CHAPTER V
THE STORY AND THE LETTERS
Imagine, if you please, the forest primeval; yes, the murmuring pinesand the hemlocks of the poem as well, by the side of a rapidly rushingmountain torrent fed by the eternal snows of the lofty peaks of thegreat range. A level stretch of grassy land where a mountain brookjoined the creek was dotted with clumps of pines and great bouldersrolled down from the everlasting hills--half an acre of open clearing.On the opposite side of the brook the canyon wall rose almost sheer forperhaps five hundred feet, ending in jagged, needle-edged pinnacles ofrock, sharp, picturesque and beautiful. A thousand feet above ran thetimber line, and four thousand feet above that the crest of the greatestpeak in the main range.
The white tents of the little encampment which had gleamed so brightlyin the clear air and radiant sunshine of Colorado, now stood dim andghost-like in the red reflection of a huge camp fire. It was the eveningof the first day in the wilderness.
For two days since leaving the wagon, the Maitland party with its longtrain of burros heavily packed, its horsemen and the steady plodders onfoot, had advanced into unexplored and almost inaccessible retreats ofthe mountains--into the primitive indeed! In this delightful spot theyhad pitched their tents and the permanent camp had been made. Wood wasabundant, the water at hand was as cold as ice, as clear as crystal andas soft as milk. There was pasturage for the horses and burros on theother side of the mountain brook. The whole place was a littleamphitheater which humanity occupied perhaps the first time sincecreation.
Unpacking the burros, setting up the tents, making the camp, buildingthe fire had used up the late remainder of the day which was theirs whenthey had arrived. Opportunity would come to-morrow to explore thecountry, to climb the range, to try the stream that tumbled down asuccession of waterfalls to the right of the camp and roared and rushedmerrily around its feet until, swelled by the volume of the brook, itlost itself in tree-clad depths far beneath. To-night rest after labor,to-morrow play after rest.
The evening meal was over. Enid could not help thinking with what scornand contempt her father would have regarded the menu, how his gorgewould have risen--hers too for that matter!--had it been placed beforehim on the old colonial mahogany of the dining-room in Philadelphia. Butup there in the wilds she had eaten the coarse homely fare with the zestand relish of the most seasoned ranger of the hills. Anxious to be ofservice, she had burned her hands and smoked her hair and scorched herface by usurping the functions of the young ranchman who had beenbrought along as cook, and had actually fried the bacon herself! Imaginea goddess with a frying pan! The black thick coffee and the condensedmilk, drunk from the graniteware cup, had a more delicious aroma and amore delightful taste than the finest Mocha and Java in the daintiestporcelain of France. _Optimum condimentum._ The girl was frankly,ravenously hungry, the air, the altitude, the exertion, the excitementmade her able to eat anything and enjoy it.
She was gloriously beautiful, too; even her brief experience in the westhad brought back the missing roses to her cheek, and had banished thebister circles from beneath her eyes. Robert Maitland, lazily recliningpropped up against a boulder, his feet to the fire, smoking an old pipethat would have given his brother the horrors, looked with approvingcomplacency upon her, confident and satisfied that his prescription wasworking well. Nor was he the only one who looked at her that way. Marionand Emma, his two daughters, worshiped their handsome Philadelphiacousin and they sat one on either side of her on the great log lyingbetween the tents and the fire. Even Bob junior condescended to give herapproving glances. The whole camp was at her feet. Mrs. Maitland hadbeen greatly taken by her young niece. Kirkby made no secret of hisdevotion; Arthur Bradshaw and Henry Phillips, each a "tenderfoot" of theextremest character, friends of business connections in the east, whowere spending their vacation with Maitland, shared in the generaldevotion; to say nothing of George the cook, and Pete, the packer and"horse wrangler."
Phillips, who was an old acquaintance of Enid's, had tried his luck withher back east and had sense enough to accept as final his failure.Bradshaw was a solemn young man without that keen sense of humor whichwas characteristic of the west. The others were suitably dressed foradventure, but Bradshaw's idea of an appropriate costume wasdistinguished chiefly by long green felt puttees which swathed his hugecalves and excited curious inquiry and ribald comment from the surpriseddenizens of each mountain hamlet through which they had passed, to allof which Bradshaw remained serenely oblivious. The young man, who doesnot enter especially into this tale, was a vestryman of the church inhis home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His piety had been put to asevere strain in the mountains.
