Chapter XXIII: Reading the Will

A sudden rushing wind struck Snap upon the cheek, and he awoke; awoke with a smell of carrion in his nostrils and a dark cloud floating over his eyes. As he sprang to his feet it was gone, but the view that suddenly confronted him--the narrow bed on which he had slept, and the yawning abyss beneath--made him reel and stagger with horror. Recovering himself as his faculties came back from dreamland, he heard a harsh 'croak! croak!' and saw the cloud which had broken his slumbers floating, on wings which scarcely moved, round and round the summit, turning its ugly head enquiringly towards him every time it passed.

'You fiend!' he muttered, shaking his fist at the raven, 'I wonder, after the hundred years you've lived about this peak and its graveyards, that you don't know a live man from a dead one; perhaps that will teach you,' and as the bird came by again he hurled a lump of granite at it with an accuracy and energy which would not be denied.

The stone caught the bird full, and sounded hollow on its great wing. For a moment it staggered, and two black feathers fluttered ever so slowly down, until it made Snap sick to watch them going, going, as if they never would stop; but the raven righted himself, and with a fierce croak sailed on out of sight.

'Sounded as if he was a cursing of you, didn't it, Snap?' said Wharton's voice at the boy's side; 'a nice old party he is! But I wish we had his wings.'

'Yes, Dick,' replied Snap, 'even without those two pen-feathers I knocked out of him.'

'If Warwolf had seen you do that,' remarked Wharton, 'he would never have been happy again, That bird is "Great Medicine" with the Blackfeet.'

'Great humbug,' retorted Snap indignantly.

'Just so, that's the way as I always translate it myself,' replied the foreman; 'but I say, I wonder if Warwolf got clear away?'

'I hope he did,' said Snap, 'I should like to see the poor old Cradle again.'

'What, that horse?' answered Dick; 'wal, if the chief didn't get clear away, I reckon neither you nor me will want any hoss again.'

'No, I suppose not, Dick,' replied Snap grimly; 'I wonder if these chaps realise what a corner we are in,' he added, pointing over his shoulder to his sleeping comrades.

'Frank may,' said Dick; 'I'm not rightly certain whether the young 'un understands anything yet.'

'What do you mean, Dick? you don't mean that he has gone off his head, do you?' replied Snap a little vaguely.

'He wasn't sane when we pulled him up yesterday, but may be he'll be all right to-day,' was the answer, and at that moment the object of their solicitude woke and sat up.

'Is that you, Dick?' asked Towzer's voice feebly.

'Yes, my lad, that's me. Don't you try to get up yet, you've been a bit ill. Mustn't let him look over that edge yet at any price,' he whispered aside to Snap.

'Lie still, old fellow,' added Snap soothingly as he bent over him, 'how do you feel?'

'Oh, only a bit faint and as if I was sea-sick, Snap,' he replied, 'but I've had such a dreadful dream.'

Snap didn't ask him what it was, he guessed that the boy half remembered yesterday's experiences; but Towzer went on addressing Frank, who was now sitting up beside him.

'I dreamed,' he said, 'that I was a coward, that you called me one, Frank, and then they put me on a roasting-jack for a punishment, and hung me on to the bottom of the world, and I went round and round and round----'

'Here, dry up that soft talk,' interposed Dick roughly, 'we don't want no talk of dreams here: you get a knife into that tin, Towzer, and let's have breakfast,' and, so saying, the old man handed the boy a tin of meat and a knife, 'just to prevent him thinking,' as he explained later on.

'I think he is all right now,' said Frank after breakfast, 'let's tell him a little; we can't go on like this.'

'Very well, but take care how you do it,' assented Dick.

Then they told him, not all, but most of that last day's doings, concluding with: 'And when we got you on the rope you must have bumped your head against the rock, or spun round until you went nearly silly and fainted; and so now you must keep quiet and promise not to look over the edge again until we give you leave. Is that a bargain?'

'Yes,' sighed Towzer, 'I suppose it is; but I must be a terrible nuisance to you fellows. What a little brute you must think me!'

All that day and the next the boys lay in their narrow bed watching the sun rise and set, and the clouds go hurrying by. Sometimes a few rugged brown clouds would drift up, and then a little flurry of wind and rain would almost wash them out of their exposed position, while the balloon creaked and strained at her moorings in an alarming fashion.

'Snap,' said Dick on the second day, 'them Injuns can't see the balloon from below, and they're getting more daring, now they think the great bird has gone.'

'How is that, Dick?' asked Snap.

'Well, you see we have drawn the balloon out of sight by mooring it close alongside among these crags. Leastways I reckon that's so, for the Crows have come out of cover. Look for yourself.'

