CHAPTER XXII.
THE OLD HOME-CAMP.
The silence which followed that ejaculation was like the hush of earthbefore a thunder-storm.
Not a syllable passed the lips of the boys as they followed Herb intothe log hut, but feeling seemed wagging a startled tongue in eachfinger-tip which convulsively pressed the rifles.
And not another articulate sentence came from the guide; only his throatswelled with a deep, amazed gurgle as he reached the interior of theshanty, and dropped his eyes upon the individual who raised that queerchanting.
On a bed of withered spruce boughs, strewn higgledy-piggledy upon thecamp-floor--mother earth--lay the form of a man. Thin wisps ofblue-black hair, long untrimmed, trailed over his face and neck, whichlooked as if they were carved out of yellow bone. His figure wasskeleton-like. His lips--the lips which at the entrance of the strangersnever ceased their wild crooning--were swollen and fever-scorched. Hisblack eyes, disfigured by a hideous squint, rolled with the sick fanciesof delirium.
Cyrus and the Farrars, while they looked upon him, felt that, even ifthey had never heard Herb's exclamation, they would have had nodifficulty in identifying the creature, remembering that story which hadthrilled them by the camp-fire at Millinokett. It was Herb Heal'straitor chum--the half-breed, Cross-eyed Chris.
And Herb, backing off from the withered couch as far as the limitedspace of the cabin would allow, stood with his shoulders against themouldy logs of the wall, his eyes like peep-holes to a volcano, gulpingand gurgling, while he swallowed back a fire of amazed excitement anddefeated anger, for which his backwoods vocabulary was too cheap.
A flame seemed scorching and hissing about his heart while heremembered that during some hour of every day for five years, since lasthe had seen the "hound" who robbed him, he had sworn that, if ever hecaught the thief, he would pounce upon him with a woodsman's vengeance.
"I couldn't touch him now--the scum! But I'll be switched if I'll do athing to help him!" he hissed, the flame leaping to his lips.
Yet he had a strange sensation, as if that vow was broken like anegg-shell even while he made it. He knew that "the two creatures whichhad fought inside of him, tooth and claw," about the fate of his enemy,were pinching his heart by turns in a last hot conflict.
His eyes shot flinty sparks; he drew his breath in hard puffs; hisknotted throat twitched and swelled, while they (the man and the brute)strove within him; and all the time he stood staring in grisly silenceat the half-breed.
The latter still continued his Indian croon; though from the crazy rollof his malformed eyes it was plain that he knew not whether he chantedabout the stars, his old friends and guides, or about anything else inheaven or earth.
But one thing quickly became clear to Cyrus, and then to the Farrarboys,--less accustomed to tragedy than their comrade,--that this strangepersonage, in whose veins the blood of white men and red men met,carrying in its turbid flow the weaknesses of two races, was singing hisswan-song, the last chant he would ever raise on earth.
At their first entrance, as their bodies interfered with the broad lightstreaming through the cabin-door, Chris had lifted towards them ascared, shrinking stare. But, apparently, he took them for the shadowswhich walked in the dreams of his delirium. Not a ray of recognitionlightened the blankness of that stare as Herb's big figure passed beforehim. Letting his eyes wander aimlessly again from log wall to log wall,from withered bed to mouldy rafters, his lips continued their crooning,which sank with his weakening breath, then rose again to sink once more,like the last wind-gusts when the storm is over.
Suddenly his shrunken body shivered in every limb. The humming ceased.His yellow teeth tapped upon each other in trouble and fear. He raisedhimself to a squatting posture, with his knee-bones to his chin, thewisps of hair tumbling upon his naked chest.
"It's dark--heap dark!" he whimpered, between long gasps. "Can't strikethe trail--can't find the home-camp. Herb--Herb Heal--ole pard--'twas Itook 'em--the skins. 'Twas--a dog's trick. Take it out--o' my hide--ifyer wants to--yah! Heap sick!"
Not a ray of sense was yet in the half-breed's eyes. An imaginary,vengeance-dealing Herb was before him; but he never turned a glancetowards the real, and now forgiving, old chum, who leaned against thewall not ten feet away. His voice dropped to a guttural rumble, in whichIndian sounds mingled with English.
But the flame at Herb's heart was quenched at the first whimpered word.His stiffened muscles and lips relaxed. With a gurgle of sorrow, hecrossed the camp-floor, and dropped into a crawling position on thefaded spruces.
