The Land of Frozen Suns Part 4

My self-appointed champion-who, I now discovered, was just drunk enough to welcome disturbance in any form whatsoever-and the young fellow with whom I had been speaking before the row, wiped the blood off my face and doctored the eye that Tupper had come near gouging from its socket. And while they were thus ministering to me another stockhand clanked in from the street.

"Say, Matt, yuh sure stirred up somethin'," he announced. "This the kid that got action on the St. Louis jasper? Well, there's goin' to be a healthy ruction round here over that, let me tell yuh. Bax is red-eyed over yuh runnin' a whizzer on him, and he's collectin' a posse to take both of yuh in. Don't yuh reckon we better drift for camp, Matt?"

Matt smiled and beckoned to some of the others. "Not by a long shot!" he drawled. "Whenever old Ed Bax runs me out uh town, it'll be in the good-by wagon. I'm goin' to see that this kid gets a square deal. If Bax or anybody else wants me let 'em come and get me. Will the rest uh you fellows stand pat?"

In varying stages of hilarity they crowded about him and profanely a.s.sured him that they would turn Benton inside out and shake the pockets if he but said the word. In the midst of their chatter the man who had brought news of the marshal's action drew closer and lowered his voice.

"Look here, Matt," he argued, "you're runnin' the outfit and you're a friend of mine and all that sort of thing, and yuh know that all of us'll back any sort of play yuh make. But it looks to me like we can do better'n to pull off a big fight. I ain't plumb chicken-hearted, but Bax is goin' to come down on us with a bunch uh tin-horn gamblers to help him out, and if this kid's in sight he's goin' to try and take him. Yuh sabe? He's got to make some kind of a bluff at it, or every pilgrim that comes along'll run over him. So it's a cinch that there'll be more or less gun-play, and the Circle'll be shy a man or two when it's over."

"They ain't got the nerve, d.i.c.k," Matt declared confidently.

"It don't take much nerve to start anything like that," d.i.c.k replied.

"Somebody'll reach for his gun, and it'll be off. Now, Bax ain't goin'

to jump _you_-he's afraid to. If the kid's with yuh he's got to. I move we stake this kid to a hoss, and let him drift. That lets _him_ out. And if Bax wants to have it out with yuh on general principles, why, we'll see it through."

"d.i.c.k's right," one of them put in. "The kid's got to hit the trail, anyhow, and he might as well do it right away quick. That's the main thing, ain't it. We started in to help him out, and if we can do it peaceful, we'll live longer. Bax won't tackle us unless he just has to."

"Yuh got me on the run," Matt frowned. "I'd just as soon dehorn this Bax party to-night as any other time. But I see where the kid better move out, all right. You pilot him, Wall, and catch up one uh them extra hosses, and stake him to that saddle Musky left-I'll fix it with old Musk when he comes back. He can ride my hoss to camp."

It was all arranged offhand in less time than I have taken to tell of it, and I was hustled out to where a row of cow-ponies patiently awaited the pleasure of their hard-riding masters. For aught these sons of the plains knew I was a purely worthless bit of human driftwood. But I don't think they gave a thought to the matter. There was only one thing to be done, in their estimation, and they proceeded to do it without consulting me or doing very much talking about it themselves. So very shortly I found myself straddle of the Circle foreman's horse and jogging out of Benton. Beside me, young Wall rode silently until we reached the top of the long hill that slopes to the town. Then he shook his horse into a lope, and broke into cheerful whistling.

I, however, was far short of the whistling mood. The thing I should have done I was afraid to do. Ordinarily, my instinct would have been to face the music. I was unrepentant for the part I had played in the extinction of Tupper. Nor would I, if I had calmly weighed the chances for and against, have felt any fear of consequences before the law. But my experience with the law, in those days, was a void. That which we do not understand we usually fear, and that night I was stricken with a swift fear of the law. I had killed, and there was a penalty. My spirit revolted at the thought of a jail. Likewise, the quick action of those Circle cowpunchers made a deep impression on me. If incarceration was so to be avoided that they were willing to back their deeds with gunpowder, I wanted no phase of incarceration in my experience. Better the open, an unknown country, and whatever might befall therein, than to lie in Benton "calaboose"-which, to my disturbed mind, was a synonym for a place of vague horrors.