Peering over the little parapet which ran round their resting-place, Snap could see camp-fires on the prairie below, and through his glasses he made out a line of sentries set all round the foot of the mountain, not near it, but still hemming it in in such a way that escape from it across the open prairie to the forest beyond the camp-fires was impossible.

'They know that we're trapped,' said Frank, 'and mean to starve us out, though they are still afraid to put foot on the mountain.'

'That's so,' replied Wharton, 'and young Towzer is opening the last tin of meat but one. It must be only one tin between four to-night, and if Warwolf doesn't bring his Blackfeet to-morrow we had better try to run the gauntlet, and get away separately to-morrow evening before hunger makes us too weak to fight.'

'It wouldn't do, Dick,' whispered Snap, drawing him aside, 'Towzer could never get down the mountain, and even if Frank got through he could never find his way in the forest. But I have a better idea than that.'

'What is it, lad?' asked Wharton.

'Never mind yet, old fellow, it will keep,' replied the boy; 'besides, I'm not quite sure yet if it is practicable, and if Warwolf turns up I would much rather not try it. But look here,' he added, turning to the others, 'I've got some interesting reading in this poor old German's log-book.'

'Let us have it after dinner, Snap,' said Frank.

'Them's my sentiments exactly,' put in Dick; 'I never can hear reading comfortably unless I've got a pipe in my mouth.'

So after dinner, that is after everyone had played as long as he could with his small share of the last tin but one, Snap took the book and read, whilst Dick smoked a double allowance of tobacco to console his ill-used stomach for the loss of at least three-fourths of his share of the curry, which the good old chap had managed to add to the boys' portions unobserved.

'I don't call it kinder fair on you, boys,' he remarked, 'my doing all the smoking; won't you try a pull? it's wonderfully satisfying.'

Snap took the offered pipe and enjoyed the first few whiffs immensely, but, as he remarked, 'almost at once struck ile.'

'Thank you, Dick, kindly,' he said, handing the pipe back hurriedly, 'but I think my jaw will work without oiling. I'd rather read and see you smoke.'

Dick laughed and resumed his pipe, while Snap read as follows:

'"Sunday, 15.--Thank God, I have still an arm left to write. It is I who am in fault. The balloon was by me too suddenly stopped, and I was at once outthrown, and my leg and arm altogether broken----"

'Then there is a stop, as if the pen had fallen from his hand,' said Snap.

'Fainted from pain, I guess,' said Dick, taking his pipe out of his mouth and blowing away a lot of little rings of smoke.

This was a favourite trick of Dick's, and you might see him often send three rings one through the other in succession.

'The next entry is the 17th, and it is a long one,' continued the reader. '"I know right well," he writes, "that I cannot much longer stay. The end must soon come. Ach Gott! how it will good be. Now hear I, day and night, the roaring of the winds of heaven, like the beating of surf on the shore. If it were not that my limbs were so heavy with pain, these winds would snatch me from my hard couch and give me back to my native earth and peace. Ah me! how the clouds spin, and the peak keeps bending, bending---- I have had no food since my fall and die of hunger and weakness. God grant I die before that foul black bird, which comes croaking nearer and nearer, tears my eyes out! But I think death is very near now, the pain is gone, and I can think clearly. I have one work to do, and then I die peacefully. Some man may find me--when, God knows; who he will be, He too knows--but, as He has put a thing into my mind, I would leave it to my brother men. It is this. In the small box, A, in the car of the balloon, is a paper. This paper contains a design for steering balloons. All my life I have sought this, now have I found it--too late. Henceforth the air shall be as navigable as the sea or the dry land. But I would have this design patented and to bear my name. So much earthly ambition clings to me still. Take, then, thou, who mayest find these bones, this box, A, to Professor von Bulberg of Berlin. There it shall be patented in my name. I would have the honour; and for your service, since I have no kin, I leave you as reward whatever I may die possessed of, here or in Potsdam: here, a few priceless instruments; there, a little house or two, I think, and, should there be any, half the proceeds of this my invention; the other half to go to the Royal Society of Aeronauts, Berlin."

'By Jove!' said Snap at this point, 'it is just as well that he had no more to write; if he had, I could not have read it, although his shaky hand is very sharp and clear; but it is shaky towards the end--just look at it,' and he passed it to Frank.

'What luck it is that you took up German instead of Greek, Snap!' said Frank.

'Well, I don't know,' replied he, 'we could have read it anyhow. Here is another paper, in another language, which I found tucked under him when we lifted him up.' And, so saying, the boy handed his companions the following:

'Let's have a look at that,' said Dick, stretching his arm out for the paper. When he had studied it a little the old foreman handed it back again to Snap, saying:

'That's downright smart of the German: it's not the first time as he's been amongst Injuns; I call that a lot easier to read than your pothooks and up-and-down strokes, don't you, Snap?'