That day everybody had to work on the trail--everybody wanted to forthat matter. The hardest labor consisted in the driving of the burros.Unfortunately there was no good and trained leader among them through anunavoidable mischance, and the campers had great difficulty in keepingthe burros on the trail. To Arthur Bradshaw had been allotted the mostobstinate, cross-grained and determined of the unruly band, and oldKirkby and George paid particular attention to instructing him in thegentle art of manipulating him over the rocky mountain trail.
"Wall," said Kirkby with his somewhat languid, drawling, nasal voice,"that there burro's like a ship w'ich I often seed 'em w'n I was a kiddown east afore I come out to God's country. Nature has pervided 'emwith a kind of a hellum. I remember if you wanted the boat to go to theright you shoved the hellum over to the left. Sta'boad an' port was theterms as I recollects 'em. It's jest the same with burros, you takes 'emby the hellum, that's by the tail, git a good tight twist on it an' efyou want him to head to the right, slew his stern sheets around to theleft, an' you got to be keerful you don't git no kick back w'ich if itlands on you is worse 'n the ree-coil of a mule."
Arthur faithfully followed directions, narrowly escaping the outragedbrute's small but sharp pointed heels on occasion. His efforts not beingproductive of much success, finally in his despair he resorted to brutestrength; he would pick the little animal up bodily, pack and all--hewas a man of powerful physique--and swing him around until his headpointed in the right direction; then with a prayer that the burro wouldkeep it there for a few rods anyway, he would set him down and start himall over again. The process, oft repeated, became monotonous after awhile. Arthur was a slow thinking man, deliberate in action, he stood itas long as he possibly could. Kirkby who rode one horse and led twoothers, and therefore was exempt from burro driving, observed him withgreat interest. He and Bradshaw had strayed way behind the rest of theparty.
At last Arthur's resistance, patience and piety, strained to thebreaking point, gave way suddenly. Primitive instincts rose to thesurface and overwhelmed him like a flood. He deliberately sat down on afallen tree by the side of a trail, the burro halting obediently, turnedand faced him with hanging head apparently conscious that he merited thedisapprobation that was being heaped upon him, for from the desperatetenderfoot there burst forth so amazing, so fluent, so comprehensive atorrent of assorted profanity, that even the old past master inobjurgation was astonished and bewildered. Where did Bradshaw, mild andinoffensive, get it? His proficiency would have appalled his Rector andamazed his fellow vestrymen. Not the Jackdaw of Rheims himself was socursed as that little burro. Kirkby sat on his horse in fits of silentlaughter until the tears ran 'down his cheeks, the only outward andvisible expression of his mirth.
Arthur only stopped when he had thoroughly emptied himself, possibly ofan accumulation of years of repression.
"Wall," said Kirkby, "you sure do overmatch anyone I ever heard w'en itcomes to cursin'. W'y you could gimme cards an' spades an' beat me, an'I was thought to have some gift that-a-way in the old days."
"I didn't begin to exhaust myself," answered Bradshaw, shortly, "andwhat I did say didn't equal the situation. I'm going home."
"I wouldn't do that," urged the old man. "Here, you take the hosses an'I'll tackle the burro."
"Gladly," said Arthur. "I would rather ride an eleph
ant and drive a herdof them than waste another minute on this infernal little mule."
The story was too good to keep, and around the camp fire that nightKirkby drawled it forth. There was a freedom and easiness of intercoursein the camp, which was natural enough. Cook, teamster, driver, host,guest, men, women, children, and I had almost said burros, stood on thesame level. They all ate and lived together. The higher up the mountainrange you go, the deeper into the wilderness you plunge, the furtheraway from the conventional you draw, the more homogeneous becomessociety and the less obvious are the irrational and unscientificdistinctions of the lowlands. The guinea stamp fades and the man and thewoman are pure gold or base metal inherently and not by any artificialstandard.
George, the cattle man who cooked, and Peter, the horse wrangler, whoassisted Kirkby in looking after the stock, enjoyed the episodeuproariously, and would fain have had the exact language repeated tothem, but here Robert Maitland demurred, much to Arthur's relief, for hewas thoroughly humiliated by the whole performance.
It was very pleasant lounging around the camp fire, and one good storyeasily led to another.
