Chapter XVII: In the Brûlê

That was a very beautiful camp and a merry night, that last night with the cowboys from Rosebud. The fire they had made was what they called a nor'-wester. Timber was plentiful--to be had, indeed, for the felling--and the men left in camp had found it better fun to swing an axe than to do nothing. So whole trees lay across the fire, and huge tongues of flame kept leaping out and shooting into the darkness. Every now and then a log broke, and the ends fell in with a crash, the flames roared more fiercely than ever, and a shower of red sparks went away on the wind.

The men left in camp, being in a luxurious mood and having lots of time on their hands, had run up a shelter of boughs--two great props and a crosspiece, with a lot of underbrush sloping from this ridge-pole to the ground. Under this, with their feet to the fire, lay the men smoking.

'Wal, Dick,' said the Judge, 'I reckon I don't owe you no grudge. You've been a good pal to us, and I hope, mate, you'll strike it rich where you're a-goin'.'

'Them's my sentiments to a dot,' said Texan, 'and if those boys of yourn don't get their har raised by grizzly or Injun before they're six months older, I shouldn't be much surprised if you made cowboys of them.'

'Thank you, Texan, old chap,' laughed Snap. 'If you don't do any more mining amongst those gopher-holes before I come back, I'll bet you my best saddle that the Cradle and I lick your head off at any distance you like on old "Springheels."

The laugh, for a moment, went against Texan, for in the round-up just over it was commonly stated as a fact that, whilst riding at full pace down a hill after cattle, his pony had put its foot in one gopher-hole and shot its owner into another, from which, five minutes later, he was extracted by a comrade, who said that he had found Texan 'growing anyhow, just planted root up'ards in a gopher-hole!'

'There's one thing agin you, Dick, and that's the weather,' remarked the Judge; 'for all it's so fine now, I don't half like that fringe round the moon.'

'No, it does look watery, doesn't it?' said old Dick, looking up; 'but, hang it all, don't let us croak. Hand me another of those fish, Snap, if you can spare one. Bust me! if you don't eat half-pound trout as if they was shrimps,' he added.

'There's summat I'm thinking,' said Texan after a pause, 'that's worse nor weather. I don't want to croak, Dick, but air you sure about them Injuns? I kem acrost their fishing-camp to-day, and there isn't a soul in it. Do you calculate as they're on the war-path?'

'Not they!' replied Dick; 'a Crow won't face a Blackfoot nowadays, and, unless they're stealing horses or killing cattle, they aren't doing any harm, you bet.'

'How!'

It was a sound between a human voice and a dog's bark, sharp, hoarse, and guttural, and it appeared to proceed from the ground under Snap's seat. Snap was round as if a wasp had stung him. There had been no sound behind the camp-fire; no dry twig had cracked, no leaf rustled; and yet there was this sudden 'How!' and behind Snap stood, stiff and silent, a tall, grim-looking Redskin.

A sort of pointed hat of rush was on his head, through the band of which an eagle's plume had been stuck; round his shoulders was a bright-coloured blanket, and wide trousers of deer-skin, with long fringes of the same down the seams, reached to his ankles.

'Not a beauty,' Snap thought, and he moved a little uneasily away from the stranger, who stood quietly staring at the group.

The Indian was certainly not a beauty, even for an Indian. His hair was sleek and black--'snaky' Towzer called it. His eyes were small and set close together in a big bull-like head, and he was hare-lipped. His face, too, was full of lines and wrinkles. He was as old as the hills apparently, but old as the oaks grow old--strong and rugged, and nowhere near being worn out.

'How!' said Dick, and he rose and gave the chief his hand, and offered him a seat on his blanket, which he took.

'Do you speak English?' asked Snap as the Indian sat beside him, but the only answer he got was a stony stare.

'I guess he does, for all that,' whispered Texan; 'these beggars never let on how much they know. Say, Dick, you talk their lingo; ask him where he comes from.'

So adjured, old Dick Wharton supplied his guest with fish, bread, and tea, all of which he took without a word, and then Dick began to question him.

The Indians had broken up their fishing-camp, the Redskin said; their medicine-man had advised them to. Oh, yes, it was a good season, and there were lots of fish there yet, but the medicine-man had seen a bird, and the tribe could not stay any longer.

