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!'