*CHAPTER XXII*
_*The Mud-Slide*_
From our scrutiny of the mountain above us the sheriff turned aside.
"If we have to leave here, I reckon I just have a look at that hole o'theirs and see what like it is to my mind," said he, "with all duerespect to your judgment, sir," (this to Apache Kid) "and out of a kindo' curiosity."
He bade the Indian go with him to tend the windlass and Apache Kid and Ireturned to the cabin, Slim following ostentatiously at our heels, andremaining at the door watching the sheriff.
I plucked my friend by the sleeve. This was the first opportunity wehad had for private speech since the sheriff's arrival.
"Apache," I said, "what is the meaning of this arrest? Is it thehalf-breed that came with Mr. Pinkerton who has garbled the tale of hisdeath for some reason?"
He shook his head.
"No," said he, "not the half-breed. I 'll wager it is some of Farrell'sgang that are at the bottom of it."
"But they," I began, "they were all----" and I stopped on the word.
"Wiped out?" he said. "True; but you forget Pete, the timid villain."
"But he," I said, "he was away long before that affair of poor Mr.Pinkerton."
"Yes, but doubtless the Indian made up on him, and whether they talkedor not Pete could draw his conclusions. And a man like Pete, one ofyour coyote order of bad men, would just sit down and plot and plan----"
"But even then," I said, "they can't prove a thing that never occurred;they can't prove that you did what you never did."
He looked at me with lenient, sidewise eyes, not turning his head, andthen pursed his lips and gazed before him again at the door, whereSlim's long back loomed against the storm-darkened sky.
"All this," said he, "is guesswork, of course; for the sheriff isreticent and so am I. But as for _proving_, I dare say Pete could get acrony or two together to swear they saw me. O! But let this drop," hebroke out. "If there's anything that makes me sick now, it's buildingup fabrications. Let us look on the bright side. Gather together yourbelongings and thank Providence for sending us the convoy of the sheriffto see us safely back to civilisation with our loot."
"You 're a brave man," I said. But he did not seem to hear.
"What vexes me," said he, "is to think that Miss Pinkerton may haveheard this yarn and placed credence in it."
The entrance of the sheriff, with a serious face, put an end to theconversation then.
"Well," said Apache Kid, "what do you think?"
"I think this is a derned peculiar mountain," said the sheriff, "and Ireckon you boys had better pack your truck. That hole 's full."
"Water?" said Apache Kid.
"No," said the sheriff: "full of mountain. You can see the upward sideof it jest sliding down bodily in the hole, props and all. They mustha' had some difeeculty in it, the way they had it wedged. Younoticed?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's just closed up now, plumb. Went together with a suck, likethis yere," and he imitated it with his mouth. "Reckon we better getready to pull out, if needs be. What in thunder----" he broke off.
Apache Kid, Slim, and the sheriff looked at each other. You should haveheard the sound. It was like the sound of one tearing through a web ofcloth--a giant tearing a giants web and it of silk.
"The horses!" the sheriff cried; but the Indian had already gone. "Howabout yours, young feller?"
I made for the door to follow the Indian and catch the horses, out ontothe hillside--and saw only half the valley. The other half was hidbehind the wall of rain that bore down on us.
The Indian was ahead of me, scudding along to where the lone pine stood;but the terrified horses saw us coming and ran to meet us, quivering andsweating.
Then the rain smote us and knocked the breath clean out of me. I hadheard of such onslaughts but had hardly credited those who told of them.I might have asked pardon then for my unbelief. I was sent flying onthe hillside and was like a cloth drawn through water before I could getto my feet again. The Indian was scarcely visible, nor his three horses.I saw him prone one moment, and again I saw him trying to hold themtogether as he--how shall I describe it?--_lay_ aslant upon the gale. Isucceeded in quieting my beast, and then turned and signed to him that Iwould lead one of his beasts also, for when I opened my mouth to speak,he being windward of me, the gust of the gale blew clean into my lungsso that I had to whirl about and with lowered head gasp out the breathand steady myself. But he signed to me to go, and nodded his head inreassurance; though what he cried to me went past my ear in anincomprehensible yell.
