The Silver Canyon

by Fenn, George Manville

  Walking, too, was difficult, and there were so many thorns, that, out of kindness to his child, the Doctor proposed that they should return to the tent; signals were made to the men at a distance, and thoroughly enjoying the cool, delicious air of approaching eve, they had nearly reached the tent, when about a hundred yards of the roughest ground had to be traversed—a part that seemed as if giants had been hurling down huge masses of the mountain to form a new chaos, among whose mighty boulders, awkward thorns, huge prickly cacti, and wild plums, grew in profusion.

  “What a place to turn into a wild garden, Bart!” said the Doctor, suddenly.

  “I had been thinking so,” cried Maude, eagerly. “What a place to build a house!”

  “And feed cattle, eh?” said the Doctor. “Very pretty to look at, my child, but I’m afraid that unless we could live by our guns, we should starve.”

  “Hough—hough—hough!” came from beyond a rugged piece of rock.

  “O father!” cried Maude, clinging to his arm.

  “Don’t hold me, child,” he said fiercely, “leave my arm free;” and starting forward, gun in hand, he made for the place from whence the hideous half-roaring, half-grunting noise had came.

  Before he had gone a dozen steps the sound was repeated, but away to their right. Then came the sharp reports of two guns, and, evidently seeing something hidden from her father and Bart, Maude sprang forward while they followed.

  “Don’t go, Missy, don’t go,” shouted Juan, and his cry was echoed by Harry; but she did not seem to hear them, and was the first to arrive at where a huge bear lay upon its flank, feebly clawing at the rock with fore and hind paw, it having received a couple of shots in vital parts.

  “Pray keep back, Maude,” cried Bart, running to her side.

  “I wanted to see it,” she said with an eager glance around at her father, who came up rapidly. “What is it?”

  “It’s the cub half grown of a grizzly bear,” said Dr Lascelles, speaking excitedly now. “Back, girl, to the tent; the mother must be close at hand.”

  “On, forward; she’s gone round to the right,” shouted the men behind, who had been trying to get on by another way, but were stopped by the rocks.

  “Back, girl!” said the Doctor again. “Forward all of you, steadily, and make every shot tell. Where is Joses?”

  Just then the deep hoarse grunting roar came again from a hollow down beyond them, and directly after, as they all hurried forward, each man ready to fire at the first chance, they heard a shot, and directly after came in sight of Joses, with his double rifle to his shoulder taking aim at a monstrous bear that, apparently half disabled by his last shot, was drawing itself up on a great shelving block of stone, and open mouthed and with blood and slaver running from its glistening ivory fangs, was just turning upon him to make a dash and strike him down.

  Just then a second shot rang out, and the bear rolled over, but sprang to its feet again with a terrific roar, and dashed at her assailant.

  It was impossible to fire now, lest Joses should be hit; and though he turned and fled, he was too late, for the bear, in spite of its huge, ox-like size, sprang upon him, striking him down, and stood over him.

  But now was the time, and the Doctor’s and Bart’s rifles both rang out, the latter going down on one knee to take careful aim; and as the smoke cleared away the bear was gone.

  “She’s made for those rocks yonder,” cried Juan, excitedly. “We’ll have her now, master. She didn’t seem hurt a bit.”

  “Be careful,” cried the Doctor. “Maude, help poor Joses. Go forward, Bart, but mind. She may be fatally wounded now.”

  Bart was for staying to help the man who had so often been his companion, but his orders were to go on; he knew that Joses could not be in better hands; and there was the inducement to slay his slayer to urge him forward as he ran with his rifle at the trail over the rocks, and was guided by the savage growling he could hear amidst some bushes to where the monster was at bay.

  It was fast approaching the moment when all would be in gloom, and Bart knew that it would be impossible for them to camp where they were with a wounded grizzly anywhere near at hand. Slain the monster must be, and at once; but though the growling was plain enough, the bear was not visible, and ammunition is too costly out in the desert for a single charge to be wasted by a foolish shot.

