by Zane Grey
“Ho! Ho! when hell freezes over—if we must!”
Jones found one 45-90 cartridge in all the outfit, and with that in the chamber of his rifle, once more struck south. Spruce trees began to show on the barrens and caribou trails roused hope in the hearts of the hunters.
“Look in the spruces,” whispered Jones, dropping the rope of his sled. Among the black trees gray objects moved.
“Caribou!” said Rea. “Hurry! Shoot! Don’t miss!”
But Jones waited. He knew the value of the last bullet. He had a hunter’s patience. When the caribou came out in an open space, Jones whistled. It was then the rifle grew set and fixed; it was then the red fire belched forth.
At four hundred yards the bullet took some fraction of time to strike. What a long time that was! Then both hunters heard the spiteful spat of the lead. The caribou fell, jumped up, ran down the slope, and fell again to rise no more.
An hour of rest, with fire and meat, changed the world to the hunters; still glistening, it yet had lost its bitter cold its deathlike clutch.
“What’s this?” cried Jones.
Moccasin tracks of different sizes, all toeing north, arrested the hunters.
“Pointed north! Wonder what thet means?” Rea plodded on, doubtfully shaking his head.
Night again, clear, cold, silver, starlit, silent night! The hunters rested, listening ever for the haunting mourn. Day again, white, passionless, monotonous, silent day. The hunters traveled on—on—on, ever listening for the haunting mourn.
Another dusk found them within thirty miles of their cabin. Only one more day now.
Rea talked of his furs, of the splendid white furs he could not bring. Jones talked of his little muskoxen calves and joyfully watched them dig for moss in the snow.
Vigilance relaxed that night. Outworn nature rebelled, and both hunters slept.
Rea awoke first, and kicking off the blankets, went out. His terrible roar of rage made Jones fly to his side.
Under the very shadow of the tepee, where the little musk-oxen had been tethered, they lay stretched out pathetically on crimson snow—stiff stone-cold, dead. Moccasin tracks told the story of the tragedy.
Jones leaned against his comrade.
The giant raised his huge fist.
“Jackoway out of wood! Jackoway out of wood!”
Then he choked.
The north wind, blowing through the thin, dark, weird spruce trees, moaned and seemed to sigh, “Naza! Naza! Naza!”
CHAPTER 11
ON TO THE SIWASH
“Who all was doin’ the talkin’ last night?” asked Frank next morning, when we were having a late breakfast. “Cause I’ve a joke on somebody. Jim he talks in his sleep often, an’ last night after you did finally get settled down, Jim he up in his sleep an’ says: ‘Shore he’s windy as hell! Shore he’s windy as hell’!”
At this cruel exposure of his subjective wanderings, Jim showed extreme humiliation; but Frank’s eyes fairly snapped with the fun he got out of telling it. The genial foreman loved a joke. The week’s stay at Oak, in which we all became thoroughly acquainted, had presented Jim as always the same quiet character, easy, slow, silent, lovable. In his brother cowboy, however, we had discovered in addition to his fine, frank, friendly spirit, an overwhelming fondness for playing tricks. This boyish mischievousness, distinctly Arizonian, reached its acme whenever it tended in the direction of our serious leader.
Lawson had been dispatched on some mysterious errand about which my curiosity was all in vain. The order of the day was leisurely to get in readiness, and pack for our journey to the Siwash on the morrow. I watered my horse, played with the hounds, knocked about the cliffs, returned to the cabin, and lay down on my bed. Jim’s hands were white with flour. He was kneading dough, and had several low, flat pans on the table. Wallace and Jones strolled in, and later Frank, and they all took various positions before the fire. I saw Frank, with the quickness of a sleight-of-hand performer, slip one of the pans of dough on the chair Jones had placed by the table. Jim did not see the action; Jones’s and Wallace’s backs were turned to Frank, and he did not know I was in the cabin. The conversation continued on the subject of Jones’s big bay horse, which, hobbles and all, had gotten ten miles from camp the night before.
“Better count his ribs than his tracks,” said Frank, and went on talking as easily and naturally as if he had not been expecting a very entertaining situation.