'Well, it's not difficult, certainly. I suppose he means, if the Indian takes Box A to any gentleman in a beard, breeches, and sombrero, he will get rum and a rifle; if, on the other hand, he runs off with Box A, the attractive-looking person with a spear will make it hot for him--isn't that it?' replied Snap.

'That's so, sonny!' replied Wharton, delighted at Snap's intelligence, 'and, as Injuns don't generally wear beards, breeches, or sombreros, that chap in the pictur' is a white man. The fellow with a bear's head and a spear is Okeeheedee, the devil of the Blackfeet.'

'Well, if we ever get away we must try to take the poor fellow's box and send it to Professor Bulberg at Berlin, though I don't expect to become a millionaire out of my share of the profits under his will,' said Snap.

'Your share! Why, if there was any to take, Snap, it would be all yours, of course,' remonstrated Towzer.

'You don't understand, dear boy,' replied Snap. 'In the Bull Pine Firm we have all things in common--fresh air and famine, for instance, just at present--and, as we all got here about the same time, we shall all be equally entitled under the will, as my uncle in the Temple would say; isn't that right, Dick?'

'Wal, share and share alike is prairie law, when you do make a find,' Wharton answered, 'but I'd sell my share for a sight of Rosebud and a square meal of beans and bacon right now!'

After a pause the little party crept to the edge of their nest and, looking over, could see the Indian watch-fires glowing in the gathering gloom of night. Long columns of blue smoke rose up among the pines, and a camp like the camp of an army was pitched on the edge of the prairie.

'I doubt if Warwolf would do much good even if he did get through,' said Wharton. 'Those Crows we put up have just gone back to the fishing-camp and brought the whole tribe about our heels. There are a couple of hundred men there, if there is one.'

No one had an answer to make to this speech, so they all lay there watching. It seemed such a strangely cruel lot to be hung like Mahomet's coffin halfway between heaven and earth, cut off from both--still alive, and yet beyond reach of the living. Surely no sailor on a desert island was ever so deserted as they; he at least could swim in the element which hemmed him in, but for them there was no way of escape. It was doubtful even whether the strongest of them could ever climb down the way they came. For the other two such a feat was certainly impossible. And what could swim in the element which closed them in? The eagle, and the raven, and----

Snap stopped thinking, and broke the silence.

'Dick, there is only one way out of this, and we've got to try it. We can't stay here and starve,' he said.

'Not pleasant, is it?' replied Wharton; 'but what are we going to do? We can't eat bed-rock and we can't fly.'

'Yes, we can,' was Snap's unexpected answer, 'at least that balloon can; and if you are game we'll try it to-morrow.'

'What! go up in that thing? not I, sonny,' replied the old cowboy; 'I don't mind your hanging me out on a clothes-line again over them rocks if so be as you think my constitution requires it, but I'll be dog-goned if I'll go up in that thing.'

Now, 'dog-goned' was a rare expression with Dick and was generally supposed by his friends to mean that he had issued an ultimatum. If in the old days at the ranche he had said that he would be 'dog-goned' if So-and-so shouldn't git next day, you might as well say good-bye to So-and-so, for next morning, 'bright and early,' he invariably 'got.' So, then, this rebellion of Dick's was rather a formidable thing, and one not to be treated lightly.

Snap tried to argue with the old man, but it was useless. Reason against prejudice never had much chance. Dick never had been a 'blooming balloonatic,' he said, and didn't 'kinder cotton to becoming one now.'

'Well, Dick,' said Snap, 'it's just this. If we stay here it means death--a long, lingering, painful death. If we try the balloon, of course it may drop us like a stone, and then that's death too, but a quick, painless one. We should be dead before we got to the bottom.'

'That's right enough, lad,' persisted Wharton, 'but if that is all that you are hankering after who is to hinder your jumping over the edge here--that's death too, a pretty certain one, and painless, says you!'

'Quite so, Dick, but I don't think the balloon would let us down. Why should it? There is a lot of ballast in. We'll throw that out, and then away we go sailing over the heads of these Redskins until somewhere or other we come softly and slowly down again, safe and sound, and out of danger. I can't think why we have stayed here so long,' Snap concluded, having succeeded, as many a man has done before, in talking himself into belief in his own scheme.

'I'm not a-goin' to say, Snap,' said Dick slowly, 'as there ain't something in your idea; but sailing in that thing don't seem natural to me somehow. Howsomdever, if we can't get away before this time to-morrow in any other way, you boys can try it if you like, and I'll jest try to wriggle through them reptiles down below in my own way.'

And that was the most the boys could get out of Dick, and with it they had to be content: though Snap had not the least intention of going without the old man. 'All or none' was his motto, and he meant to stick to it.