by Zane Grey
For some reason beyond Kalispel’s ken, Sydney rode directly behind him most of the way down this canyon, and she plied him with innumerable questions. And at many a place, where the stream roared over a fall or the pines and flowers and shade invited rest, or a beautiful glade opened up she would say: “Let’s camp here. It’s too lovely to pass by.”
And Kalispel would say: “Ride your boss, lady. This shore is no picnic.”
“But if I was particularly crazy about a place, wouldn’t you stop?”
“Wal, I reckon so, if you could persuade me you could be crazy about anyone—I mean thing.”
“Oh!” she replied, enigmatically.
Blair had a bad trip. He was so saddle-sore that he had to spend more and more time walking. The trail led up and down, endlessly, and it was rough, and in spots, dangerous.
Before sunset the bronze-walled canyon with its pine-fringed rims opened out into a wider and grander canyon from which came a low sullen roar.
“Hear that?” called Kalispel, turning to Sydney.
“Do you think I’m deaf? Oh, it makes my skin prickle.”
“That’s the roar of the Middle Fork,” declared Kalispel. “An’ dog-gone me! I’m shore afraid the meltin’ snow has raised the river.”
“Will we have to swim our horses across?”
“Gosh! I wish we could. But the danger is we’ll have three or four feet of swift water slidin’ over slippery rocks. An’ if a hoss rolls with you—good-by!”
“Heavens!... I should think you’d want to keep me with you a little while, anyway.”
“Sydney, I don’t savvy you,” he retorted. “But I’m tellin’ you I’d shore love to keep you with me always.”
“Yes? And you’re so wondrously brave with men.... Oh, the river! beautiful!—How wide and green and swift!... Dare we ever try to ford that?”
“We shore have to. But not here,” replied Kalispel, his keen eyes ranging the canyon.
Camus Creek spread wide and shallow over yellow ledges to flow into the river. At this junction the Middle Fork was twice as wide as the Salmon, and presented a thrilling and formidable spectacle, roaring around a dark-walled bend to slide green and hurrying onward, down under a colossal bronze-faced mountain wall into a purple gateway beyond. On the Camus Creek side sage-covered benches sloped down to banks where tall lofty pine trees bordered the river. The whole scene had a bigness and roughness that emphasized this opening into the wild Saw Tooth Range.
They forded the Camus to climb a sage-bench, from which a view of the vast, smooth, grassy slopes on the left, swelling and mounting to gold-mantled peaks, capped the climax of that splendid wilderness scene.
“I’m going to camp right here,” declared Sydney, and she dismounted.
“Alone?” queried her guide, smiling.
“But it’s sunset. We’ve come so far. Dad is ready to drop. And I—oh, I’ve deceived you. I’m ready to die.”
“Shore a couple more miles up river won’t kill you.”
“Kalispel, have you no heart?”
“Reckon I did have one awhile back. Come, pile on again, Lady.”
“Don’t you love beautiful places? Oh, I’m disappointed in you. Won’t you camp here—to please me?”
“Wal, if you put it that strong I reckon I will,” he drawled. “Fact is I’d camped here, anyhow. I just wanted you to coax me.”
“Indeed!—I wonder if my trust is misplaced.”
“Quién sabe,” he ended, sagely.
“Go away,” she waved. “I’ll take care of my horse.”
To Kalispel’s amaze and secret glee she not only unsaddled her mount, but hobbled him, too. She must have watched Kalispel at this task, for she executed it neatly. She scolded her father and drove him out to fetch in firewood. And then she essayed to help Kalispel at his manifold camp tasks.
“Dog-gone it! Get out of my way,” he ejaculated, mildly. “How do you expect me to get supper pronto?”
“But I want to help,” she protested.
“Wal, you’re terrible disturbin’.”
“How? I’m certainly not clumsy.”
“Gosh! You’re gracefulness itself. I reckon it’s your good looks.”
“Nonsense! You should be used to my looks by now....Please, Kalispel, let me learn. It fascinates me—the way you mix dough for biscuits.”
And she plumped herself down on her knees beside him, and rolling up her sleeves to expose strong round arms, she put her hands with his into the pan.
