Warwolf remained with them, lending a hand and giving advice, whilst his strength gradually returned, and the deep cuts made by the thongs of the Crows healed over and disappeared.

On the fourth day all were busy in camp, preparing the winter quarters, except Frank, who had been sent out to get fresh meat, and, being a poor and inexperienced hand at stalking, had apparently been led far from home before getting his shot. Towards evening, however, the crack of his rifle was heard again and again.

'By Jove!' cried Towzer, 'Major has got amongst them now, at any rate.'

'Yes,' remarked Wharton; 'I wish as he'd remember that we haven't got a cartridge factory handy, though.'

'By George! how he is wasting them!' added Snap as report after report rang out in the distance.

All this time Warwolf stood still as a stone, listening.

'My brothers had better be ready,' he now said; 'Frank fired once half an hour ago. Warwolf heard him. Those last shots were not fired by the white hunter.'

'Who fired them then?' cried Towzer.

'The Crows,' replied the chief.

'The Crows! then——' and the boy stopped and his face fell.

'Come, Dick,' said Snap, catching up his rifle. 'Warwolf is right, but we may save him yet, and if not——'

'No,' interrupted Warwolf, 'the white warriors will wait here. Warwolf will go and find out what has happened. The white hunter lives still. If the Crows had got a fair shot at him they would have fired once and my brother would have died. If he had been surrounded he would have fought, his rifle would have answered theirs, and we should have heard it. But he escaped as soon as the Crows discovered him; those shots were fired when our brother dashed into the forest. I go to meet him.' And so the Indian glided away and was gone.

'Best leave him have his own way,' said Wharton, 'he knows more than we do, and he'll give his own hair to save Frank's.'

The two boys could not deny the justice of what old Wharton said, but the waiting for news was weary work for all that, and even Wharton was making preparations to start on a search for his two comrades, when they came back to camp, Frank pale and bleeding, leaning heavily on Warwolf, whose hunting-shirt was soaked with the boy's blood.

'Stand back, and don't worry him with questions,' commanded old Dick; 'and you, young 'un, if you want to help your brother, pile them rugs up for us to bed him down on. What is it, Warwolf?' he added as he lowered the boy, half fainting from loss of blood, on to the skins.

'The white hunter shot a buck near a camp of Crows. An Indian would have seen their camp-fire before he saw the buck, but the white man had only eyes for the buck. The Crows heard the shot, and their braves stole round the hunter. Had he not been fleeter than the pronghorn on the prairie, they would have scalped him before dusk. As it is, he has only got a bullet through his arm. To-morrow he will be rested and well;' and, so saying, the chief went on preparing some herbs and simple remedies which he had drawn from a sack of beaver-skin which he carried about him.

'Are there many of the Crows in camp?' asked Dick.

'A large party on the war-path,' replied Warwolf, bandaging up Frank's arm in a kind of herb-poultice.

'What does my brother advise?' asked Dick.

'If the young hunter was strong enough to travel,' replied the Indian, 'we might escape to-night and perhaps reach my tribe before the accursed Crows overtook us. As it is, we must wait and fight here. We shall kill many of them.'

'But,' said Snap, 'we cannot possibly beat off so large a party. It will cost every one of us our lives.'

'It will,' replied the Indian grimly; 'but it will cost the Crows more.'

'Oh, hang the Crows,' cried Dick, 'I don't think much of your plan, chief, though I confess I can think of nothing better.'

'I can though, Dick,' said Snap.

'Out with it then, my boy.'

'Well, didn't Warwolf say that it was only six or seven miles from here to the Lone Mountain?'

'That's so,' replied Wharton.

'And,' continued Snap, 'since this terrible bird has settled there, no Indian will put foot on the mountain.'

'You've got it, Snap,' cried Dick enthusiastically, 'that's our chance, we can carry Frank that far.'

Warwolf's face had been a study while the boy spoke, and now he broke in with vehement endeavours to dissuade the whites from their rash undertaking.

'No! no! Warwolf,' replied Wharton, 'you may believe in your great bird if you like, but I guess the only birds as trouble me just now are them tarnation Crows.'

'My brothers must please themselves,' replied the chief; 'Warwolf will die with them, if they wish, here at the hands of the Crows, but to enter the Lone Mountain now is madness. If my brothers will, they must go alone.'

'Right you are, chief; this much you shall do for us,' said Snap: 'help us to take Frank on my pony to the foot of the mountain, then do you take the pony and escape to your own tribe and bring them with you to save us.'

'To avenge you?' said the Indian.

'Very well, to avenge us,' assented Snap, and so it was settled.

Frank was put on the Cradle's back, and in silence, with rifles at the ready, they broke up their camp and crept through the forest towards the haunted mountain.

The dawn was coming when the chief left them, his fine, fierce face clouded with a sorrow which even his stoicism could not conceal. He looked on his friends as going to their doom. He tried once more to persuade them either to stop and fight the Crows in some extemporised fort in the forest, or to trust to the Crows not catching them before they could reach the Blackfoot village.

'It's no good, Warwolf,' said Dick, 'with a party as big as ours they would catch us before to-morrow midday. You and the Cradle may get off if you are clever, and they won't follow us up there,' pointing to the peak, now showing in places through the morning mists above the great pines.

Without a word the Indian turned and left them, backing the pony carefully over the old trail; he had already risked more than a thousand Crows in coming so near to the accursed spot, and he would not wait to hear the air full of the rushing of wings and see Okeeheedee stoop from his mountain crag and destroy the white men.

Frank's strength was coming back a little by this time, so that with Snap and Dick to help him he was able to walk with the rest.