  Juan, Harry, and Sam were all in position, ready to fire, but still the animal did not show itself, so they went closer to the thicket, and threw in heavy stones, but without the least effect, till Juan suddenly exclaimed that he would go right in and drive the brute out.

  Bart forbade this, however, and the man contented himself with going a little closer, and throwing a heavy block in a part where they had not thrown before.

  A savage grunt was the result, and judging where the grizzly lay, Juan, without waiting for counsel, raised his rifle and fired, dropping his weapon and running for his life the next moment, for the shot was succeeded by a savage yell, and the monster came crashing out in a headlong charge, giving Juan no cause for flight, since his butt made straight for Bart, open mouthed, fiery-eyed, and panting for revenge.

  Bart’s first instinct was to turn and run, his second to stand his ground and fire right at the monster, taking deadly aim.

  But in moments of peril like his there is little time for the exercise of judgment, and ere he could raise his rifle to his shoulder and take careful aim the bear was upon him, rising up on its hind legs, not to hug him, as is generally supposed to be the habits of these beasts, but to strike at him right and left with its hideously armed paws.

  Bart did not know how it happened, but as the beast towered up in its huge proportions, he fired rapidly both barrels of his piece, one loaded with heavy shot for the turkeys, the other with ball, right into the monster’s chest.

  As he fired Bart leaped back, and it was well that he did so, for the grizzly fell forward with a heavy thud, almost where he had been standing, clawed at the rocks and stones for a few moments, and then lay perfectly still—dead.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine.

  First Searches for Gold.

  The three men uttered a loud cheer, and ran and leaped upon their fallen enemy, but Bart ran back, loading his piece as he went, to where he had left the Doctor with poor Joses.

  Bart felt his heart beat heavily, and there was a strange, choking feeling of pain at his throat as he thought of rough, surly-spoken Joses, the man who had been his guide and companion in many a hunt and search for the straying cattle; and now it seemed to him that he was to lose one who he felt had been a friend.

  “Is he—”

  Bart panted out this much, and then stopped in amazement, for, as he turned the corner of some rocks that lay between him and the tent, instead of addressing the Doctor, he found himself face to face with Joses, who, according to Bart’s ideas, should have been lying upon the stones, hideously clawed from shoulder to heel by the monster’s terrible hooks. On the contrary, the rough fellow was sitting up, with his back close to a great block of stone, his rifle across his knees, and both hands busy rolling up a little cigarette.

  “Why, Joses,” panted Bart, “I thought—”

  “As I was killed? Well, I ain’t,” said Joses, roughly.

  “But the bear—she struck you down—I saw her claw you.”

  “You see her strike me down,” growled Joses; “but she didn’t claw me, my lad. She didn’t hit out far enough, but she’s tore every rag off my back right into ribbons, and I’m waiting here till the Doctor brings me something else and my blanket to wear.”

  “O Joses, I am glad,” cried Bart, hoarsely; and his voice was full of emotion as he spoke, while he caught the rough fellow’s hands in his.

  “Don’t spoil a fellow’s cigarette,” growled Joses roughly, but his eyes showed the pleasure he felt. “I say are you glad, though?”

  “Glad?” cried Bart, “indeed, indeed I am.”

  “That’s right, Master Bart. That�
�s right. It would have been awkward if I’d been killed.”

  “Oh, don’t talk about it,” cried Bart, shuddering.

  “Why not, my lad? It would though. They’d have had no end of a job to dig down in this stony ground. But you’ve killed the bear among you?”

  “Yes; she’s dead enough.”

  “That’s well. Who fired the shot as finished her? Don’t say you let Juan or Sam, or I won’t forgive you.”

  “I fired the last, and brought her down,” said Bart quietly enough.

  “That’s right,” said Joses, “that’s right; you ought to be a good shot now.”

  “But are you not hurt at all?” asked Bart.

  “Well, I can’t say as I arn’t hurt,” replied Joses, “because she knocked all the wind out of me as she sent me down so quickly, and she scratched a few bits of skin off as well as my clothes, but that don’t matter: skin grows again, clothes don’t. Humph, here comes the Doctor with the things.”

