"Indians only are tabooed, but none of them have shown up, not even his runner, and I guess you can speak to him if you want to; it isn't a thing most ladies would like to do, though," he added.
"I suppose not," she said good-humoredly, "but then, I've known the man for something over a year, and am not at all afraid—in fact, I'd rather like to do it and have something to horrify the ladies at the ranch with. Think of it! An interview with a horse-thief—perhaps a duet with him all alone in the middle of the night. Oh, yes, that's too good to miss. But I must hurry up, or they will be sending someone after me."
At the door of the shack, however, she paused a moment in what might be trepidation, her hand laid hesitatingly on the saddle, as if in doubt whether to remount or enter the shanty, from which she could hear the low refrain of a song of their cultus corrie—"Tsolo, tsolo!"
"The guard will not leave the door?" she whispered; and Sergeant Kelp concluded that, after all, she was pretending to greater nerve than she possessed.
"Never fear," he returned; "I will call him out to hold your horse, and he won't stir from the door. By the way, I'll have someone to see you home when you're ready to go. Good-night."
Then the guard was called out, and a moment later the visitor slipped in, the prisoner never turning his head or noticing the exchange until she spoke.
"Jack!"
He turned quickly enough.
"God A'mighty, girl! What are you doing here?"
She thought of the ears, possibly listening ears, on the other side of the door, and her tone was guarded and careless, as it had been with the Sergeant, as she laughed and answered in Chinook:
"To pay a visit; what else?"
She noticed with exultation that it was only rope he was tied with—his hands and his feet, as he sat on the bunk—a plaited rope of rawhide; strong enough when strengthened by a guard opposite and a loaded gun; but without the guard and with a keen knife!
She checked him in the midst of a passionate protest against her coming.
"I am here, so that fact is settled," she said quietly. "I didn't come for fun, and we haven't any time to lose. I brought you a letter; it is in this," she said.
"You have seen Kalitan?"
He took from her the rubber case and extracted the letter from it, but scarcely noticed it, his eyes were turned so anxiously to her face.
"Yes; and you had better read it," she advised, walking back to the door.
"Rachel—"
"Read it; let them see you!" and she opened the door wide and stepped out as if to make sure of the guard's presence.
"It's all right, Miss, I'm here," he whispered, looking past her to the prisoner opening the letter and throwing the envelope in the fire. "I'll not stir from here with the beast. Don't be uneasy;" and then she turned back and closed the door. She had seen he was not close enough to listen.
"Jack," she said, coming back to him, "you must get out of this. Mowitza is at the door; I have brought the things you will need. Can you make a dash for it and get away?"
He looked at her in utter amazement.
"I didn't know it until to-night," she continued; "this is your chance, before the others get back—if they ever do get back! God help them!"
"What do you mean? Where are they?" And his hand, tied as it was, caught her own quickly.
"They are in a death-trap, in that gully back of the Tamahnous ground. You know where—right over the peak from the old mine. They've been there since dark, hedged in by the Kootenais, who are only waiting for daylight to come. Heaven help our men when it does come!"
"The Kootenais? It can't be them. They are not hostile."
"Not yesterday," she agreed bitterly, "but they are to-day. They sent a messenger of good-will to camp this morning, the grandson of Grey Eagle. He was shot down, almost in sight of camp, by one of the soldiers, and the braves he had brought, the best in the tribe, attempted a rescue. Our cavalry pursued them, and were led into that ravine. The Indians knew the ground, and our men didn't. At the end of the narrow pass, the reds rolled boulders down the mountain and closed it up, and then cut off retreat; and there they are, waiting for daylight or starvation—God knows what!"
"Who told you this?"
"Kalitan; he met an Indian trapper who had passed the gulch but a little while before. He came directly to me. The whites here blame you for helping the trouble—the beginning it, the—"
"You mean the horse stealing?" he said, looking at her curiously.
"Yes." Her eyes were on the floor; she did not see that scrutiny. "And you must get out of here before word comes of those men penned up there. There would be no waiting for trial then; they would shoot you."
"And that is what you came for?"
"Yes;" and she drew a sharp knife—an Indian knife—from her belt under the shawl. "With a quick stroke, the severed the knotted cords and they fell from his wrists; then she dropped on her knees, a flash, once, twice, of the blade in the light, and he stooped and raised her.
"You are doing this for me," he said, drawing her to him, "without knowing whether I deserve shooting or not?"
"Don't speak of that part of it!" she burst out. "When I let myself think, I feel as if I am going crazy!"—then she stopped short. "And a crazy woman just now would handicap you some. No, Jack, we need all of our wits for to-night—here," and unfastening the belt from under her shawl, she buckled it about him. It contained two loaded revolvers.
"It's the first time I've armed you as I've seen sweethearts or wives do," she said, looking up at him. "It may be the last. I only ask one thing—you will not, unless it is the last means of saving your own life, turn one of these against my friends?"
Even then, the weakness of the man in him came uppermost.
"But if it is to save my own life?"
Her hands went quickly over her eyes, as if to shut out sight or thought.
"Don't ask me—only go—and—take care of yourself!"