But no one could ever foretell Colonel Jones’s actions. He showed every intention of seating himself in the chair, then walked over to his pack to begin searching for something or other. Wallace, however, promptly took the seat; and what began to be funnier than strange, he did not get up. Not unlikely this circumstance was owing to the fact that several of the rude chairs had soft layers of old blanket tacked on them. Whatever were Frank’s internal emotions, he presented a remarkably placid and commonplace exterior; but when Jim began to search for the missing pan of dough, the joker slowly sagged in his chair.
“Shore that beats hell!” said Jim. “I had three pans of dough. Could the pup have taken one?”
Wallace rose to his feet, and the bread pan clattered to the floor, with a clang and a clank, evidently protesting against the indignity it had suffered. But the dough stayed with Wallace, a great white conspicuous splotch on his corduroys. Jim, Frank and Jones all saw it at once.
“Why—Mr. Wal—lace—you set—in the dough!” exclaimed Frank, in a queer, strangled voice. Then he exploded, while Jim fell over the table.
It seemed that those two Arizona rangers, matured men though they were, would die of convulsions. I laughed with them, and so did Wallace, while he brought his one-handled bowie knife into novel use. Buffalo Jones never cracked a smile, though he did remark about the waste of good flour.
Frank’s face was a study for a psychologist when Jim actually apologized to Wallace for being so careless with his pans. I did not betray Frank, but I resolved to keep a still closer watch on him. It was partially because of this uneasy sense of his trickiness in the fringe of my mind that I made a discovery. My sleeping-bag rested on a raised platform in one corner, and at a favorable moment I examined the bag. It had not been tampered with, but I noticed a string turning out through a chink between the logs. I found it came from a thick layer of straw under my bed, and had been tied to the end of a flatly coiled lasso. Leaving the thing as it was, I went outside and carelessly chased the hounds round the cabin. The string stretched along the logs to another chink, where it returned into the cabin at a point near where Frank slept. No great power of deduction was necessary to acquaint me with full details of the plot to spoil my slumbers. So I patiently awaited developments.
Lawson rode in near sundown with the carcasses of two beasts of some species hanging over his saddle. It turned out that Jones had planned a surprise for Wallace and me, and it could hardly have been a more enjoyable one, considering the time and place. We knew he had a flock of Persian sheep on the south slope of Buckskin, but had no idea it was within striking distance of Oak. Lawson had that day hunted up the shepherd and his sheep, to return to us with two sixty-pound Persian lambs. We feasted at suppertime on meat which was sweet, juicy, very tender and of as rare a flavor as that of the Rocky Mountain sheep.
My state after supper was one of huge enjoyment and with intense interest I awaited Frank’s first spar for an opening. It came presently, in a lull of the conversation.
“Saw a big rattler run under the cabin today,” he said, as if he were speaking of one of Old Baldy’s shoes. “I tried to get a whack at him, but he oozed away too quick.”
“Shore I seen him often,” put in Jim. Good, old, honest Jim, led away by his trickster comrade! It was very plain. So I was to be frightened by snakes.
“These old canyon beds are ideal dens for rattle snakes,” chimed in my scientific California friend. “I have found several dens, but did not molest them as this is a particularly dangerous time of the year to meddle with the re
ptiles. Quite likely there’s a den under the cabin.”
While he made this remarkable statement, he had the grace to hide his face in a huge puff of smoke. He, too, was in the plot. I waited for Jones to come out with some ridiculous theory or fact concerning the particular species of snake, but as he did not speak, I concluded they had wisely left him out of the secret. After mentally debating a moment, I decided, as it was a very harmless joke, to help Frank into the fulfillment of his enjoyment.
“Rattlesnakes!” I exclaimed. “Heavens! I’d die if I heard one, let alone seeing it. A big rattler jumped at me one day, and I’ve never recovered from the shock.”
Plainly, Frank was delighted to hear of my antipathy and my unfortunate experience, and he proceeded to expatiate on the viciousness of rattlesnakes, particularly those of Arizona. If I had believed the succeeding stories, emanating from the fertile brains of those three fellows, I should have made certain that Arizona canyons were Brazilian jungles. Frank’s parting shot, sent in a mellow, kind voice, was the best point in the whole trick. “Now, I’d be nervous if I had a sleepin’ bag like yours, because it’s just the place for a rattler to ooze into.”
