Campmates Part 20

"Oh, sir, please don't send me back!" pleaded Glen, earnestly. "I should feel awfully to have to go home with the trip only half finished."

"Then you are willing to face all the hards.h.i.+ps?"

"Yes, sir, I'm willing to face anything, rather than going back."

"All right!" laughed Mr. Hobart; "I suppose I shall have to take you along. I proposed to the general to take Binney Gibbs with him, or else send him back to the States, because I did not consider him strong enough to endure what is ahead of us; but I don't see how I could urge that in your case, for I actually believe you are one of the toughest among us."

How Glen rejoiced in his strength as he heard this! Perhaps it was going to prove as valuable to him as a scholars.h.i.+p, after all.

"Mr. Brackett is going to run the level, and wants you for his rodman,"

continued Mr. Hobart. "The pay will be double what you are now receiving, and you can soon fit yourself for the position by a little hard study; for Mr. Brackett is a capital instructor. I have told him that he may take you on trial, and see what he can do with you. I also told him of your aversion to study, and gave him to understand what a difficult job he had undertaken."

Glen flushed at this, and gazed at the ground for a moment. Finally he said, "Studying seems very different when you can look right ahead and see what good it is going to do."

"Yes," replied Mr. Hobart, "I know it does. Still, in most cases we have to trust the word of those who can look ahead when we can't. I've no doubt but what you were told at school that a knowledge of Latin would aid you in learning many other languages; but you were not willing to believe it until you saw for yourself how it helped Binney Gibbs pick up Spanish."

Glen did not make any promises aloud in regard to fitting himself for his new position, for he believed in actions rather than words; but he made one to himself, and determined to keep it.

They remained in camp at Isletta one day longer, to prepare for their arduous undertaking, and to engage several new axemen to fill the places of those who had been promoted; but on the second morning the transit was set up over the last stake they had driven, and its telescope was pointed due west.

At first Glen missed the excitement of riding in advance of the party with the front flag. On a preliminary survey, the level can hardly keep up with the transit; and it was not so pleasant to be always behind, striving to catch up, as it had been to be in the lead.

To "Billy" Brackett the change of positions came even harder than to Glen, because in taking the level he had gone back a step rather than forward; but he never showed it. Indeed, by his steady cheerfulness and unceasing flow of good spirits the new leveller soon banished even a shadow of regret from the mind of his young rodman, and taught him to feel a real interest in his new work.

So they slowly climbed the western slope of the Rio Grande Valley, crossed the barren plateau of the divide between it and the Rio Puerco, followed that stream and its tributary, the San Jose, on the banks of which they saw the ancient pueblos of Laguna and Acoma, into another region of rugged mountains, and, in about two weeks, found themselves at the forlorn frontier post of Fort Wingate, where they were to obtain their final supplies for the winter.

Chapter x.x.xIV.

BAITING A WOLF-TRAP.

At Fort Wingate the real hards.h.i.+ps of the trip began in an unexpected manner. Instead of being plentifully supplied with provisions, as had been reported, the post was found to be very poorly provided, and all that could be spared to the engineers were condemned quartermaster's stores. The party must take these or nothing; and when Mr. Hobart left it to his men whether they should accept the damaged stores and push on, or go back to the Rio Grande, they unanimously said, "Go on!" So, for the next two months, they made the best of half-spoiled hams and bacon, hard-tack filled with white worms, and sugar abounding in little black bugs, that fortunately floated on top of the coffee and could be skimmed off.

The men provided themselves with a number of little luxuries at the sutler's--the last store they would see for months--and "Billy" Brackett bought a cheese. This was considered a very queer purchase; but Glen's was queerer still, for it was a small quant.i.ty of strychnine. He only procured this after giving a.s.surances that he did not propose to commit suicide and making many promises to be very careful in its use. What he proposed to do with the poison he did not confide to anybody except his friend "Billy" Brackett, who agreed with him that it was a capital plan.

A run of twelve miles from Fort Wingate brought the party to a camp, in a forest of the most stately yellow-pines they had ever seen, beside a great spring of ice-cold water--known as the Agua Fria (cold water).

Here, as soon as supper was over, Glen proceeded to put his great plan into execution. The nights were now very cold, and the boy generally woke before morning to find himself s.h.i.+vering beneath his insufficient covering of blankets. Every night, too, since entering the mountains the party had been annoyed by the sneaking visits and unearthly howlings of wolves that hung on the outskirts of the camp from dark to daylight, every now and then making a quick dash through it, if the guard was not watching sharply, and s.n.a.t.c.hing at bits of food or at anything made of leather that lay in their path. So Glen thought he would teach the wolves a lesson, which should at the same time add some of their skins to his bed-clothing; and it was for this purpose he had procured the strychnine.

Now, with "Billy" Brackett's help, he dragged out from one of the wagons a gunny-sack, containing some kidneys, lungs, and other refuse animal matter, obtained from the Fort Wingate butcher, and these he smeared with the deadly powder. Then they prepared several torches of pine slivers, and, amid the unanswered questionings of their companions, left camp, carrying the sack of meat between them. Beginning at a point a few rods from the tents, they strewed the poisoned bait for half a mile along the banks of the little stream flowing from the spring. It was an exciting task, for they seemed to hear suspicious sniffs, and the soft pattering of feet on both sides of them; while Glen felt certain that his torchlight was reflected from gleaming eyeb.a.l.l.s more than once. So greatly did these things work upon their imaginations that when, as they started back towards camp, their last torch suddenly went out, leaving them in blackest darkness, they both took to their heels, and raced breathlessly for the distant light of the friendly camp-fire. When they reached it, in perfect safety, they burst out laughing in one another's faces, and wondered what they had run from.

