CHAPTER XXII.
TWO STRANGE VISITORS.
Late one evening, when the savory odor of frying bacon, pancakes andcoffee mingled with the balsam-like aroma of the pines, and the riverwas singing loudly its eternal murmuring song, Jack, who had wandereda short distance from the others, came dashing back along a sort ofshaly trail made some time in the past by the feet of wanderingprospectors or trappers. They were camped up the river some distanceabove the scene of Tom and Sandy's adventure.
"Well, what's up now?" demanded Tom, looking up with flushed face andrumpled hair from the cooking fire.
The others regarded Jack questioningly.
"What is it, my boy?" asked Mr. Dacre, seeing that some unusualoccurrence was responsible for Jack's excitement.
"Visitors!" cried the lad.
"Visitors? I suppose Lady Wolf or Baroness Muskrat are coming to payus a call the noo," scoffed Sandy.
"Quit your joking, Sandy, these are real visitors. Regular company."
"Best bib-and-tucker folk?" demanded Tom.
"That's what. Better fry up some more bacon and get ready an extrasupply of other grub."
"Say, kindly have the goodness to explain what you are driving at,won't you?" pleaded Tom.
"Just this. Two regular wild west customers are coming down the trail.I kind of guess they'll be glad to accept any invitation we might beinclined to give them."
Jack knew that in the wild places the hospitality of any camp isgladly extended to the stranger, and that the news that visitors wereapproaching would be a pleasant surprise to these sojourners in thefar north. It was long since they had seen strange faces.
"Of course they are welcome to the best the camp affords," said Mr.Chillingworth heartily.
"You say that they are rather tough-looking customers, Jack?" askedTom rather anxiously.
Mr. Dacre set the lad's question aside with a laugh.
"Pshaw! You would hardly expect to find visitors in correct regaliafor calling in this section of the country," he said.
"Come down to that," agreed Tom, chiming in with his uncle's laughter,"I guess that we are pretty hard-looking cases ourselves."
Before they had time to comment on this remark, which was unmistakablya true one, the sound of footsteps coming down the loose, stony trailcould be plainly heard. A few minutes later two men came in sight.Both were typical products of the region.
One was tall, strapping and sun-browned, six foot two in hisstockings. His round, good-natured face was topped with a thatch ofcorn-yellow hair, which, with his light blue eyes and freshcomplexion, showed his Norse origin.
The other wayfarer was smaller and more compact, but as he bent underhis heavy pack they could see the tense muscles bulge and play underhis coarse blue shirt. He was tanned almost to a mahogany hue and, noless than his companion, bore the stamp of a battler in the lonelyplaces. A certain quiet air of watchfulness, of self-reliance andruggedness sufficiently displayed this quality.
The two men introduced themselves. The fair-haired one was OlafGundersen, for many years a dweller in the Yukon region. He hadpacked, trapped, hunted and prospected for many seasons in the wildestparts of Alaska. With his companion, Lafe Cummings, a wiry Iowan, hewas making a trail down the Yukon to be used later on when the twoestablished a pack train. From the proceeds of this venture theyhoped to reap a golden harvest, which their rough, adventurous liveshad so far failed to yield them.
They were bid a hearty welcome and before long the entire party,re-enforced by the two newcomers, were seated about the fire devouringtheir supper in a way that bade fair to call for a replenishment ofthe larder in the near future.
"Ah-h-h-h! dase bane good grub," sighed Olaf, as he finished up a hunkof cheese after disposing of two heaping saucerfuls of canned peaches,the latter opened as an especial compliment to the company.
"You're dead right there, Olaf," agreed Lafe in a high, nasal tone."You folks done us white and no mistake."
They sat around the fire late that evening, and the boys' eldersexplained the object of their presence in the region as freely as theythought advisable. Lafe and his partner were equally open indiscussing their affairs, and the boys listened with rapt attentionto the budget of tales the two hardy pioneers had to tell of the Yukonand its pleasures and perils. As they talked, the rushing voice of theriver and the deep sighing of the wind in the pines made a fittingaccompaniment to their Odyssey of the far north.
Lafe had just finished a picturesque tale of life in Dawson City inthe early days, when eggs were a dollar each and flour worth literallyits weight in gold, when, from the forest behind them, came a shrill,unearthly cry. It was like the shriek of a human creature in mortalagony and it cut the silence like a knife.
They all looked around, startled for an instant, and then Mr. Dacreexclaimed:
"A wild-cat!"
"That's what it is. One of them pesky varmints, sure enough," declaredLafe. "I mind me of a time in Nevady, when----"
But they were none of them listening to Lafe just then. Their eyeswere centered on Olaf.
An extraordinary change had come over the big, blonde Norwegian. Heglanced about him nervously, almost timorously. It was odd to see theeffect that the ululation of the wild cat crying out in the woods hadhad upon the strapping frontiersman. His light eyes held, for aninstant, all the fear of a frightened child. Then the cry died out andwith its passing, the fear faded from his face.
By common consent they looked at Lafe, as if seeking an explanationfor the phenomenon. Olaf glanced uneasily about as if he was halfafraid of being ridiculed for his momentary exhibition of alarm.