I thought of standing my ground, of taking chances on Bax the marshal and the Benton jail, until the _Moon_ could reach St. Louis and apprise Bolton of my need-and then I shuddered at the thought that the thing might be settled beyond interference before he could make the long river journey. I had heard and read more or less of hasty trials in the West; I had killed a man in what seemed to me a barbarous fas.h.i.+on; I did not know what the authorities, self-const.i.tuted or otherwise, might do to me-and I hadn't the nerve to stay and find out. If they should hang me, thought I, I shall be a long time dead. Flight, under these circ.u.mstances, made the strongest appeal to my excited imagination.

Such was the chaotic state of my ideas when Wall pulled up his horse, and I saw the white glimmer of tents close at hand.

"Night-hawk's got the bunch over here, I think," said he. "Seems like I hear the bells. Anyhow, you stay here and I'll get yuh a _caballo_ that can drift."

He trotted off, leaving me standing by the clear-cut outline of a wagon.

Away off in the semi-dark-for the moon was now risen-I heard a sudden scurry of hoofs, an accentuated jangling of two or three small bells.

Presently Wall came loping back leading a blaze-faced sorrel horse.

From under the forward end of the wagon he dragged a saddle, a bridle and a saddle-blanket.

"There," he said, "there's a good rig, barrin' spurs-which yuh won't need much. And a good hoss to put it on. Go to it."

The stock saddle, with its high horn and deep seat, was not so different from what I'd been used to-except as to weight. The double-cinch apparatus bothered me a little, but when Wall explained the uses of the latigo and the manner of its tying, I got my horse saddled properly-the small imps of uneasy haste spurring me on. Then I swung up to try the stirrups, and found that I had a restive brute under me. He plunged once or twice, but I kept his head in the air, and finally straightened him out. Wall nodded approval.

"I wasn't dead sure yuh could ride him," he owned. "But I see you've got him in your sack, and you'll find him there when it comes to gettin'

over the ground."

"I'm all ready now, I think," said I.

"Wait a minute," Wall laughed. "Don't rush off. Bax wouldn't come into the Circle camp after yuh to-night for two farms in Iowa. Chances are he's busy right now figuring a way to get a dead safe whack at Matt Dunn. Come on over to the cook-tent and get some grub to tie on your saddle. You'll need it."

By the light of a candle he ransacked the grub boxes on the tail end of the cook-wagon. A loaf of bread, some fresh-made biscuits, and a big piece of boiled beef, together with a trifle of pepper and salt this light-hearted, capable youngster wrapped in a bit of burlap and tied behind the cantle of my saddle. And while he munched a piece of beef himself, he gave me explicit directions as to my course.

"Once yuh get over into the MacLeod country," he concluded, "you'll be all right. n.o.body'll care a cuss who yuh are nor where yuh come from, so long as yuh behave yourself. This red hoss hasn't got the Circle brand, though he belongs to the outfit, so they won't ask no fool questions about him. Yuh ought to pick up a job with some uh them Canadian layouts pretty easy."

"Oh, wait a minute," he exclaimed, when I was again about to mount, and he ran over to an outspread canvas-covered bed. He fumbled among the tumbled quilts a moment and came back to me carrying a broad cartridge-belt, on which a bone-handled Colt swung in its leathern scabbard.

"I pretty near forgot this," he chuckled. "Yuh ain't heeled, and Lord knows yuh need to be at this stage uh the game. Say, how are yuh off for coin?"

"Man alive!" I cried-and I meant it, "you've done more for me now than I can repay in a thousand years. I don't need money."

"Oh, yes, yuh do," he returned, unruffled. "A dollar or two'll come mighty handy when yuh hit MacLeod, or wherever yuh land. I ain't goin'

to make yuh rich. Here, and good luck to yuh."

He pressed a ten-dollar gold piece upon me. Then we shook hands as brothers at parting, and I rode out of the Circle camp on a high-stepping horse, with the Big Dipper and the North Star to guide me to the Canada line.