Thus, staggering and swaying, we won back to the rib beside the cabin,but this we could scarcely mount. So the Indian, coming level with me,stretched his hand and signed that he would hold my pack-horse with hisown. I saw the sheriff battling with the gale and the dim forms ofApache Kid and Slim a little ahead of him, Slim and Apache Kid weightedgreatly down. How we ever succeeded in getting the saddles on thehorses seemed a mystery. But the beasts themselves were in a state ofcollapse with terror. I dare say they would have stampeded had therebeen any place to stampede to; but there was no place. For a good fiveminutes you might have thought we were hauling on saddles and drawing upstraps and cinches on the bed of a lake that had a terrible undercurrentin it. Then the first onslaught passed and we saw the hill clear for amoment, but still lashed with hail, so that our hands were stiff andnumb. The sheriff and Apache Kid were floundering back to the cabin,and it was then that the catastrophe that the Indian had feared tookplace. Mercifully, it was not so sudden as an avalanche of snow; for,at the united yell of the three of us who cowered there with the beasts,the sheriff and Apache Kid looked up at the toppling mountain. Aye,toppling is the word for it. The lower rim of the chasm I told you ofwas falling over and spreading down the surface of the hill. It was aslow enough progress to begin with, and the two men seemed to waver andconsider the possibility of again reaching the cabin. Then they sawwhat we beheld also--the whole face of the mountain below the chasmsagged forward. It looked as though there was a steadfast rib along thetop; but barely had they gained the rocky part where we stood, than thatapparent backbone collapsed upon the lower part, and, I suppose with theshock of the impact on the rest, completed the mischief. The sound ofit was scarce louder than the hiss of the rain, a multitude of softbubblings and squelchings. But if there was with this fall no sound aswhen a rock falls, it was none the less awful to behold.
We saw the mountain slide bodily forward, and the one thought must haveflashed into all our minds at once, "If this rock on which we stand isnot a rib of the hill, but is simply imbedded in that mud mountain, weare lost."
That of course could scarcely be, but nevertheless we all turned andfled along the ridge, horses and men, and, as we looked over ourshoulders, there was the farther spur of rock, which had attracted thethree prospectors, slipping forward and down, whelmed in the slide. Therest was too sudden to describe rightly. A great crashing of trees anda rumbling, now of rocks, came up from the lower valley, and themountain absolutely subsided in the centre and went slithering down. Weposted along the face of the hill here to the south, I think each of usexpecting any moment to feel the ground fail under him. But at last wegained the hard, rocky summit of a ridge that ran edgewise into thatblack mountain. There we paused and looked back.
There was now a dip in the ridge, where before had been an eminence; andfarther along, where a new precipice had been made by this fall, we saw(where the rain drove) huge pieces of earth loosen and fall, one afterthe other, upon the blackness below. But these droppings were just asthe last shots after a battle, and might keep on a long while, sometimesgreater, sometimes less, but never anything to compare with the firstfall.
But we could not remain there. A fresh bending over of the tree-tops,like fishing-rods when the trout runs, a fresh flurry of wind, and asudden assault of hail sent us from that storm-fronting height to seeks
helter below.
One would have thought that there could be no dry inch of ground in allthe world; the hills were spouting foaming torrents, and in our flight,as we passed the place up which Canlan and I had come, I saw thewatercourse no longer dry, but a turbulent rush of waters.
It was farther along the hill, so anxious were we to pass beyond thepossibility of any further crumbling, that we made a descent. Our faceswere bruised with the hail and we were stiff with cold, when at last wecame to what you might call an islet in the storm.
The hill itself, quite apart from its watercourses, was all a-trickleand a-whisper with water, but here was a little rise where the waterwent draining around on either side, and in the centre of the rise amonster fir-tree, the lowest branches about a dozen feet from the groundwhich all around the tree was dust-dry, so thick were the branchesoverhead.
Under this natural roof we sheltered; here we built our fire, driedourselves, and cooked and ate the meal of which we stood so greatly inneed; and after that we sat and hearkened, with a subdued gladness and akind of peaceful excitement in our breasts, to the voices of thestorm--the trailing of the rain, the cry of the wind, and the falling oftrees.
So we spent the night, only an occasional raindrop hissing in our littlefire or blistering in the dust. But by morning the itching of the antshad us all early awake. It was in a pause in the breakfast preparationsthat Slim remarked:
"Well, I guess anybody that wants that there ore now will find it inbits strewed about the valley. It won't need no crushing before it getssmelted."
"Yes," said the sheriff, "there's abundance o' 'floats' lying in amongthat mud, but, now that I think on it, that was the tail end they wereon, them three fellers. In the course o' time yonder chunk was brokenoff and sagged away into yonder wedge-like place of mud. I bet you thelead is right in this hill to back of us. Suppose you was prospectin'along through the woods up there now and found any of them floats, why,you 'd go up to look for the lead right there. It would n't astonish meone little bit to find that with the mud sliding away there it wouldjest be a case o' tunnelling straight in."