“Take yours out,” she said, presently.
“Reckon I can’t. They’re fast.”
She giggled. “Was there ever such a man?—You are holding mine.”
“So I am. Dog-gone!... Sydney, if you don’t want me to love you, this is no way to act.”
“We must eat, little boy. And I must learn to be a camp cook....And for that matter a—ranch cook”
“Yeah?—If I had any nerve——”
“Kalispel, never fear. You are the nerviest person I ever met in my whole life.”
“With men an’ guns, you mean?”
“I mean with helpless, innocent, trusting, tenderfoot girls,” she retorted. “The proof is in the pudding. No, the dough! You are still holding my hands.”
Kalispel surrendered and removed his floury hands from the pan.
“You ab-so-lute-lee don’t want me to love you?” he asked, sternly.
“I ab-so-lute-lee don’t,” she mimicked.
“Wal, you bake the biscuits—an’ be a murderer in another way,” he said, and got up.
Supper was late that night. Neither Kalispel nor Blair appeared to note that the biscuits were burnt and soggy. Kalispel heroically made way with several.
The wide canyon with its dark sky-high walls was an impressive place. The Blairs sat up for an hour around the camp fire.
“You’re gettin’ a touch of the real wild West here,” remarked Kalispel. “But the lonesomeness, an’ that strange feeling for which there’s no name, don’t grip your soul here like they will over in my valley. The voice of the stream is different. Wolves mourn on the slopes. An’ the old mountain thunders.”
“Thunders! How can a mountain thunder? Is it a volcano?” rejoined Sydney, greatly interested.
“I can’t say how it thunders, but it does. Makes you shiver when you wake up in the middle of the night. It’s the mountain on the north side of the valley. Twice as high as that an’ amazin’ to see. The whole front of it is a mile-high slope of many colors, bare as weathered earth can be. A terrible slant of loose dirt an’ gravel an’ clay. Seems like it is alive an’ growls deep inside.”
“Uh! Sounds kind of spooky,” declared Sydney.
“Reckon you’ve hit it, spooky!”
Next morning Kalispel rounded up the stock in the gray of dawn and had his party on the way early. The trail leading up the river was not so well defined as the one they had been following. In some places of rocky foundations it disappeared altogether. But the travel was fairly good and almost level, so that the little caravan made perhaps three miles an hour.
Kalispel soon called the attention of the Blairs to a tremendous slope of weathered rock on the other side of the river. It was a slide of talus so high that the ledge from which the mass of loose shale and rock had eroded could not be located from below. Deer and elk and bear trails bisected it low down. It terminated, not many rods below, in a rough white rapid that swept quickly into a deep eddy. If a horse was carried that far he could not scale the steep bluff of rock and would unquestionably be lost in the heavy rapids below.
They plunged on. The icy cold water splashed up in Kalispel’s face. Sydney had not yet realized actual danger. Then suddenly her horse slipped. The water surged up to her saddle. She shrieked and appeared about to throw herself off.
“Stay on!” yelled Kalispel. The animal righted himself. “Pull him downstream a little.”
“I thought I—was a gone gosling then,” she called, and turned a startled face t
oward him.
“You’re doin’ fine....Not much more now. We’ll make it.”
He kicked and spurred his own mount, that was scarcely doing better than Sydney’s. And they entered the bad stretch, slanted a little downstream. Kalispel urged his horse on ahead and closer to hers.
“Give me your hand,” he shouted, reaching precariously for her. And he caught hers just in the nick of time, for her horse went down and rolled. Kalispel dragged the girl free from the saddle. His own animal labored, slipped, plunged and snorted furiously. Sydney’s weight in the racing current was too great. Besides, the current pulled her head under. Kalispel dragged her up, caught her blouse, and would have succeeded in drawing her across his pommel, but his horse fell. Kalispel swung his leg and slid off. He went almost under. Then with his boots touching the bottom he drew Sydney’s head out of the water, and leaning back against the current he used it to hold him up and push him along while he edged toward the shore. When he was about to be carried off his feet a boulder helped again to catch him. By accurate calculation and prodigious effort he reached the shallow water just above the rapid.