'Seen a bird!' cried old Wharton; 'well, I reckon he sees a good many birds in a day; but what kind of a bird was this to frighten the whole tribe from fishing and gambling?'

'The tribe was not frightened, O white-skin,' replied the Indian with dignity; 'but they knew that the bird which Teeveevex saw was the bird of doom, which preys on the tribes of men, and the Crows have hidden until the danger is passed.'

'But what sort of a bird is the bird of doom?' persisted Wharton.

'Only Teeveevex has seen it,' replied the chief, 'but its white wings are as the clouds which contain the rain-storms, and it rushes through the sky like a star falling from its throne.'

'Bunkum!' muttered Texan, and, low as he muttered it, a spark seemed suddenly to kindle and as suddenly to die out in the watchful eye of the savage. 'I'll bet the Blackfeet are going to have a lively time of it, unless they're going to do a bit of horse-stealing at Rosebud.'

'What is the name by which the braves call you?' asked Wharton.

'The men call me the Great White Rabbit,' replied the chief proudly.

'Not a bad name either for a hare-lipped one,' muttered Frank.

The Indian could not have understood what was meant, but he saw the smile, and gave Frank one of his ugly looks.

That sturdy young Englishman stared coolly at him, remarking to Snap, 'It's an engaging young thing when it's pleased, isn't it, Snap? And, oh Lord, what a mouth for a fish dinner!' he added as the savage filled up the vacuum between his jaws with about half a pound of trout.

'Ask him how old he is,' said Snap, and Wharton repeated the question.

The chief thought for a moment, and then held up five fingers solemnly.

'Oh, you be hanged!' cried Towzer. 'Why, the beggar's laughing at us. A nice, tender, five-year-old you are, aren't you, my beauty?' And the boys laughed in concert.

'He is right enough, though,' said Wharton; 'with these chaps each finger stands for ten, and I don't suppose that he is more than fifty.'

After eating everything which the whites had left, and begging for a charge or two of powder, the cowboys' visitor got up and left without a word either of thanks or adieu.

'Well,' said Towzer, 'that twopence which I presume our friend's mamma, Mrs. Doe Rabbit, spent on her son's manners doesn't appear to have been a good investment.'

'Lord bless you, you don't expect thanks from an Injun, do you?' remarked Wharton; 'like enough that chap will put a ball in you if he gets a chance, and I should be very much surprised if either of your grizzlies has its hide on to-morrow. If it has, old Buck Rabbit, or whatever he calls himself, won't be to blame, you bet!'

And sure enough, when Snap and Texan went up next morn (rather late, it is true), both bear-skins had gone, and the place, so Texan said, 'stunk of Injuns.'

When Snap and Texan got back without their bear-skins old Wharton had the ponies packed, and 'the Judge' had made all preparations for a start.

'So Buck Rabbit got those skins, did he?' asked Wharton. 'Well, I'll forgive him, whatever Snap says, if that's all the hair he raises this fall.'

'Yes, you may say that,' Texan added grimly. 'I've been here some while now, but I never knowed those Crows give up their summer gamble, and bust me if I think they'll feel inclined to lie idle now that they have been skeered out of their fishing-camp.'

'That being so,' said Dick, 'it seems to me you mout as well lead them off our trail a bit. Don't let them sight you between this and Rosebud, and maybe, if Buck Rabbit didn't count the horses, he'll think, when he sees the trail of all them ponies, that we've all gone back to Rosebud.'

'And how about Rosebud, Dick?' asked Texan.

'Oh, I reckon Rosebud can look after itself, leastways it could when I was theer,' replied the old foreman; and Texan and the Judge nodded approvingly, and murmured with emphasis 'You bet!'

'Then you'll be back in spring for the cows?' asked Texan.

'Well, we'll do our possible,' replied Wharton, busy with the Cradle's lash-rope; 'if we don't turn up you'll understand that we're wiped out, and "the boys" can divide my band amongst 'em.'

'The boys won't none of 'em hanker after their share of that band, Dick,' replied Texan, shaking the old man's hand. 'Good luck to you!'