"It was in these very mountains," said Robert Maitland, at last, whenhis turn came, "that there happened one of the strangest and mostterrible adventures that I ever heard of. I have pretty much forgottenthe lay of the land, but I think it wasn't very far from here that thereis one of the most stupendous canyons through the range. Nobody ever goesthere--I don't suppose anybody has ever been there since. It must havebeen at least five years ago that it all happened."
"It was four years an' nine months, exactly, Bob," drawled old Kirkby,who well knew what was coming.
"Yes, I dare say you are right. I was up at Evergreen at the time,looking after timber interests, when a mule came wandering into thecamp, saddle and pack still on his back."
"I knowed that there mule," said Kirkby. "I'd sold it to a feller namedNewbold, that had come out yere an' married Louise Rosser, old manRosser's daughter, an' him dead, an' she bein' an orphan, an' thisfeller bein' a fine young man from the east, not a bit of a tenderfootnuther, a minin' engineer he called hisself."
"Well, I happened to be there too, you remember," continued Maitland,"and they made up a party to go and hunt up the man, thinking somethingmight have happened."
"You see," explained Kirkby, "we was all mighty fond of Louise Rosser.The hull camp was actin' like a father to her at the time, so long's shehadn't nobody else. We was all at the weddin', too, some six monthsafore. The gal married him on her own hook, of course, nobody makin'her, but somehow she didn't seem none too happy, although Newbold, whowas a perfect gent, treated her white as far as we knowed."
The old man stopped again and resumed his pipe.
"Kirkby, you tell the story," said Maitland.
"Not me," said Kirkby. "I have seen men shot afore for takin' wordsout'n other men's mouths an' I ain't never done that yit."
"You always were one of the most silent men I ever saw," laughed George."Why, that day Pete yere got shot accidental an' had his whole breasttore out w'en we was lumbering over on Black Mountain, all you said was,'Wash him off, put some axle grease on him an' tie him up.'"
"That's so," answered Pete, "an' there must have been somethin' powerfulsoothin' in that axle grease, for here I am, safe an' sound, to thisday."
"It takes an old man," assented Kirkby, "to know when to keep his mouthshet. I learned it at the muzzle of a gun."
"I never knew before," laughed Maitland, "how still a man you can be.Well, to resume the story, having nothing to do, I went out with theposse the sheriff gathered up--"
"Him not thinkin' there had been any foul play," ejaculated the old man.
"No, certainly not."
"Well, what happened, Uncle Bob," inquired Enid.
"Just you wait," said young Bob, who had heard the story. "This is anawful good story, Cousin Enid."
"I can't wait much longer," returned the girl. "Please go on."
"Two days after we left the camp, we came across an awful figure,ragged, blood stained, wasted to a skeleton, starved--"
"I have seen men in extreme cases afore," interposed Kirkby, "but nevernone like him."
"Nor I," continued Maitland.
"Was it Newbold?" asked Enid.
"Yes."
"And what had happened to him?"
"He and his wife had been prospecting in these very mountains, she hadfallen over a cliff and broken herself so terribly that Newbold had toshoot her."
"What!" exclaimed Bradshaw. "You don't mean that he actually killedher?"
"That's what he done," answered old Kirkby.
"Poor man," murmured Enid.
"But why?" asked Phillips.
"They were five days away from a settlement, there wasn't a human beingwithin a hundred and fifty miles of them, not even an Indian," continuedMaitland. "She was so frightfully broken and mangled that he couldn'tcarry her away."
"But why couldn't he leave her and go for help?" asked Bradshaw.
"The wolves, the bears, or the vultures would have got her. These woodsand mountains were full of them then and there are some of them, leftnow, I guess."
The two little girls crept closer to their grown up cousin, each castinganxious glances beyond the fire light.
"Oh, you're all right, little gals," said Kirkby, reassuringly, "theywouldn't come nigh us while this fire is burnin' an' they're pretty wellhunted out I guess; 'sides, there's men yere who'd like nothin' better'ndrawin' a bead on a big b'ar."
"And so," continued Maitland, "when she begged him to shoot her, to puther out of her misery, he did so and then he started back to thesettlement to tell his story and stumbled on us looking after him."
"What happened then?"
"I went back to the camp," said Maitland. "We loaded Newbold on a muleand took him with us. He was so crazy he didn't know what was happening,he went over the shooting again and again in his delirium. It wasawful."
"Did he die?"