He lifted the girl in his arms, and staggering over the slippery stones he gained the bank and laid her down on a mat of pine needles. She was conscious and not in any way harmed.
Kalispel stood erect to gaze upstream to see how Blair had fared. To his relief the big horse was wading out in the shallow water. Both the other horses, unencumbered with riders, were doing likewise. The burros were already out on the bank.
“Lucky! Wal, I guess!” exclaimed Kalispel as he knelt beside the girl.
“Sydney, it was a close call....How are you?”
“Frozen—stiff,” she whispered.
“No wonder. Gee! wasn’t that water cold? I’ll have a fire in a jiffy....Shore you’ve no hurts?”
Her wet face was pallid and her great violet eyes beginning to lose their dark shade of terror.
“You saved—my life,” she said, in wondering gratitude.
“Sydney, shore we both darn near went over the rapids....An’ that would have been all day.”
She smiled wanly and clung to him. “I’m sorry I said that—last night You know—about what I didn’t want—you to do....It isn’t true.”
Next morning Kalispel found the trail he and Jake had made with their burros coming down off the mountain. He rejoiced. Somehow a vague fear had attended him. Now all was well. He had but to travel slowly and husband the strength of the Blairs, and in four days, or less, he would be back with Sam in the valley of gold. He had no fear that his generous-hearted brother might resent the coming of Blair and Sydney. Sam was right, however, in wanting a month or more of staking claims and digging gold before the stampede came. Eventually a stampede was inevitable.
Kalispel did not trifle with his happiness by importuning Sydney about her shy confession. That had been enough to lift him to the seventh heaven. She seemed to be a girl of an infinite variety of moods, the last of which, since the river episode, was one of shyness and reserve. She no longer teased him or made ambiguous remarks or met his worshipful eyes. Moreover, the strain of the strenuous horseback ride had begun to tell upon her. That night, high up on the windy, grassy hilltop, at the end of the day’s climb, she said: “Lift me down, Kalispel.”
The next day provided easier travel, owing to a winding trail around the slopes of the round bald mountains. He found, too, that he was getting on faster than he had expected. The horses made half again as much progress as he and Jake had made on foot.
Toward the middle of the afternoon of the third day Kalispel ascertained that they were almost over the divide, from the ridge of which they could look right down upon Sam’s valley.
He had dreamed a good deal this last day, so that the hours had been as minutes. A thousand times he had glanced back to make sure Sydney’s slender graceful form was a reality, that the pensive face with its dark, challenging eyes was there to gladden his sight. And many of those times had been rewarded by a smile, a gleam or flash, or wave of gauntleted hand, something sweet to enhance his dream. Love, fortune, happiness were within his grasp. And he would gaze about him, over the vast spread of jagged peaks and forested domes, or down into the rough gulches, or out upon the colored bare slopes so characteristic of the region, or up at an isolated ledge where the sheep and goats kept motionless vigil—all with a sense that the thing which had saved him was this continual reversion to nature, to the lonely silence of the hills, to the heights and the depths of the rocks which called for endurance, for the infinite breathing whole that had given him faith.
As he approached the last few rods of the ascent to the summit of the divide he slowed down to let Sydney catch up. The burros passed on over out of sight. On the left rose the bulk of a bronze peak, and on his right towered the mighty half of the stupendous slope of defaced mountain-side.
“Oh, how wild and ghastly... but beautiful!” panted Sydney as she joined him. “Kal, I shall hug you—maybe—for fetching me here—giving me this—this tremendous experience.”
“Kal?” he echoed, in a transport.
“Yes, Kal,” she retorted, archly.
“Let me tell you somethin’,” he pleaded.
“Well, you’ve been pretty good lately—for you,” she temporized, but her eyes were eloquent and warm.
“Sydney, in a moment more we’ll be lookin’ down into my valley. An’ it’ll be the happiest moment of my life.”
“Little boy, why so pale and solemn? It certainly will not be the unhappiest of mine.” She stretched a gloved hand to him. They went on.
Kalispel saw the fringed tip of the south slope rise about the divide.