"Chris!" he cried thickly. "Chris,--poor old pard,--don't ye know me?Look, man! Herb is right here--Herb Heal, yer old chum. You're 'heapsick' for sure; but we'll haul you off to a settlement or to our camp,and I'll bring Doc along in two days. He'll"--
But Cross-eyed Chris became past hearing, his flicker of strength hadfailed; he keeled over, and lay, with his limp legs curled up, faint andspeechless, upon the dead evergreens.
"You ain't a-going to die!" gasped Herb defiantly. "I'll be jiggered ifyou be, jest as I've found you! Say, boys! Cyrus! Neal! rub him a bit,will ye? We ain't got no brandy, I'll build a fire, and warm somecoffee."
It was strange work for the hands of the Bostonian, and stranger yet forthose of young Farrar,--son of an English merchant-prince,--thisstraightening and rubbing of a dying half-Indian, a "scum," as Herbcalled him, drunkard, and thief. Yet there was no flash of hesitation onFarrar's part, as they brought their warm friction to bear upon thechill yellow skin, piebald from dirt and the stains of travel, as if itwere the very mission which had brought them to Katahdin.
They had grave thoughts meanwhile that the old mountain was decidedlygloomy in its omens, first a thunder-storm and then a tragedy; for, rubas they might with brotherly hands, they could not pass their ownwarmth into the body of the half-breed, though he still lived.
But the mountain had not ended its terrors yet.
Its mumbling lips began to speak, with a threatening, low at first likemuttered curses, but swelling into a nameless noise--a rumbling,pounding, creeping, crashing.
"Great Governor's Ghost! what's that?" gasped Cyrus, stopping hisrubbing. "Pamolah or some other fiend seems to be bombarding us from thetop now."
"It's more thunder rolling over us," said Neal; but as he spoke histongue turned stiff with fear.
"Sounds as if the whole mountain was tumbling to pieces. Perhaps it'sthe end of the world," suggested Dol, as a succession of booming shocksfrom above seemed to shake the camping-ground under his feet.
There was one second of awful indecision. The boys looked at each other,at the dying man, at the roof above them, in the stiffness of uncertainterror.
Then a figure leaped into their midst, with an armful of dry sticks,which he dashed from him. It was Herb, with the fuel for a fire. And,for the first and last time in his history, so far as these friends ofhis knew it, there was that big fear in his face which is most terriblewhen it looks out of the eyes of a naturally brave man.
"Boys, where's yer senses?" he yelled cuttingly. "Out, for your lives!Run! There's a slide above us on the mountain!"
"Him?" questioned Cyrus's stiff lips, as he pointed to the breathingwreck on the spruce boughs. "He's not dead yet."
"D'ye think I'd leave him? Clear out of this camp--you, or we'll beburied in less'n two minutes! To the right! Off this ridge! Got yerrifles? I'm coming!"
The woodsman flung out the words while his brawny arms hoisted the bodyof his old chum. His comrades had already disappeared when he turned andsprang for the camp-door with his limp burden, but his moccasined footkicked against something.
A great hiccough which was almost a sob rose from Herb's throat. It washis one valuable possession, his 45-90 Winchester rifle, his secondself, which he had rested against the log wall.
"Good-by, Old Blazes!" he grunted. "You never went back on me, but Ican't lug him and you! My stars! but that was a narrow squeak."
For, as he cleared the cam
ping-ground with a blind dash, with head bentand tongue caught between his clenched teeth, with a boom like a Gatlinggun, a great block of granite from the summit of Katahdin struck therock which sheltered the old camp, breaking a big piece off it, and shoton with mighty impetus down the mountain.
An avalanche of loose earth, stones, and bushes, brought down by thisbattering-ram of the landslide, piled themselves upon the log hut,smashing to kindling-wood its walls, which had stood many a hard storm,burying them out of sight, and flinging wide showers of dust and smallmissiles.
A scattered rain of clay caught Herb upon the head, and lodged, some ofit, on the little pack containing axe and lunch which was strapped uponhis shoulders.
He shook. His grip loosened. The limp, dragging body in his arms sankuntil the feet touched the earth.
But with the supreme effort, moral and physical, of his life, the forestguide gathered it tight again.
"I'll be blowed if I'll drop him now," he gasped. "He ain't nothing buta bag o' bones, anyhow."
Only a strong man in the hour of his best strength could have done it.With a defiant snort Herb charged through the choking dust-clouds,pelted by flying pebbles, sods, and fragments of sticks.
"This way, boys!" he roared, after five straining, staggering minutes,as he caught a glimpse of his comrades ahead, tearing off to the right,as he had bidden them. "You may let up now. We're safe enough."
