LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

teeth were chattering with the general tremor. As the Frenchman saw I was merciless, and knew he was in my power, he told me the whole tale of how he had been hired in an hour of starvation to decoy me away from my home. He had no hand in the extreme consequences, and I let him go with the warning that I might not be so lenient if ever we met again. Whilst he rode away like mad, I returned to Matamas, whose hand I tied, open, on a plank, and I said:"

      "'Well named as 'the killer,' tell me all about this plot, or I shall cut you up joint by joint!' and, though you shudder at the thought, sir," he interjected to Ridge, while Cherokee Bill greedily listened, "I should have done it; but at the third of his finger being severed, the coward fainted, and, on coming to, as I sawed at another articulation, he whined the complete confession. His was the scapulary which my father had inextricably grasped in the death 'scrimmage.' If I had regretted my cruelty, the list of his crimes would have steeled me anew. Worse than I suspected remained to tell, for his two accomplices had not only fled with the valuables of my father-in-law, but with the heart treasures of mine, which I had till then believed buried beside their mother: my son and my daughter, at present fifteen and seventeen, were abducted by these villains, and are now slaves to them and their kind in some robbers' ranche of the plains or whiskey mill shanty in these mountains. Never can I rest, you see, till they are rescued from these chains of vice, and their persecutors feed the turkey buzzards like Matamas did himself."

      "Now, in telling you that a band of gold hunters are on their way hither, and that I have recently crossed Indian trails, I have served you. Help me, now, my friends, with your practical counsel – how can I soonest overtake those men?"

      There was a long silence. Bill and Ridge conferred in the sign language as if their thoughts were too full of action to be diluted into verbiage.

      "One question?" said the trapper. "In all your story you have manifested the greatest heed not to mention names except of the villainous. Those are no clue to me. But, may happen, those of yourself and kinsfolk may enlighten us. Who are you?"

      "My name is Filditch, Samuel George Filditch, my father's George W., and my father-in-law's Don Tolomeo Peralta, well known in California and Sonora."

      "Enough. What was the name of your father's brother, whom you never saw, but whom you remember to have heard spoken of in childhood. Was it not James? Come, come!" continued the old hunter, rising and kicking a log so that the freshened flame should flood him with radiance: "They used to say we were like as boys; can you see no trace of a likeness to my brother George in these features? Still silent? Ridge is only a 'mountain name'; but believe me, and Cherokee Bill will bear me out with gun and knife – there never was a deed of mine done under it which my real name would not proudly cover. It is Heaven that has brought you to my bosom, Sam! Come to my heart, where I had clean given up dreams of having a loving head pillowed! Heaven knows this was a wish long gnawing at my bones! We'll chip in together. Don't you carry any heaviness at your heart now. Your interests are mine. I am not a young chicken, but I am game, and with this new spirit, I feel thar's a lot o' living in me yet! We start on this manhunt together. Thar's my hand, Sam!"

      "And here is mine!" added the Cherokee. "The Old Man and me always hold together like burrs," he continued, in a kind of apologetic tone. "And if this ain't the most remarkable fact I ever struck, then I don't want my breakfast in the morning."

      Thereupon was sealed between the trio a compact that would bring about strange events, hidden under the veil of the future, so that the most imaginative could not foresee the incidents, far more surprising than this meeting of kindred, not at all an uncommon event in the West, where congregate the members of the Eastern families, so wondrously disrupted and attracted West.

      Ridge – still to use that name – and his nephew were evoking home memories, when suddenly the latter felt a touch on the shoulder. Cherokee Bill was making the sign for silence, and pointing out of the cave opening.

      There was a novel sound, indeed, in the stilly night air: music as from a seraphic choir, for a score of women's voices were singing a hymn at a distance which the limpidity of the air materially diminished:

      "Come, tell the broken spirit That vainly sighs for rest There is a home in glory, A home forever blest; Still sound the gospel trumpet O'er hill and rolling sea, From chains of sin and blackness, To set the captive free!"

      "Saints in the Mountain!" murmured Jim Ridge, astonished. "I never heard the likes hereabouts. It carries me away back fifty year', when I was a boy in the church! But what are white women doing here? I am staggered. And tuning up like that, too. That's first-class bait for Crows. The angels must ha' taken a fancy to them, or they are cracked to sing at top of the v'ice, an' redskins on the loose. What do you make of it, Bill?"

      "See!"

      The hunter stared forth. A yellow light appeared as a lining to a cold fog over a vale.

      "Ah, a powerful camp! No Crow men will attack that in a hurry – those dogs want to be twenty to one, and, then, somebody has to kick them on to it. Things are bound to be interesting, but, I judge, we can wait till morning. At least, that's my way. I am ready to drop, myself."

      "And I," said Filditch, indeed exhausted.

      "I will take the first watch," observed the Cherokee, calmly.

      In another few minutes, wrapped in fur and blankets, the two white men were profoundly reposing. Ridge chose the flat ground to which the body accommodates itself, whilst his newfound kinsman, less wise, made a kind of bed. The son of the assassinated trapper guarded them who had now the same vow as himself to be their life task.

      CHAPTER VI

      IN HOSTILE HANDS

      When Ulla Maclan came to her senses she found herself in darkness, but it was not that of the grave. The snow had been falling again, and all the night through; but the warmth of her body had hollowed out a cave around her, in the roof of which her breath had maintained an aperture. But, cruelly enough, the same blanched mantle that preserved her from freezing had sheltered her from the eager eyes of the only other survivor of her father's party.

      With a suffocated feeling, she broke open the shell, and warily emerged into the more than ever wintry landscape. All the breakage of the sledge loads had been smoothly buried with the remains of the hapless Canadians.

      Not a mark on the level snow revealed the substantiality of the form which she believed in her terror the spectre of the Indian Chief, but which we know as the secretary, so nearly discovering her, but going on his fruitless way, brokenhearted.

      The musical trickling of melting snow tantalised her palate, and she scrambled through the soft drift to a cleft where a rivulet was beginning to run. The cool draught was delicious. She then set to reviving herself with a dash of it over her face, and was binding up her hair, when a loud and coarse laugh made her start and turn, blushing.

      Three white men in hunters' garb stood on a crest of the rocks swept clear of the snow, where they travelled as well to avoid leaving traces as to be free of step. The mountains rose behind them, a sweet faint azure, with an opal edge, which was the last night's snow.

      Two of the strangers were about the same age, some five-and-thirty; harsh and angular of feature, brutal and bullying, tall and burly. In their half wild, half border town dress, they were not to be taken for genuine trappers by anyone less new to this region than our heroine. They were what is called hide hunters, or skin scalpers, whose least shameful occupation is the slaughtering buffaloes for the hide alone, or even collecting their bones to be sent East for the best ivory knife handles.

      The third and superior was more than ten years older, with piercing grey eyes and low forehead, a dirty yellow beard and long hair; the aspect of a confirmed rogue, sly, base, and wicked. They were all armed to the teeth, and their arms were a great deal better kept than their teeth, innocent of any attentions whatever, which did not add any attraction to their grins at surprising the young lady at her toilet.

      Somehow, she would almost have preferred to see the red men themselves than these representatives of her race. Nevertheless, she named herself, related the disaster, and implored their help for Heaven's sweet sake.

      "A da'ter of one of these top-shelf hunting gentlemen," remarked the old man, laughing;

Скачать книгу