“I smell smoke,” said Sydney.
“So do I,” replied Kalispel, in surprise. “That’s strange.”
The horses stamped up on top. Kalispel swept his eager gaze downward to the gray valley of rocks, the silver winding stream, the grand bare slope looming sinisterly beyond. But what was it that flashed and moved? White tents! Columns of blue smoke rising! Men wading in the stream!
“My Gawd!” burst out Kalispel, his heart contracting.
“Oh! Your valley is full of people!” cried Sydney, in dismay.
CHAPTER
* * *
5
KALISPEL stared down into the valley with a terrible sickening realization that the spectacle below represented a stampede of miners. Long before Jake could have gotten to Boise and back the gold-diggings had been discovered.
“Smoke! Tents! Men puttering in the brook! What does it all mean?” exclaimed Blair, in amazed consternation.
“Look! There’s a pack-train coming down the valley,” cried Sydney.
“Of all the cursed luck!” exclaimed Kalispel, in bitter passion. His sweeping gaze took in a new and well-defined trail coming in from the south. Heavily laden mules wagged their canvas packs, bristling with shovels and picks, along this trail. Prospectors swung behind them, with the stride of men who had found the pot at the foot of the rainbow. Kalispel at last turned to his friends.
“Folks, I’m so sony I want to die,” he said, huskily. “Our diggings have been discovered... an’ the stampede has begun.”
“Oh, Kalispel—don’t look—so—so dreadful!” entreated Sydney. “We know it couldn’t be your fault.”
“Hell, boy! if what you say is true—and, by golly! it looks like it—why, there’s enough gold for all,” added Blair, manfully swallowing his disappointment.
“Let’s rustle down,” replied Kalispel. But he was inconsolable. He divined a blow, the crushing extent of which he could not grasp. Sam would tell him.
He urged his horse down after the burros. The Blairs followed. As Kalispel descended his gaze sought to encompass all the activity in that valley. Tents glanced white and gray in the afternoon sunlight. They appeared to run in two long lines down the middle of the bench, leaving a lane between. That lane was a street. Already a town had been laid out. A keener survey gathered even more
dismaying facts. Camps had been located close together all the way down the stream as far as he could see. That meant claims. All available gold-bearing ground could not have been taken up yet, but no doubt the rich claims had been staked.
The descent of that pass seemed interminable to Kalispel. He never looked back once at Sydney. He pushed the string of burros at a pace that threatened slipping of their packs. At last he drove them out on the level bench, not far from the stream, where they began to crop the green grass. Kalispel dismounted. Whatever he had to encounter here he wanted to face on foot. Thought of Sam’s rich quartz claim somehow did not mitigate his queer misgivings. As he threw his saddle, a familiar low deep rumble brought him up with a start. The old bald-faced mountain had growled ominously.
“Hear that, Blair?” he asked, as his followers arrived.
“Hear what?”
“Oh, I did. Thunder!” cried Sydney. She was wide-eyed and agitated, and gray of face from fatigue. She reached out her hands for Kalispel to lift her down, and as he leaped to her side she almost fell into his arms.
“You poor kid!” he said, thickly. “Set here an’ rest....Blair, you watch the burros while I go see what’s what.”
Kalispel strode over the rocky bench down to the stream to the nearest camp. Bed-rolls, packs, utensils and stone fireplaces, picks and shovels, piles of wood, all kinds of camp paraphernalia, appeared to line the stream. Of the two nearest miners one was bending over a rock in the stream, and the other, a tall, bearded, wet and dirty young man, evidently having espied Kalispel, advanced a little to meet him.
“Howdy, stranger. See you found a new way in,” he replied, genially.
“That’s the way I went out two weeks or so ago,” replied Kalispel, curtly.
“Was you in hyar—two weeks ago?” queried the other, incredulously.
“Yes. Me an’ my two brothers.”
“Wal, it’s a pity you didn’t stay on. Mebbe one of you fellars was responsiibie for the news of a gold strike that hit Challis about a week ago.”
“I wasn’t. I went out with my brother to pack in supplies. Maybe he got drunk an’ gave the snap away.”