'So long!' cried the Judge. 'Keep your eyes skinned at night, pard!'

And with the bell of the leading pack-animal tinkling merrily the two boys, and all the ponies save the Cradle and another, disappeared among the trees on the back track.

Dick and the boys stood looking along the trail for some time after their friends were out of sight. Now and again they could hear the bell or a cry from Texan or the Judge to one of the self-willed ponies, but by degrees they passed out of earshot as out of sight.

'I guess we'd better tramp,' said Dick, turning to the three young Englishmen, over whom a certain sense of loneliness had been stealing.

For the first time they realised what this adventure meant. They saw now that for the next four months at any rate they were entirely dependent upon their own efforts for all the necessaries of life. They were only four men, armed and strong, it is true, isolated among the great things of Nature--mountains and forests, and by-and-by ice and snow and tempest--and cut off from railways and the civilised world, and bound to die if they could not find food and make shelter for themselves. Old Dick, used all his life to depend on his own right hand for everything he wanted, probably only felt a bit of a wrench at parting from his old comrades and saying good-bye to his old position of foreman.

The boys felt a good deal more than that. Those two rough-riders, driving their string of pack ponies before them, were to them the world, or at any rate their last glimpse of it.

'You had better lead "the Cradle," Snap,' cried Wharton, 'but I reckon we'll all have to swim at the ford. Your friends can swim, I suppose?'

'Like fish, Dick,' replied Frank for himself and brother.

'Come on, then,' said the old man, and with a long, swinging stride the four started on their hundred-mile walk.

All four were in mocassins, flannel shirts, and pants of blue jean. On their heads they wore the usual cowboy hat, a wide light-coloured sombrero. Snap carried his rifle, as the best shot of the party, but the others had tied their rifles with their coats and blankets on the pack-animals' backs.

The river when they reached it was not as full as Wharton had expected, still for a few paces in the middle horses and men had to swim.

As they stood shaking themselves on the further bank, Towzer looked ruefully at his own draggled appearance and remarked:

'I believe I've got my stockings wet! Don't you think, Frank, mother would like us to change them?'

There was a laugh among the boys, and then as they tramped through the grimy, burnt forest, with its charred stumps and black, leafless branches, their thoughts went back to Fairbury.

The thought acted on the different natures differently. Towzer felt inclined to sit down and cry, and, as that would not do at any price, he began to whistle an old nigger-minstrel melody. A hard, dogged expression came into Frank's face. He would rather have been squire of Fairbury, but he meant to do his duty here all the same. And Snap! well, Snap's eyes lit up, and his head was very high in the air. He didn't know that he was leading a pack pony, and that old Wharton was wondering why the boy's eyes looked so bright and moist. Snap didn't see the grey old forest, or think of the years of daily labour, but he saw a bright picture with two sides to it: on the one a wide stretch of country dotted everywhere with cattle which bore his brand, and on the other the steps of the old hall at Fairbury, and the Winthrops, dear old Admiral Chris, and the little mother; Fairbury had been bought back, and that sweet, grey-haired woman had her hand in his, and was saying, 'I trusted you, Snap, all along; I knew my brown boy would go straight.'

Well, it was a dream, and Snap an optimist and a bit of a poet, and perhaps in nine cases out of ten such dreams only lead to disappointment; but if you are prepared to meet with disappointment, a beautiful dream is no bad thing to beguile a long march.

The country through which the boys were now travelling was as desolate and uncanny as anything which the world can show. They were crossing a belt of forest between the forks of a great stream, one arm of which they crossed in the morning. Between the two streams a great fire had raged some years ago, and range after range of rolling hills lay before them covered with tall trees charred to a cinder, yet standing upright still--grey, unburied skeletons of the past. In some places a tree which had once been nearly two hundred feet in height still reared a great grey spire towards heaven, and yet a few yards from the ground you could see that fire and weather between them had eaten the trunk almost through, so that its balance alone seemed to keep it upright. All through the brûlé, as this burnt forest is called, the trails are blocked by fallen timber. At every breeze a score of them come crashing down, and hardly a minute goes by without a snap like a rifle-shot to remind you that it is merely by an interposition of Providence that each of the great pines along your path has not fallen upon you as you passed. The difficulty of getting pack animals through a forest of this kind is considerable, although they will jump and crawl like cats; and the walking is weary work even for the strongest man, where at one moment you have to balance along the stem of a fallen pine, or climb over a log ten feet high, and the next have your pants caught by the point of a sharp rampike which tears them to shreds and perhaps takes a foot or two of skin with it.