In the confusion and dim light of bedtime I contrived to throw the end of my lasso over the horn of a saddle hanging on the wall, with the intention of augmenting the noise I soon expected to create; and I placed my automatic rifle and .38 S. and W. Special within easy reach of my hand. Then I crawled into my bag and composed myself to listen. Frank soon began to snore, so brazenly, so fictitiously, that I wondered at the man’s absorbed intensity in his joke; and I was at great pains to smother in my breast a violent burst of riotous merriment. Jones’s snores, however, were real enough, and this made me enjoy the situation all the more; because if he did not show a mild surprise when the catastrophe fell, I would greatly miss my guess. I knew the three wily conspirators were wide-awake. Suddenly I felt a movement in the straw under me and a faint rustling. It was so soft, so sinuous, that if I had not known it was the lasso, I would assuredly have been frightened. I gave a little jump, such as one will make quickly in bed. Then the coil ran out from under the straw. How subtly suggestive of a snake! I made a slight outcry, a big jump, paused a moment for effectiveness in which time Frank forgot to snore—then let out a tremendous yell, grabbed my guns, sent twelve thundering shots through the roof and pulled my lasso.
Crash! the saddle came down, to be followed by sounds not on Frank’s programme and certainly not calculated upon by me. But they were all the more effective. I gathered that Lawson, who was not in the secret, and who was a nightmare sort of sleeper anyway, had knocked over Jim’s table, with its array of pots and pans and then, unfortunately for Jones had kicked that innocent person in the stomach.
As I lay there in my bag, the very happiest fellow in the wide world, the sound of my mirth was as the buzz of the wings of a fly to the mighty storm. Roar on roar filled the cabin.
When the three hypocrites recovered sufficiently from the startling climax to calm Lawson, who swore the cabin had been attacked by Indians; when Jones stopped roaring long enough to hear it was only a harmless snake that had caused the trouble, we hushed to repose once more—not, however, without hearing some trenchant remarks from the boiling Colonel anent fun and fools, and the indubitable fact that there was not a rattlesnake on Buckskin Mountain.
Long after this explosion had died away, I heard, or rather felt, a mysterious shudder or tremor of the cabin, and I knew that Frank and Jim were shaking with silent laughter. On my own score, I determined to find if Jones, in his strange make-up, had any sense of humor, or interest in life, or feeling, or love that did not center and hinge on four-footed beasts. In view of the rude awakening from what, no doubt, were pleasant dreams of wonderful white and green animals, combining the intelligence of man and strength of brutes—a new species creditable to his genius—I was perhaps unjust in my conviction as to his lack of humor. And as to the other question, whether or not he had any real human feeling for the creatures built in his own image, that was decided very soon and unexpectedly.
The following morning, as soon as Lawson got in with the horses, we packed and started. Rather sorry was I to bid good-by to Oak Spring. Taking the back trail of the Stewarts, we walked the horses all day up a slowly narrowing, ascending canyon. The hounds crossed coyote and deer trails continually, but made no break. Sounder looked up as if to say he associated painful reminiscences with certain kinds of tracks. At the head of the canyon we reached timber at about the time dusk gathered, and we located for the night. Being once again nearly nine thousand feet high, we found the air bitterly cold, making a blazing fire most acceptable.
In the haste to get supper we all took a hand, and someone threw upon our tarpaulin tablecloth a tin cup of butter mixed with carbolic acid—a concoction Jones had used to bathe the sore feet of the dogs. Of course I got hold of this, spread a generous portion on my hot biscuit, placed some red-hot beans on that, and began to eat like a hungry hunter. At first I thought I was only burned. Then I recognized the taste and burn of the acid and knew something was wrong. Picking up the tin, I examined it, smelled the pungent odor and felt a queer numb sense of fear. This lasted only for a moment, as I well knew the use and power of the acid, and had not swallowed enough to hurt me. I was about to make known my mistake in a matter-of-fact way, when it flashed over me the accident could be made to serve a turn.
“Jones!” I cried hoarsely. “What’s in this butter?”
“Lord! you haven’t eaten any of that. Why, I put carbolic acid in it.”
“Oh—oh—oh—I’m poisoned! I ate nearly all of it! Oh—I’m burning up! I’m dying!” With that I began to moan and rock to and fro and hold my stomach.