He caught the hands from her eyes, kissing her fiercely—exultantly.
"Then I am first to you—nearer than all the rest! My girl, you've proved it to-night, and I'll show you! If you know how to pray, pray for me to-night—for me and the men in that death-trap. Do you hear? I am going now. Here is this letter; it will tell you all. If I never come back, tell Prince Charlie he is right at last—that I believe him. He will understand. My girl—mine—it is not an eternal good-bye. I will come back if I live, and I will have to live long enough for that! Here, just once, kiss me, my girl—my girl!"
The next instant she was flung from that embrace and fell with a faint scream to the floor.
The guard dashed in, and was dextrously tripped by an unlooked-for figure close to the wall, his gun wrenched from him, and a staggering blow dealt that sent him to his knees.
Clouds had swept over the cold stars, and the sentry could see but dimly the equestrian figure that came clattering down the avenue.
"Hadn't you better wait for company, Miss?" he called, but no answer was given; and in much wonder, he was about to call again, when pistol-shots from the shack aroused the camp. He called a halt; that was heeded no more than his question, and he sent a random shot after the flying figure—not for the purpose of hitting the girl, but to impress on her the duty of a sentry and some idea of military rule. Before the last dull thud of hoofs in the snow had ceased to be heard, Roberts had staggered to the door, firing wildly, and calling to stop the prisoner—to stop the horse-thief.
There was nothing in the camp to do it with. He was gone—everyone was blaming everybody else for it; but no one thought of blaming the girl who lay in a dead faint on the floor, where he had flung her, that none might think she had let him go willingly. And Miss Rachel was cared for very tenderly, and a man was sent to the ranch to assure Mrs. Hardy of her safe-keeping, waking Mrs. Hardy out of a delicious sleep, and mystifying her completely by the information. The only one about the house who might have helped elucidate happened to be remarkably sound asleep at th
e time the messenger arrived—an Arrow encased in the quiver of rest.
* * *
CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH THE LOST MINE.
An hour before day in the Kootenais! Not the musical dawn of that early autumn, when all the woods were a-quiver with the fullness of color and sound; when the birds called to each other of the coming sun, and the little rills of the shady places moistened the sweet fern and spread its fragrance around and about, until one could find no couch so seductive as one on the amber grasses with the rare, all-pervading scents of the virgin soil.
Not any of those seductions solaced or made more bitter the watch of the men who stood hopeless in the snow of that treacherous ravine. Not even a fire dared be lit all the night long, because of those suddenly murderous natives, who, through knowing the secrets of the cleft earth, held their fates at the mercy of eager bronze hands.
"And one man who knew the country could have prevented this!" groaned Hardy, with a thought of the little wife and Miss Margaret. How would they listen to this story?
"If we had Genesee with us, we should not have been penned up in any such fashion as this," decided Murray, stamping back and forward, as many others were doing, to keep their blood in circulation—for what?
"Hard to tell," chimed in the scout from Idaho. "Don't know as it's any better to be tricked by one's own gang than the hostiles. Genesee, more'n likely, was gettin' ready for this when he run off the stock."
Just then something struck him. The snow made a soft bed, but the assailant had not stopped to consider that, and quick as light his knee was on the fallen man's chest.
"Take it back!" he commanded, with the icy muzzle of a revolver persuading his meaning into the brain of the surprised scout. "That man is no horse-thief. Take it back, or I'll save the Indians the trouble of wasting lead on you."
"Well," reasoned the philosopher in the snow, "this ain't the damnedest best place I've ever been in for arguin' a point, an' as you have fightin' ideas on the question, an' I haven't any ideas, an' don't care a hell of a sight, I'll eat my words for the time bein', and we'll settle the question o' that knock on the head, if the chance is ever given us to settle anything, out o' this gully."
"What's this?" and though only outlines of figures could be distinguished, the voice was the authoritative one of Captain Holt. "Mr. Stuart, I am surprised to find you in this sort of thing, and about that squaw man back in camp. Find something better to waste your strength for. There is no doubt in my mind now of the man's complicity—"
"Stop it!" broke in Stuart curtly; "you can hold what opinion you please of him, but you can't tell me he's a horse-thief. A squaw man and adopted Indian he may be and altogether an outlaw in your eyes; but I doubt much your fitness to judge him, and advise you not to call him a thief until you are able to prove your words, or willing to back them with all we've got left here."
All they had left was their lives, and Stuart's unexpected recklessness and sharp words told them his was ready as a pledge to his speech. None cared, at that stage of the game, to question why. It was no time for quarrels among themselves when each felt that with the daylight might come death.
Afterward, when the tale was told, no man could remember which of them first discovered a form in their midst that had not been with them on their entrance—a breathless, panting figure, that leaned against one of their horses.
"Who is it?" someone asked.
"What is it?"
No one answered—only pressed closer, with fingers on triggers, fearing treachery. And then the panting figure raised itself from its rest on the horse's neck, rose to a stature not easily mistaken, even in that light, and a familiar, surly voice spoke:
"I don't reckon any of you need be puzzled much to find out; hasn't been such a long time since you saw me."
"By God, it's Genesee!"