"One fears one thing, one is dead mortal scared of another,"volunteered Lafe at length. "I knowed an old lady at home thatwouldn't go nigh a cat. 'Nuther feller I hev in mind was as bold as alion in everything but one, an' that was spiders. Yes'ir, let a spidercome anigh Spence Higgins and he'd come purty near hollering out likea school gal that spied one of the critters on her best pink muslin."
"Yes, I suppose that we all have our pet dislikes," said Mr. Dacre.
"Wa'al, Olaf, he's got a heap more reason an' title to his dislikethan most of us, I reckon," said Lafe. "I'll bet a cookie right nowthat you thought that thar critter was a mounting lion fer a minute,na'ow, didn't yer, Olaf?"
The big Norseman smiled his slow smile.
"He bane sound powerful lake it, Lafe," he said at length, "an' das asoun' you know I don't bane lake. No, sir, he skoll make me baneplanty scared all right, I tale you."
"You had some adventure with a mountain lion one time?" asked Mr.Chillingworth, scenting a story.
"Aye. I skoll bet you may lafe, I bane have bad time with mountainlion one tame long ago," said Olaf slowly. "I never forgate him, Ibate you, no not so long as I skoll live."
"Tell 'em about it," urged Lafe, "go on. Then they'll see why you'veno reason to like the critters, though there's none round hereaboutsthat ever I heard tell of."
Olaf regarded the group about him with unblinking eyes and his slow,good-natured smile.
"You lake I bane tale you why I no lake mountain lion?" he asked.
"Yes, please, by all means," urged Mr. Dacre, who knew that it couldhave been no common adventure that had branded this big-limbed giantwith a dread of a creature which ordinarily is glad enough to givehuman beings a wide berth.
"Then I bane tale you why Oaf Gundersen give mountain lion the insideof the trail whenever as be I skoll meet him again," said theNorwegian.
"It all happened a long time ago," he began, and in telling his storywe shall not try to reproduce his odd, broken idioms, nor hisinimitable style, "a long time ago when the boys here must have beenlittle fellows. It was back in Californy where the creatures were asthick as blackberries and gave lots of trouble to the settlers and theminers. I was working a small mine and trying to run a small mountainranch at the same time. My living I eked out by hunting and trappingwhen I got a chance.
"One day while I was out hunting, a big mountain lio
n and his matecame down on the ranch and killed the only horse I had. I hunted themale for a week and then I found him and shot him down. But theaccount was not yet even. I determined to kill his mate, too.
"I tracked her for days but could never get close enough to her for ashot. The creature appeared to have an uncanny sense of my purpose ofrevenge. She always evaded me with what appeared to be almostsupernatural skill. Time after time I thought that I had her at mymercy, only to have her escape my rifle-fire unharmed.
"After some time devoted to this fruitless quest of vengeance, Ibegan to see the killing of this puma as a fixed purpose. Nothing elseseemed to matter much so long as I could kill the beast that had sooften evaded me.
"I used to start out early every day and return home only late atnight from the hunt, and always I was baffled. The she-puma stilllived in spite of my efforts. If she had been human I would have saidthat she laughed at me, for sometimes at night I could hear herscreaming in the forest like a big wild-cat, as if in defiance of me.
"At such times I would grit my teeth as I lay in my bunk and say tomyself. 'All right, my lady. It's a long lane that has no turning, andI'll never give up till I have killed you.'
"But the next day she would avoid me again, sometimes by not more thana hair's breadth; but it was enough. She carried her hide whole and Iwas still unrevenged for the death of my horse.
"One day I followed her trail to a part of the mountains where fallentrees, underbrush and jagged stones made the traveling hard. All atonce, after some half hour of scrambling forward, I found myselffacing a cave, a black, narrow opening in a cliff of grayish stonethat towered high above the forest.
"I knew as if by instinct that I had found the mountain lion's lair.But was she inside? That was the question. If she was, I determined tolie there till she came forth, even if it took days, and then despatchher without mercy.
"With this object in view I cast myself on my stomach in the midst ofa tangle of underbrush, and with my rifle all ready for instant use Ibegan my vigil.
"I lay there for quite some time," said Olaf, "and then, all at once,I began to hear sounds that made me prick my ears up. From inside thecave came whining little growls and mews almost like the crying ofkittens. Of course I knew almost instantly what caused the noise. Thepuma had young ones. They were what I heard.
"'Aha!' thought I, 'so much the better. Now I know I have you, mylady. When you come back to your cubs, I shall kill you and my revengewill be complete.'
"The thought gave me much satisfaction and I lay there listeningfeverishly for the slightest sound of the returning mother. But aftera while something happened that gave my thoughts a different trend.Out of the cave mouth there came tumbling two fuzzy, fussy littlemountain lion cubs. They looked like yellow balls of down. They satthere blinking in the sun for a while and then began playing just askittens do. It was a pretty sight, but I had other thoughts to occupyme just then. An idea had suddenly come to me.
"Why not take the cubs and raise them? I would be able to sell them tosome menagerie or zoo for a good sum when they grew older, and Iwould thus be repaid for the loss of my horse. The more I thought itover, the better my plan appeared to me. I resolved to put it intoinstant execution."
The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon Page 22