They faced back, and saw him make a few reeling, descending steps, thenlay what now seemed to be an out-and-out lifeless man on a bed of mossbeneath a dwarfed spruce.
The nerves of the three were in a jumping condition, their brains feltbefuddled, and their hearts sinking and melting in the midst of theirbones, from the astounding shock and terror of the land-slide. But, asthey beheld the guide deposit his burden, with its helplessly trailinghead and limbs, a cheer in unsteady tones rang above the slackeningrattle of earth and stones, and the far-away boom of the granite-blockas it buried itself in the forest beneath.
"Hurrah! for you, Herb, old boy," yelled Cyrus triumphantly. "That wasthe grittiest thing I ever saw done' Hurrah! Hurrah! Hoo-ray!"
The English boys, open-throated, swelled the peal.
But their cheering broke off as they came near, and saw the mask-likeface over which Herb bent.
"Is he gone, poor fellow?" asked Garst. "What do you suppose causedit--the slide?"
"Why, it was a thundering big lump of granite from the top o' themountain," answered Herb, replying to the second question. "That plaguyheavy rain must ha' loosened the earth around it the clay and bushesthat kep' it in place. So it got kind o' top-heavy, and came slumpingand pitching down, slow at first, and then a'most as quick as acannon-ball, bringing all that pile along with it. I've seen the likebefore; but, sho! I never came so near being buried by it."
He pointed as he spoke to the late camping-ground, with its lodgment ofclay, sods, pygmy trees, and pieces of rock, big and little.
"HERB CHARGED THROUGH THE CHOKING DUST-CLOUDS.]
"The old camp's clean wiped out, boys," he said; "and I guess one of themen that built it is gone, or a'most gone, too. Stick your arm underhis head, Cyrus, while I hunt for some water."
Garst did as he was bidden, but his help was not needed long. The guidewent off like a racer, covering the ground at a stretching gallop. Heremembered well the clear Katahdin spring, which had supplied thehome-camp during that long-past trapping winter. He returned with histin mug full.
When the ice-cold drops touched Chris's forehead, and lay on his partedlips, gem-like drops which he was past swallowing, his malformed eyesslowly opened. There was intelligence in them, shining through thegathering death-film, like a sinking light in a lantern.
He was groping in the dim border-land now, and in it he recognized hisold partner with shadowy wonder; for delirium was past, with the otherstorms of a storm-beaten life.
"Herb," he gurgled in snatches, the words being half heard, half guessedat, "'twas I--took 'em--the skins--an' the antlers. I wanted--to get--tothe ole camp--an' let you--take it out o' me--afore I--keeled over."
Herb had taken Cyrus's place, and was upholding him with a tendernesswhich showed that the guide's heart was in this hour melted to a jelly.Two tears were dammed up inside his eyelids, which were so unused totears that they held them in. He neither wiped nor winked them awaybefore he answered:--
"Don't you fret about that--poor kid. We'll chuck that old businessclean out o' mind. You've jest got to suck this water and try to chipperup, and--we'll make camp together again."
But Herb knew as well as he knew anything that the man who had robbedhim was long past "chippering up," and was starting alone to the unseencamping-grounds.
"How long since you got back here?" he' asked, close to the dulling ear.
"Couldn't--keep--track--o' days. Got--turned--round--in woods.Lost--trail--heap--long--getting--to--th' old--camp."
The words seemed freezing on the lips which uttered them. Herb asked nomore questions. Silence was broken only by the rolling voice of theland-slide, which had not yet ceased. Occasional volleys of loose earthand stones, dislodged or shaken by the down-plunging granite, stillkept falling at intervals on the buried camp.
At one unusually loud rattle, Chris's lips moved again. In those strangegutturals which the boys had heard in the hut, he rumbled an Indiansentence, repeating it in English with scared, breaking breaths.
It was a prayer of her tribe which his mother had taught him to say atmorning and eve:--
"God--I--am--weak--Pity--me!"
"Heap--noise! Heap--dark!" he gasped. "Can't--find--th' old--camp."
"You're near it now, old chum," said Herb, trying to soothe him. "It'sthe home-camp."
"We'll--camp--to-ge-ther?"
"We will again, sure."
* * * * *
The last stone pounded down on the heap above the old camp; and Herbgently laid flat the body of the man he had sworn to shoot, closed themalformed eyes, and turned away, that the fellows he was guiding mightnot see his face.
Camp and Trail: A Story of the Maine Woods Page 23