  “A narrow escape for him, Bart. But how about the grizzly?”

  “Dead, sir, quite dead,” replied Bart. “Are we likely to see Mr Grizzly as well?”

  “No, I think not, my boy. Mother and cubs generally go together.”

  “Now, Joses, let me dress your back.”

  “No, thank ye, master, I can dress myself, bless you.”

  “No, no, I mean apply some of this dressing to those terrible scratches.”

  “Oh, if that’s what you mean, master, go on. Wouldn’t they be just as well without?”

  “No, no; turn round, man.”

  Joses obeyed, and Bart shuddered as he saw the scores made by the monster’s hideous claws, though Joses took it all quietly enough, and after the dressing threw his blanket over his shoulders, to walk with his master and Bart, to have a look at the grizzly lying there in the gathering shades of night.

  It was a monster indeed, being quite nine feet long, and massive in proportion, while its great sharp curved claws were some of them nearly six inches from point to insertion in the shaggy toes.

  Such a skin was too precious as a trophy to be left, and before daylight next morning, Juan, Harry, and Sam were at work stripping it off, Bart, when he came soon after, finding them well on with their task, Joses being seated upon a fragment of rock contentedly smoking his cigarette and giving instructions, he being an adept at such matters, having stripped off hundreds if not thousands of hides in his day, from bison cattle and bear down to panther and skunk.

  “I ain’t helping, Master Bart,” he said apologetically, “being a bit stiff this morning.”

  “Which is a blessing as it ain’t worse,” said Harry; “for you might have been much worse, you know.”

  “You mind your own business,” growled Joses. “You’re whipping off great bits o’ flesh there and leaving ’em on the skin.”

  “Well, see how hard it is when it’s cold,” grumbled Harry; and then to Juan, “I shan’t take no notice of him. You see he’s a bit sore.”

  Harry was quite right, poor Joses being so sore that for some days he could not mount his horse, and spent his time in drying the two bear-skins in the sun, and dressing them on the fleshy side, till they were quite soft and made capital mats for the waggon.

  One morning, however, he expressed himself as being all right, and whatever pains he felt, he would not show the slightest sign, but mounted his horse, and would have gone forward, only the Doctor decided to spend another day where they were, so as to more fully examine the rocks, for he fancied that he had discovered a metallic deposit in one spot on the previous night.

  It was settled, then, that the horses should go on grazing in the little meadow-like spot beside a tiny stream close by the waggon, and that the Doctor, Juan, Joses, and Bart should explore the ravine where the Doctor thought he had found traces of gold, while Sam and Harry kept watch by the camp.

  For days past the neighbourhood had been well hunted over, and with the exception of a snake or two, no noxious or dangerous creature had been seen; the Indians seemed to have gone right away, and under the circumstances, all was considered safe.

  Explorations had shown them that the place they were in rose like, as it were, a peninsula of rocks from amidst a sea of verdure. This peninsula formed quite a clump some miles round, and doubtless it had been chosen as a convenient place by the bear, being only connected with the mountain slope by a narrow neck of débris from the higher ground.

  As the party went on, the Doctor told Bart, that his intention was to journey along by the side of the mountain till he found some valley or canyon, up which they could take the waggon, and then search the rocks as they went on whenever the land looked promising.

  Upon this occasion, after a few hours’ walk, the Doctor halted by the bed of a tiny stream, and after searching about in the sands for a time he hit upon a likely place, took a small portion of the sand in a shallow tin bowl, and began to wash it, changing the water over and over again, and throwing away the lighter sand, till nothing was left but a small portion of coarser fragments, and upon these being turned out in the bright sunshine and examined, there were certainly a few specks of gold to be seen, but so minute that the Doctor threw them away with a sigh.