'I am afraid Texan was right,' said Dick as they plodded along, while the sun was setting slowly in the west, 'those clouds are coming up uncommon fast, and it's main dark for three o'clock.'

Winthrop was leading 'the Cradle,' and Towzer was walking alongside of him, and when Dick spoke he spoke to Snap, who had fallen a bit behind.

'Don't you agree, Snap?' he said after a pause, and as no answer came he looked round.

'Hulloh! Why, where in thunder have you got to?' he cried. 'Here! hold on there in front. Where's Snap?'

The boys pulled up and looked round. Not five minutes before they had seen him; now, though they could see plainly amongst the grey, bare poles, there was no sign of him.

'Snap! hi, Snap!' they cried; and faint and far away an echo seemed to say 'halloa.'

'Was that an answer?' said Dick; 'here, dang your skin, hold up there,' he added, giving 'the Cradle' an angry dig in the ribs, to induce that animal to stop pawing the ground and snorting.

'Now shout agin, Frank, and mebbe this brute will let us hear if he answers.'

'Snap! halloa, halloa there, Snap!' cried Frank, and again from far away came an answering halloa, very feeble and faint, but still recognisable as Snap's voice.

'Why, he's underground,' said Towzer.

'Yes, I reckon he is,' said Dick; 'I hope he ain't much hurt.'

'Why, do you know where he is?' asked both boys.

'Not exactly, but if you'll give me thet lash-rope we'll, maybe, find him pretty soon. It's lucky we missed him so soon,' he added.

Turning back, the old man walked along the trail, calling Snap by name from time to time, the answer getting plainer as he advanced, but still proceeding apparently from somewhere under their feet.

'Here he is,' remarked Wharton at last, 'and a pretty dark hole it is, too. Are you hurt any, Snap?' he inquired, leaning over a log and looking down on the other side.

'No, I'm all right,' said the voice, 'but I can't get out.'

'Lay hold of that,' replied Wharton, lowering the rope, 'and we'll pretty soon haul you out.'

When the Winthrops came up this was what met their gaze. The whole floor of the forest was composed of fallen trees and dead logs, in most cases overgrown with moss and bushes, which in their turn had been burnt or scorched. For centuries the trees had grown and fallen, rotted or refused to rot, and over them the fresh forest had grown, until in many cases they formed a solid soil of rotted wood and debris. Here and there, however, where a few great trees had fallen and had not yet rotted, a thin crust, as it were, of boughs and soil and debris had formed above, and through such a crust as this Snap had tumbled into what Towzer called the basement of the forest, a dark, damp, underground hollow, in which in places you could travel upright for thirty or forty yards under a bridge of fallen timber. Out of a place of this kind Snap was hauled, very black and grimy, and as hoarse as a crow with shouting, but otherwise unhurt.

'We had better push on at once,' said Wharton as soon as he was sure that his friend was unhurt. 'I don't like the look of the evening a bit, and should be thankful if we could get under the lee of some big boulders I know of, a few miles further on, before the storm breaks.'

'It does look bad, doesn't it?' said Frank; 'however, a little rain would do no harm, as we shall not strike water to-night, and we all want a wash badly, specially Snap.'

'If this storm catches us in the brûlé, we shan't want washing any more,' was Dick's gloomy reply; and, though the sky--covered with long fleecy storm-clouds, and full of an angry yellow light--did not look reassuring, the boys all thought that for once Dick was taking an unnecessarily black view of their chances.

The boys were still digesting Dick's last speech when there came a tiny whisper through the trees. It was not anything more. Just a faint little wind like a sigh; and yet three or four great trees, which had kept their balance for years, came down before it with a crash which made even Dick's cheek blanch.

'Caught, by thunder!' cried he. 'Boys, we've only one chance; leave them ponies and follow me.'

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.