CHAPTER VI-SLOWFOOT GEORGE

I retain some vivid impressions of that night ride. A mile or two from the Circle tents I crossed the Teton River, then just receding from the June rise, and near swimming deep. After that I came out upon a great spread of bench-land, dotted with silent prairie-dog towns. Here and there a lone b.u.t.te rose pinnacle-like out of the flatness. In all my short life I had never known what it was to be beyond sound of a human voice, to be utterly alone. That night was my first taste of it, and to my unaccustomed ears the patter of my horse's hoofs seemed to be echoing up from a sounding-board, and the jingle of the bit chains rang like a bell, so profound was the quiet. I know of nothing that compares with the plains for pure loneliness, unless it be the deserted streets of a city at four in the morning-or the hushed, ghostly woods of the North, which I was yet to know. Each hollow into which I dipped reeked of mysterious possibilities. Every moon-bathed rise of land gave me a vague feeling that something sinister, some incomprehensible evil, lay in wait upon the farther side. Whatever of superst.i.tion lay dormant in my make-up was all agog that night; my environment was having its will of me. I know now that my nerves were all a-jangle. But what would you? The dark brings its subtle, threatening atmosphere to bear on braver men than I. For aught I knew there might be a price on my head. Certainly I was a fugitive, and flight breeds groundless, unreasoning fears.

Bearing a little west of the North Star, I kept the red horse at a steady jog, and when the night was far spent and my bones aching from the ride I came to another river-the Marias-which Wall had told me I must cross. Following his directions, a half-hour's journey upstream brought me upon a trail; a few wagon-tracks that I near overlooked. This led to a ford, or what may once have been a ford. It no longer merited the term, for I got well soaked in the deep, swift stream. Red carried me through, however, and when I gained the farther bank of the Marias Valley a faint reddish glow was creeping up in the east. In a little while it was broad day.

Then I halted for the first time. My mettlesome steed I picketed carefully, ate a little of the biscuits and boiled beef, and lay down to sleep in a gra.s.sy hollow, too tired to care whether Bax was hard on my trail or not. The sunlight had given me a fresh access of courage, I think-that and the heady air of those crisp morning hours. My difficulties began to take on some of the aspects of an adventure. Once in the Territories, with none to hound me, I could apprise Bolton and he would forward money to get me home. That was all I needed. And if I could not manage to eke out a living in the meantime I was not the son of my father. I fell asleep with a wistful eye on three blue spires that broke the smooth sweep of the skyline to the northward-the Sweet Gra.s.s Hills, touching on the Canadian boundary, if I remembered rightly what Wall had said.

The hot noon sun beating on my unprotected face roused me at last. It was near midday. I had no liking for further moonlight travel, so I saddled up and rode on, thinking to get somewhere near the Hills by dusk, and camp there for the night. I was now over my first fear of being followed; but, oh, my hearers, I was stiff and sore! A forty or fifty mile jaunt is not much to a seasoned rider-but I lacked seasoning; however, I was due to get it.

A little before sundown I rode into the long shadow of West b.u.t.te, in rare good humor with myself despite the ache in my legs, for by grace of my good red horse I had covered a wonderful stretch that afternoon, and my nag was yet stepping out lightly. On either hand loomed the rugged pyramids of the Sweet Gra.s.s-which in truth are not hills at all, but three boulder-strewn, pine-clad mountains rising abruptly out of a rolling plain. The breaks of Milk River, in its over-the-border curve, showed plainly in the distance. I was nearing the City of Refuge.

There in that shadow-darkened notch between the lofty pinnacles I came to a new fork in the Trouble Trail. I did not know it then, but later I could not gainsay the fact. And the mile-post that directed my uncertain steps was merely a strain of the devil in the blaze-faced sorrel I bestrode. Had he been of a less turbulent spirit I doubt much if I should ever have fallen in with Slowfoot George.