Glen was disappointed, as he lay s.h.i.+vering in his blankets that night, not to hear so many wolves as usual, while the few howls that did reach his ears seemed to come from a distance. Still, he comforted himself with the reflection that dead wolves couldn't howl, and doubtless all those that had ventured near the camp had eaten the poisoned meat, and had their howlings effectually silenced.

It seemed to him that he had hardly dropped asleep when he was rudely awakened by being pulled, feet foremost, out of his blankets, under the side of the tent, and into the open air. At the same moment "Billy"

Brackett's laughing voice cried, "Come, Glen, here it is broad daylight, and high time we were gathering in our wolves."

Whew! how cold it was! and in what a hurry Glen sprang from the frozen ground, to rush back into the tent for his boots and army overcoat. He had everything else on, for there was very little undressing at night in that party. As for being sleepy, the biting air had awakened him as effectually as a dash of ice-water.

As they left camp, "Billy" Brackett shouted back to one of the Mexican axemen to follow after them, and the man answered that he would be along in a minute. It was light enough, when they reached the place where they had left the first of the poisoned meat, for them to see it if it had been there; but it was not. Neither was there any dead wolf to be found in the vicinity. It was the same along the whole line, where they had scattered their bait. They could neither discover meat nor wolves.

"h.e.l.lo!" exclaimed "Billy" Brackett softly, as they were about to turn back, "I believe the wolves are cooking their meat;" and with that he pointed to a thin column of blue smoke rising through the trees at some distance farther down the stream.

"Perhaps they are Indians," suggested Glen.

"Perhaps they are. Let's go and find out. We can take a look at them without being seen. Besides, the Indians hereabout are peaceful now."

So they crept cautiously towards the smoke, until at length they were lying flat on the ground, on the edge of a low bank, with their heads hidden in tufts of gra.s.s, peering into a small encampment of Indians just below them. They had hardly gained this position when Glen, uttering a cry of horror, sprang down the bank, rushed in among the Indians, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing a piece of meat from the hands of one of them, who was raising it to his mouth, flung it so far away that it was snapped up and swallowed by a lean, wolfish-looking cur, that had not dared venture near the fire.

At Glen's sudden appearance the Indian women and children ran screaming into the bushes, while the men, springing to their feet, surrounded him with angry exclamations and significant handlings of their knives. They received a second surprise, and fell back a little as "Billy" Brackett, who had not at first understood Glen's precipitate action, came rus.h.i.+ng down the bank after him, shouting, "Stand back, you villains! If you lay a hand on him, I'll blow the tops of all your heads off!"

At the same time Glen was making all the faces expressive of extreme disgust that he could think of, and saying, as he pointed to a pile of meat lying in a gunny-sack beside the fire:

"_Carne no bueno! Muy mal! No bueno por hombre!_" which was the best Spanish he knew for, "The meat is not good. It is very bad, and not at all good for a man to eat."

But the Indians could not understand. The meat might not be good enough for white men, who were so very particular, but it was good enough for them. The white men had thrown it away and they had found it. They meant to eat it, too, for they were very hungry. Now, if these uninvited guests to their camp would not clear out and let them eat their breakfast in peace, they must suffer the consequences.

This is what they said; but neither Glen nor "Billy" Brackett understood a word of it. They were preparing to defend themselves, as well as they could, from the scowling Indians, who were again advancing upon them with drawn knives.

Both Glen and his companion had their rifles, and now, as they stepped slowly backward, they held them ready for instant use.

"We won't fire," said "Billy" Brackett, "unless they point a gun or an arrow at us; for the first shot will be the signal for a rush, and if they make that we haven't got a living show."

All this time the Indians, to the number of a dozen or so, advanced steadily, taking step for step with the whites, as they fell back, and watching for a chance to get past or around the black muzzles of those rifles.

Chapter x.x.xV.

EL MORO.

To Glen Eddy and "Billy" Brackett the situation looked serious, and almost desperate, as they confronted that crowd of angry savages who advanced towards them so steadily, and with such unmistakable meaning.

"It's a tough outlook for us," muttered the latter.

"Yes," answered Glen, "it is, but--" Here the boy clinched his teeth, and clutched his rifle more firmly.

"Look out!" cried the other, noticing that the Indians were gathering themselves for a rush. "They're coming!" and he raised his rifle.

In another instant he would have fired, and their fate would have been sealed. But their time had not yet come; for, at that same moment, another figure bounded down the low bank, and stood beside them facing the Indians, and speaking angrily to them in Spanish. They evidently understood him, and hesitated. He was the Mexican axeman.

"What is the trouble, Mr. Brackett?" he asked hurriedly, in English.

With a few words they made the situation clear to him, and he, in turn, quickly explained to the Indians that these white men had merely tried to save their lives by preventing them from eating poisoned meat.

"Tell them to look at the dog!" cried Glen, pointing to the poor animal that had swallowed the very bit of meat he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the Indian, and which was evidently dying.