As the sun rose the little party emerged from the forest on to a small prairie, from the further side of which rose the abrupt black mass of the Lone Mountain, an isolated spur of the chain which separated the land of the Crows from the hunting-grounds of the Blackfeet. Round the foot of the great rock wound a rapid stream, which had risen somewhere in the mountains beyond it, and perhaps a thousand feet above the stream was a broad, grassy terrace covered with tents, banners, and what looked in the faint light of dawn like the figures of men.

'Sink down!' cried Snap as he caught sight of this encampment. 'The Crows are there before us.'

'No, they aren't,' replied Dick; 'them's Blackfeet there.'

'Then we're safe, aren't we?' asked Frank with a sigh of relief.

'Not yet, my hearty,' replied Dick cheerily, 'but we soon shall be. Them's dead Blackfeet up there, and I guess they'll skeer the Crows more nor live 'uns.'

'Dead Blackfeet!' ejaculated Towzer.

'Yes, young 'un, just a graveyard, that's all!' replied Wharton.

As they drew near, the boys saw that he was right. The figures were monuments of wood, carved like men sometimes, at others like quaintly devised demons. The pennons floated from what were but dead men's headstones, and in the white tents with open doorways lay chieftains sleeping the last long sleep and waiting 'till the flush of morning, the morning of another world, should break along their battlefield.'

Suddenly an exclamation from Towzer drew all eyes to a point a few hundred feet above this camp of the dead. The boy's eyes were wide open, and his jaw dropped in horror. His flesh crept as he looked.

Above the graveyard the rock rose sheer and steep, a wall of rock like the side of a house, and yet as the boys looked in the misty light they saw one after another a long train of white figures slowly passing across it. One by one they paced along, sedate and slow, their snowy whiteness coming out in strong contrast to the gloom of their surroundings.

'What is it?' asked Snap in an awed under-tone.

'Bust me if I knows,' said Dick with savage earnestness, 'but, ghosts or no, I am a-goin' to hide up there. I guess ghosts don't hurt as much as Crows, anyway.'

Meanwhile Snap had brought his glass to bear on the rock.

'All right, Dick,' he laughed, 'you were pretty near. If they aren't ghosts they are goats, which sounds something like it, though I never heard of goats like 'em before.'

'Rocky Mountain goats! are they, by thunder?' ejaculated Wharton; 'wal, I've often heerd tell of 'em, but never seed any till to-day. You're sure they are goats, Snap?'

'Yes, quite sure; but look for yourself,' and he handed the glasses to Wharton.

'Well, they're rum-looking critters,' remarked Dick after a long stare at the white procession now disappearing over a shoulder of the rock; 'they're goats right enough, though they do look more like little buffalo-bulls with that hump on their shoulders. But, all the same, they're Warwolf's ghosts as well,' he added with a laugh.

After tramping round the foot of the mountain for a while, Towzer, who was ahead of the rest, called out, 'And there's Warwolf's bird, by Jupiter! our old friend the balloon!'

Even Frank managed to 'boil up' a trot when they heard this, to find Towzer staring up to the highest peak, six or seven thousand feet above where they then stood, over the very topmost stone of which a great balloon seemed to hover.

No wonder that that great mass of white silk, rising and falling as if all a-tremble with life, now darting out a few yards from its eyrie, now settling slowly back again, had filled the simple Indians with fear and awe. Even to the whites, who understood it, it was a marvel. What was it doing there? Who brought it, and why did he anchor his sky-ship in such a harbour? Where, too, was he, its master mariner?

These, and a dozen questions such as these, passed through their minds as they gazed. Reading his companions' unspoken thoughts and answering them, Snap said at last:

'I reckon we had better go and see.'

'Yes!' said Dick, 'we should be pretty snug up there alongside Okeeheedee as they call this bird of theirs; but it is a mighty stiff climb, and I don't know how we shall get ourselves up, let alone Frank here.'

'Leave me here, Dick,' said Frank; 'the Crows won't dare to come as near the peak as this, and in a day or two I shall be strong enough to come to you, if they are not sick of waiting for us by that time.'

'We'll see you sugared first, old fellow, and then we won't,' replied Towzer. 'Come along out of that,' and, taking one arm, whilst Snap took the other, he helped his brother along until they reached the level of the graveyard.

Here the road grew worse, and it soon became a question of rock-climbing, pure and simple. Then it was that the forethought which becomes habitual with the North-western hunter showed itself. From his waist Old Dick unwound a long lariat, and at the first seemingly impossible place got the party out of their difficulties easily enough by throwing the loop over a projecting point a great many feet above them and climbing up by the ladder thus extemporised to the little point itself. The boys followed him one after another, and then Snap and Dick, having instructed Frank to make the rope fast under his arms, hauled him up alongside of them. From here, by using the dizzy little gallery along which the wild goats had gone, the party managed to get to that shoulder over which they had seen the goats disappear.

By this time the balloon was comparatively close to them. They could see its car, and that it was anchored by a rope to the rocks over which it hung. They could have seen a man, had one been there, but they saw none. Hoping that if they could attract his attention he would show them the road to his eyrie, the boys whistled again and again. But no answer came, except the echo of their own whistles and the shrill scream of a hawk which they had disturbed from its look-out.

'Deuced odd!' said Snap.

'Asleep or dead, I should think,' said Frank, and the croak of a great raven sailing by below them, so close that they could see its bright yellow eye looking at them, seemed to echo 'Dead! dead!'

'Not a cheerful locality, even for a graveyard,' muttered Snap as the sun was hidden for a second behind the cliffs; 'however, for'ard on!'