And despite the wholesale condemnation of the man, there was not a heart that did not grow lighter with the knowledge. They knew, or believed, that here was the one man who had the power to save them, if he cared to use it; but would he?
"Jack!"
Someone, at sound of his voice, pushed through the crowd with outstretched hand. It was not refused this time.
"I've come for you," was all Genesee said; then he turned to the others.
"Are you willing to follow me?" he asked, raising his voice a little. "The horses can't go through where I've got to take you; you'll have to leave them."
A voice close to his elbow put in a word of expostulation against the desertion of the horses. Genesee turned on the speaker with an oath.
"You may command in a quiet camp, but we're outside of it now, and I put just a little less value on your opinion than on any man's in the gulch. This is a question for every man to answer for himself. You've lost their lives for them if they're kept here till daylight. I'll take them out if they're ready to come."
There was no dissenting voice. Compared with the inglorious death awaiting them in the gulch, the deliverance was a God-send. They did not just see how it was to be effected; but the strange certainty of hope with which they turned to the man they had left behind as a horse-thief was a thing surprising to them all, when they had time to think of it—in the dusk of the morning, they had not.
He appeared among them as if a deliverer had materialized from the snow-laden branches of cedar, or from the close-creeping clouds of the mountain. They had felt themselves touched by a superstitious thrill when he was found in their midst; but they knew that, come as he might, be what he would, they had in him one to whom the mountains were as an open book, as the Indians knew when they tendered him the significant name of Lamonti.
Captain Holt was the only rebel on the horse question; to add those to the spoils of the Indians was a bitter thing for him to do.
"It looks as if we were not content with them taking half our stock, but rode up here to leave them the rest," he said, aggressively, to nobody in particular. "I've a notion to leave only the carcasses."
"Not this morning," broke in the scout. "We've no time to wait for work of that sort. Serves you right to lose them, too, for your damned blunders. Come along if you want to get out of this—single file, and keep quiet."
It was no time for argument or military measures for insubordination; and bitter as the statement of inefficiency was, Captain Holt knew there were some grounds for it, and knew that, in the eyes of the men, he was judged from the same standpoint. The blind raid with green scouts did seem, looking back at it, like a headlong piece of folly. How much of folly the whole attack was, they did not as yet realize.
It was not far that Genesee led them through the stunted, gnarled growth up the steep sides of the gulch. Half-way to the top there were, in the summer-time, green grass and low brush in which the small game could hide; but above that rose a sheer wall of rock clear up to where the soil had gathered and the pines taken root.
In the dusk they could see no way of surmounting it; yet there was no word of demur, not even a question. He was simply their hope, and they followed him.
And their guide felt it. He knew few of them liked him personally, and it made his victory the greater; but even above that was the thought that his freedom was due to the girl who never guessed how he should use it.
He felt, some way, as if he must account to her for every act she had given him the power to perform, as if his life itself belonged to her, and the sweetness of the thought was with him in every step of the night ride, in every plan for the delivery of the men.
At the very foot of the rock wall he stopped and turned to the man next him. It was Hardy.
"It's a case of 'crawl' here for a few lengths; pass the word along, and look out for your heads."
The next instant he had vanished under the rock wall—Hardy following him; then a flicker of light shone like a star as a guide for the others, and in five minutes every man of them had wriggled through what seemed but a slit in the solid front.
"A regular cave, by hooky!" said
the moral guide from Idaho, as he stood upright at last. His voice echoed strangely. "Hooky! hooky! hooky!" sounded from different points where the shadows deepened, suggesting endless additions to the room where they stood.
Genesee had halted and was splitting up some pine for a torch, using the knife Rachel had cut his bonds with, and showing that the handle was stained with blood, as were the sticks of pine he was handling.
"Look for some more sticks around here, and lend a hand," he said. "We need more than one torch. I burnt up what I had in working through that hole. I've been at it for three hours, I reckon, without knowing, till I got the last stone away, whether I'd be in time or find daylight on the other side."
"And is that what cut your hands?" asked Lieutenant Murray. "Why, they're a sight! For heaven's sake, what have you been doing?"
"I found a 'cave-in' of rock and gravel right at the end of that tunnel," answered Genesee, nodding the way they had just come, and drawing their notice to fresh earth and broken stone thrown to the side. "I had no tools here, nothing but that," and he motioned toward a mallet-like thing of stone. "My tools were moved from the mine over to Scot's Mountain awhile back, and as that truck had to be hoisted away, and I hadn't time to invite help, it had to be done with these;" and he held out his hands that were bleeding—a telling witness of his endeavors to reach there in time. And every man of them felt it.
There was an impulsive move forward, and Hardy was the first to hold out his hand. But Genesee stepped back, and leaned against the wall.
"That's all right, Hardy," he said, with something of his old careless smile. "I'm glad you're the first, for the sake of old times; but I reckon it would be playing it pretty low down on a friend to let him take me in on false pretenses. You see I haven't been acquitted of horse-stealing yet—about the most low-lived trade a man can turn to, unless it is sheep-stealing."
"Oh, hell!" broke in one of the men, "this clears the horse business so far as I'm concerned, and I can bet on the other boys, too!"
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