It happened very simply. Ambling along with eyes for little but the wild land that surrounded, with reins held carelessly in lax fingers, I was an easy victim. As before remarked, I can put forward no better explanation than a streak of "cussedness" in my red mount. Suffice it to relate, that all at once I found my steed performing a series of diabolic evolutions, and in some mysterious manner he and I parted company in a final burst of rapid-fire contortions. I have since heard and read much of the Western horse and his unique method of unseating a rider, but never yet have I seen justice done the subject. Nor shall I descant long on such an unpleasant theme. Let me simply record the fact that I came to earth ungracefully, with a jarring shock, much as an importunate suitor might be presumed to descend the front steps of his inamorata's home, when a.s.sisted therefrom by the paternal toe. And when I sat up, a freshly-bruised and crestfallen youth, it was to behold Red clattering over a little hillock, head up, stirrups swinging wide. He seemed in hot haste. Like a fool I had knotted the reins together for easier holding; with them looped upon his neck he felt as much at liberty as though stripped clean of riding-gear.

It looked like a dubious prospect. Upon second thought I decided that it could easily have been worse. A broken leg, say, would have been a choice complication. My bones, however, remained intact. So I sought about in the gra.s.s for the pistol that had been jolted from its place during the upheaval, and when I found it betook myself upon the way my erratic nag had gone.

It was no difficult matter for me to arrive at the conclusion that I was in a fair way to go into the Northwest afoot-should I be lucky enough to arrive at all. Red seemed to have gone into hiding. At least, he remained unseen, though I ascended divers little eminences and stared my hardest, realizing something of the hopelessness of my quest even while I stared. That Sweet Gra.s.s country is monstrously deceptive to the unsophisticated. Overlooking it from a little height one thinks he sees immense areas of gently undulating plain; and he sees truly. But when he comes to traverse this smooth sea of land that ripples away to a far skyline, it is a horse of another color, I a.s.sure you. He has not taken thought of what tricks the clear air and the great s.p.a.ces have played with his perspective. The difference between looking over fifty miles of gra.s.sland and crossing the same is the difference between viewing a stretch of salt water from a convenient point ash.o.r.e and being out in a two-oared skiff bucking the sway-backed rollers that heave up from the sea.

So with the plains: that portion of which I speak. Distance smoothed its native ruggedness, glossed over its facial wrinkles, so to say. The illusion became at once apparent when one moved toward any given point.

The negligible creases developed into deep coulees, the gentle undulations proved long sharp-pitched divides. Creeks, flood-worn serpentine water-courses, surprised one in unexpected places.

I had not noticed these things particularly while I rode. Now, as I tramped across country, persuading myself that over each succeeding hill I should find my light-footed sorrel horse meekly awaiting me, it seemed that I was always either climbing up or sliding down. I found myself deep in an abstract problem as I plodded-trying to strike a balance between the illusory level effect and stern topographical realities.

Presently I gave that up, and came back to concrete facts. Whereupon, being very tired and stiff from a longer ride than I had ever taken before, and correspondingly ill-tempered, I d.a.m.ned the red horse for bucking me off and myself for permitting any beast of the field to serve me so, and then sat down upon the peak of a low hill to reflect where and how I should come by my supper.

A smart breeze frolicked up from that quarter where the disappearing sun cast a bloodshot haze over a few tumbled clouds. This, I daresay, m.u.f.fled sounds behind me to some extent. At any rate, I was startled out of my cogitations by a voice close by-a drawly utterance which evoked a sudden vision of a girl with wind-raveled hair, and a lean, dark-faced man leaning over a deck railing on the _Moon_.

"Magnificent outlook, isn't it?"

Notwithstanding the surprise of finding him at my elbow in such unexpected fas.h.i.+on, I faced about with tolerable calmness. That intuitive flash had been no false harbinger, for it was Barreau sure enough. The angular visage of him was not to be confounded with that of any casual stranger, even though his habiliments were no longer broadcloth and its concomitants of linen and polished shoes. Instead, a gray Stetson topped his head, and he was gloved and booted like a cowboy. Lest it be thought that his plight was twin to my own, I will say that he looked down upon me from the back of a horse as black as midnight, a long-geared brute with a curved neck and a rolling eye. Best of all, at the end of a lariat Barreau held my own red horse.

"That," said I, "depends on how you look at it. I'll admit that the outlook is fine-since you have brought me back my runaway horse."