"I don't think so," was the answer, "but really I know nothing furtherabout him. There were some good women in that camp, and we put him intheir hands, and I left shortly afterwards."
"I kin tell the rest," said old Kirkby. "Knowin' more about themountains than most people hereabouts I led the men that didn't go backwith Bob an' Newbold to the place w'ere he said his woman fell, an'there we found her, her body, leastways."
"But the wolves?" queried the girl.
"He'd drug her into a kind of a holler and piled rocks over her. He'dgone down into the canyon, w'ich was somethin' frightful, an' thenclimbed up to w'ere she'd lodged. We had plenty of rope, havin' broughtit along a purpose, an' we let ourselves down to the shelf where she wasa lyin'. We wrapped her body up in blankets an' roped it an' finallydrug her up on the old Injun trail, leastways I suppose it was madeafore there was any Injuns, an' brought her back to Evergreen camp,w'ich the only thing about it that was green was the swing doors on thesaloon. We got a parson out from Denver an' give her a Christianburial."
"It that all?" asked Enid as the old man paused again.
"Nope."
"Oh, the man?" exclaimed the woman with quick intuition.
"He recovered his senses so they told us, an' w'en we got back he'dgone."
"Where?" was the instant question.
Old Kirkby stretched out his hands.
"Don't ax me," he said. "He'd jest gone. I ain't never seed or heerd ofhim sence. Poor little Louise Rosser, she did have a hard time."
"Yes," said Enid, "but I think the man had a harder time than she. Heloved her?"
"It looked like it," answered Kirkby.
"If you had seen him, his remorse, his anguish, his horror," saidMaitland, "you wouldn't have had any doubt about it. But it is gettinglate. In the mountains everybody gets up at daybreak. Your sleeping bagsare in the tents, ladies, time to go to bed."
As the party broke up, old Kirkby rose slowly to his feet. He lookedmeaningly toward the young woman, upon whom the spell o
f the tragedystill lingered, he nodded toward the brook, and then repeated hisspeaking glance at her. His meaning was patent, although no one else hadseen the covert invitation.
"Come, Kirkby," said the girl in quick response, "you shall be myescort. I want a drink before I turn in. No, never mind," she said, asBradshaw and Phillips both volunteered, "not this time."
The old frontiersman and the young girl strolled off together. Theystopped by the brink of the rushing torrent a few yards away. The noisethat it made drowned the low tones of their voices and kept the others,busy preparing to retire, from hearing what they said.
"That ain't quite all the story, Miss Enid," said the old trappermeaningly. "There was another man."
"What!" exclaimed the girl.
"Oh, there wasn't nothin' wrong with Louise Rosser, w'ich she was LouiseNewbold, but there was another man. I suspected it afore, that's why shewas sad. W'en we found her body I knowed it."
"I don't understand."
"These'll explain," said Kirkby. He drew out from his rough hunting coata package of soiled letters; they were carefully enclosed in an oil skinand tied with a faded ribbon. "You see," he continued, holding them inhis hand, yet carefully concealing them from the people at the fire."W'en she fell off the cliff--somehow the mule lost his footin', nobodynever knowed how, leastways the mule was dead an' couldn't tell--shestruck on a spur or shelf about a hundred feet below the brink.Evidently she was carryin' the letters in her dress. Her bosom wasfrightfully tore open an' the letters was lying there. Newbold didn'tsee 'em, because he went down into the canyon an' came up to the shelf,or butte head, w'ere the body was lyin', but we dropped down. I was thefirst man down an' I got 'em. Nobody else seein' me, an' there ain't nohuman eyes, not even my wife's, that's ever looked on them letters,except mine and now yourn."
"You are going to give them to me?"
"I am," said Kirkby.
"But why?"
"I want you to know the hull story."
"But why, again?"
"I rather guess them letters'll tell," answered the old man evasively,"an' I like you, and I don't want to see you throwed away."
"Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story.Good night."]
"What do you mean?" asked the girl, curiously, thrilling to thesolemnity of the moment, the seriousness, the kind affection of the oldfrontiersman, the weird scene, the fire light, the tents gleamingghost-like, the black wall of the canyon and the tops of the mountainrange broadening out beneath the stars in the clear sky where theytwinkled above her head. The strange and terrible story, and now theletters in her hand which somehow seemed to be imbued with humanfeeling, greatly affected her! Kirkby patted her on the shoulder.
"Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story. Good-night."
The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado Page 9