Consternation preceded shock. But in the excitement of the moment, Wallace—who, though badly scared, retained his wits made for me with a can of condensed milk. He threw me back with no gentle hand, and was squeezing the life out of me to make me open my mouth, when I gave him a jab in his side. I imagined his surprise, as this peculiar reception of his first-aid-to-the-injured made him hold off to take a look at me, and in this interval I contrived to whisper to him: “Joke! Joke! you idiot! I’m only shamming. I want to see if I can scare Jones and get even with Frank. Help me out! Cry! Get tragic!”
From that moment I shall always believe that the stage lost a great tragedian in Wallace. With a magnificent gesture he threw the can of condensed milk at Jones, who was so stunned he did not try to dodge. “Thoughtless man! Murderer! it’s too late!” cried Wallace, laying me back across his knees. “It’s too late. His teeth are locked. He’s far gone. Poor boy! poor boy! Who’s to tell his mother?”
I could see from under my hat-brim that the solemn, hollow voice had penetrated the cold exterior of the plainsman. He could not speak; he clasped and unclasped his big hands in helpless fashion. Frank was as white as a sheet. This was simply delightful to me. But the expression of miserable, impotent distress on old Jim’s sun-browned face was more than I could stand, and I could no longer keep up the deception. Just as Wallace cried out to Jones to pray—I wished then I had not weakened so soon—I got up and walked to the fire.
“Jim, I’ll have another biscuit, please.”
His under jaw dropped, then he nervously shoveled biscuits at me. Jones grabbed my hand and cried out with a voice that was new to me: “You can eat? You’re better? You’ll get over it?”
“Sure. Why, carbolic acid never phases me. I’ve often used it for rattlesnake bites. I did not tell you, but that rattler at the cabin last night actually bit me, and I used carbolic to cure the poison.”
Frank mumbled something about horses, and faded into the gloom. As for Jones, he looked at me rather incredulously, and the absolute, almost childish gladness he manifested because I had been snatched from the grave, made me regret my deceit, and satisfied me forever on one score.
On awakening in the morning I found frost half an inch thick covered my sleeping-bag, whitened th
e ground, and made the beautiful silver spruce trees silver in hue as well as in name.
We were getting ready for an early start, when two riders, with pack-horses jogging after them, came down the trail from the direction of Oak Spring. They proved to be Jeff Clarke, the wild-horse wrangler mentioned by the Stewarts, and his helper. They were on the way into the breaks for a string of pintos. Clarke was a short, heavily bearded man, of jovial aspect. He said he had met the Stewarts going into Fredonia, and being advised of our destination, had hurried to come up with us. As we did not know, except in a general way, where we were making for, the meeting was a fortunate event.
Our camping site had been close to the divide made by one of the long, wooded ridges sent off by Buckskin Mountain, and soon we were descending again. We rode half a mile down a timbered slope, and then out into a beautiful, flat forest of gigantic pines. Clarke informed us it was a level bench some ten miles long, running out from the slopes of Buckskin to face the Grand Canyon on the south, and the breaks of the Siwash on the west. For two hours we rode between the stately lines of trees, and the hoofs of the horses gave forth no sound. A long, silvery grass, sprinkled with smiling bluebells, covered the ground, except close under the pines, where soft red mats invited lounging and rest. We saw numerous deer, great gray mule deer, almost as large as elk. Jones said they had been crossed with elk once, which accounted for their size. I did not see a stump, or a burned tree, or a windfall during the ride.
Clarke led us to the rim of the canyon. Without any preparation—for the giant trees hid the open sky—we rode right out to the edge of the tremendous chasm. At first I did not seem to think; my faculties were benumbed; only the pure sensorial instinct of the savage who sees, but does not feel, made me take note of the abyss. Not one of our party had ever seen the canyon from this side, and not one of us said a word. But Clarke kept talking.
“Wild place this is hyar,” he said. “Seldom any one but horse wranglers gits over this far. I’ve hed a bunch of wild pintos down in a canyon below fer two years. I reckon you can’t find no better place fer camp than right hyar. Listen. Do you hear thet rumble? Thet’s Thunder Falls. You can only see it from one place, an’ thet far off, but thar’s brooks you can git at to water the hosses. Fer thet matter, you can ride up the slopes an’ git snow. If you can git snow close, it’d be better, fer thet’s an all-fired bad trail down fer water.”
