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.