Apache Kid became so interested in this suggestion that he wanted to goback there and then to see what the storm and the mud-slide had laidbare, but the sheriff broke in on him:
"Sorry, sir; I understand your curiosity, and I 'm right curious myself;but I 'm sheriff first, and interested in mineral after:" and then thehard, callous side of the man peeped through, and yet with thatwhimsical look on his chubby face: "But after I 've seen you safelykickin' I don't know but what I might come along and have a study of thelay of the land now."
"Well," said Apache Kid, lightly, "to a man in your position it wouldn't matter so much, though the assay was nothing very great."
"No, sir; that's so," said the sheriff. "So you see that it's advisablefor a man to get a position in life. Sheriff Carson of Baker City hasexpressed in glowin' terms his faith in the near future of the valley,"he said, like a man reading.
Apache Kid laughed.
"I suppose Sheriff Carson's expression of faith would soon enough get upa syndicate to work it!"
"I would n't just say no," said the sheriff.
There was more of such banter passed, and suggestions as to where thecity--Carson City--would be built; but when Apache Kid suggested thestagecoach route the sheriff scoffed.
"Stage-route nothing!" he said. "Railroad you mean, spur-line clear toCarson City."
"The country is sure opening up and developing to lick creation," saidSlim; but at that the sheriff frowned. He might banter with hisprisoner, but not with his subordinate.
So we saddled up again, the sheriff looking with interest on the heavygunny-bags that we stowed carefully away again among the blankets on ourpack-horse, but making no comment on them. He must have known prettywell what they contained.
Apache Kid's eyes and his met, and something of the look I have alreadytold you of, that came at times, grew on Apache Kid's face, and a sortof reply to it woke in the sheriff's. But, as I say, no word passed onthe matter then. Apache Kid had taken care to bring our treasures fromthe cabin before thinking of aught else.
That return journey with the sheriff, which had been so suddenly provedimpossible, was to bring our firearms which the sheriff had appropriatedon his arrival and made Slim set in a corner. The sheriff himself wasnot in a very happy mood, quite snappy because of that foiled attempt.He had thrown off his cartridge-belt in the cabin, and in the flurry atthe end had only been able to secure his rifle in addition to hisblankets. How many charges were in its magazine I did not know. He hadworn his cartridge-belt apart from the belt to which his revolver hung,and in the latter were no cartridge-holders.
Part of the sheriff's "shortness" when speaking to Slim was due to thefact, I think, that Slim, intent upon getting out the provisions, hadcome away without a thought for any arms at all. But the Indian hadmade up for Slim, for he had not unbuckled his arsenal, and in additionto his revolver had, on either side of his tanned and fringed coat,cartridge pockets with four shells on either side. The loss of ourweapons (Apache's and mine) mattered little.
But this is all by the way, and was not so carefully considered at thetime as these remarks would lead you to think. I mention it here at allsimply because of what happened later. We were not seers or prophets tobe able at the time to know all that this shortage of ammunition was tomean.
Enough of that matter, then, and as for the journey through thewilderness, which was by Canlan's route now, at an acute angle from ourformer route, I need not tire you with a description. It was just theold story of plod, plod, plod over again; of trees and open glades andsilence, and at nightfall the forest voices that you know of already.
After three days of this plodding we sighted a soaring blue mountainridge with snow in its high corries and this as I guessed was BakerRidge; but it took us a good day's journey to come to its base, eventhough the valley between was but scantily wooded. It was on theafternoon of the fourth day that we came to the eastern shoulder ofBaker Ridge and lost sight for a space of the valley behind ere wesighted the one ahead, travelling as on a roof of the world where wereonly scattered blackberry bushes and rocks strewn like tombstones ortipped on end like Druidical stones.
Then the falling sides of the southern steep came to view, bobbing upbefore us, and on the first plateau of the descent the sheriff had someprivate talk with Slim who presently, with a final nod to a final wordof instruction, set off with a sweep of his pony's tail and loped awayout of sight, going down sheer against the sky over the plateau's verge.
When we, following more slowly, arrived at that point he was nowherevisible, having evidently pushed on speedily. Nor at the third leveldid we have any sight of him, though now we caught a glimpse of thefirst sign of civilisation--a feather of steam puffing up away to leftamong the scrubby trees, indicating the Bonanza mine; and a littlebeyond it another plume of steam from the McNair mine. A little belowus there was a running stream and this being a sheltered fold of thehill, I suppose, defended from the east and north, there grewhoneysuckle there and the scent of it came to us most refreshingly.There we sat down, apparently, from the sheriff's manner, to await someturn of events.
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