  “We must have something more promising than that,” he said. “Now I think, Bart, you had better go along that ridge of broken rock close up to the hills, and walk eastward for a few miles to explore. I will go with Juan to the west. Perhaps we shall find a likely place for going right up into the mountains. We’ll meet here again at say two hours before sundown. Keep a sharp look-out.”

  They parted, and for the next two hours Bart and Joses journeyed along under what was for the most part a wall of rock fringed at the top with verdure, and broken up into chasms and crevices which were filled with plants of familiar or strange growths.

  Sometimes they started a serpent, and once they came upon a little herd of antelopes, but they were not in search of game, and they let the agile creatures go unmolested.

  The heat was growing terrific beneath the sheltered rock-wall, and at last, weakened by his encounter with the bear Joses began to show signs of distress.

  “I’d give something for a good drink of water,” he said. “I’ve been longing this hour past, and I can’t understand how it is that we haven’t come upon a stream running out into the plain. There arn’t been no chance of the waggon going up into the mountains this way.”

  “Shall we turn back?”

  “Turn back? No! not if we have to go right round the whole world,” growled Joses. “Come along, my lad, we’ll find a spring somewheres.”

  For another hour they tramped on almost in silence, and then all at once came a musical, plashing sound that made Joses draw himself up erect and say with a smile:

  “There’s always water if you go on long enough, my lad. That there’s a fall.”

  And so it proved to be, and one of extreme beauty, for a couple of hundred yards farther they came upon a nook in the rough wall, where the water of a small stream poured swiftly down, all foam and flash and sparkle, and yet in so close and compact a body that, pulling a cow-horn from his pocket, Joses could walk closely up and catch the pure cold fluid as it fell.

  “There, Master Bart,” he said, filling and rinsing out the horn two or three times, “there you are. Drink, my lad, for you want it bad, as I can see.”

  “No, you drink first, Joses,” said the lad; but the rough frontier man refused, and it was not until Bart had emptied the horn of what seemed to be the most delicious water he had ever tasted, that Joses would fill and drink.

  When he did begin, however, it seemed as if he would never leave off, for he kept on pouring down horn after horn, and smacking his lips with satisfaction.

  “Ah, my lad!” he exclaimed at last, “I’ve drunk everything in my time, whiskey, and aguardiente, and grape wine, and molasses rum, but there isn’t one of ’em as comes up anywhere like a horn of sparkling water like that when you are parched and burnt up with thirst.�
��

  “It is delicious, Joses,” said Bart; “but now had we not better go back?”

  “Yes, if we mean to be to our time; but suppose we go a little lower down there into the plain, and try if there’s anything like what the master’s hunting for in the sands.”

  They went down for about a quarter of a mile to where there was a smooth sandy reach, and a cup being produced, they set to and washed several lots of sand, in each case finding a few specks but nothing more, and at last they gave it up, when Joses pointed to some footprints in the soil, where there was evidently a drinking-place made by deer.

  “What are those?” said Bart, “panthers?”

  “Painters they are, my lad, and I daresay we could shoot one if we had time. Make a splendid skin for little Miss. I dessay we could find a skunk or two hereabouts. Eh! nasty? Well, they are, but their fur’s lovely.”

  They saw neither panther nor skunk, though footprints, evidently made the previous night, were plentiful about the stream; and now, as time was getting on, they sturdily set themselves to their backward journey, Joses praising the water nearly all the way, when he was not telling of some encounter he had had with Indian or savage beast in his earlier days.

  “Do you think we shall see any more of the Indians, Joses?” said Bart at last.

  “What, Old Arrow—in—the—arm!”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure to,” said Joses. “He’s a good fellow that is. ’Taint an Indian’s natur to show he’s fond of you, but that chap would fight for the master to the last.”

  “It seemed like it the other day, but it was very strange that he should go off as he did.”

  “Not it, my lad. He’s gone to watch them Injuns, safe.”

  “Then he will think us ungrateful for going away.”

  “Not he. Depend upon it, he’ll turn up one of these days just when we don’t expect it, and sit down just as if nothing had happened.”

  “But will he find our trail over such stony ground?”