They of the High Trails

by Garland, Hamlin

  Her eyes widened. Her gaze deepened. She clipped her forefinger in sign of agreement. "It was very cold up there in winter. We were often hungry, for the game had all been driven to the plain and we could not follow. Many of our children died. All died but one."

  The stranger, whose name was Wetherell, responded with a sigh: "My heart is heavy when I hear of it. Because you are old and have not much food I give you this money." And he handed her a silver dollar and walked away.

  The next day, led by Eugene, Wetherell and Kelley, his partner, again approached the old Sioux, this time with a generous gift of beef.

  "My brother, here, is paper-chief," he explained. "As a friend of the red people he wants to put in a book all the wrongs that the sheep-eaters suffered."

  In this way the gold-seekers proceeded to work upon Pogosa's withered heart. Her mind was clouded with age, but a spark of her old-time cunning still dwelt there, and as she came to understand that the white men were eager to hear the story of the lost mine she grew forgetful. Her tongue halted on details of the trail. Why should not her tale produce other sides of bacon, more oranges, and many yards of cloth? Her memory wabbled like her finger—now pointing west, now north. At one time the exiles found the gold in the cabin in a bag—like shining sand; at another it lay in the sand like shining soldiers' buttons, but always it was very beautiful to look upon, and always, she repeated, the white men fled. No one slew them. They went hurriedly, leaving all their tools.

  "She knows," exulted Wetherell. "She knows, and she's the one living Indian who can direct us." To Eugene he exclaimed: "Say to her pretty soon she's going to be rich—mebbe go home to Cheyenne River. If she shows us the trail we will take her to her own people."

  Like a decrepit eagle the crone pondered. Suddenly she spoke, and her speech was a hoarse chant. "You are good to me. The bones of my children lie up there. I will go once more before I die."

  Kelley was quick to take advantage of sunset emotion. "Tell her we will be here before sunrise. Warn her not to talk to any one." And to all this Eugene gave ready assent.

  Wetherell slept very little that night, although their tent stood close beside the singing water of the Little Wind. They were several miles from the fort and in a lonely spot with only one or two Indian huts near, and yet he had the conviction that their plans and the very hour of their starting were known to other of the red people. At one moment he was sure they were all chuckling at the "foolish white men"; at another he shivered to think how easy it would be to ambush this crazy expedition in some of the deep, solitary defiles in those upper forests. "A regiment could be murdered and hidden in some of those savage glooms," said he to himself.

  Kelley slept like a top, but woke at the first faint dawn, with the precision of an alarm-clock. In ten minutes he had the horses in, and was throwing the saddles on. "Roll out, Andy," he shouted. "Here comes Eugene."

  Wetherell lent himself to the work with suddenly developed enthusiasm, and in half an hour the little train of laden animals was in motion toward the hills. Pogosa was waiting, squatted on the ground at some distance from her tepee. Slipping from his horse, he helped her mount. She groaned a little as she did so, but gathered up the reins like one resuming a long-forgotten habit. For years she had not ventured to mount a horse, and her withered knees were of small service in maintaining her seat, but she made no complaint.

  Slowly the little train crawled up the trail, which ran for the most part along the open side of the slope, in plain view from below. At sunrise they were so well up the slope that an observer from below would have had some trouble in making out the character of the cavalcade. At seven o'clock they entered the first patch of timber and were hidden from the plain.

  On the steep places, where the old squaw was forced to cling to her saddle, groaning with pain, the kindly Wetherell walked beside her, easing her down the banks. In crossing the streams he helped her find the shallowest fording, and in other ways was singularly considerate. Kelley couldn't have done this, but he saw the value of it.

  "It's a hard trip and we've got to make it as easy for the old bird as we can."

  "She's human," retorted Wetherell, "and this ride is probably painful for her, mentally as well as physically."

  "I s'pose it does stir her up some," responded Kelley. "She may balk any minute and refuse to go. We'd better camp early."

  A little later Eugene called out, "She says set tepee here." And Kelley consented.

  Again it was Wetherell who helped her from her saddle and spread his pack for her to rest upon. He also brought a blanket and covered her as tenderly as if she were his own grandmother. "She's pretty near all in," he said, in palliation of this action. He took a pleasure in seeing her revive under the influence of hot food.

  When she began to talk, Eugene laughingly explained: "She stuck on you. She say you good man. Your heart big for old Injun woman."

  Kelley chuckled. "Keep it up, Andy," he called through the tent. "I leave all that business to you."

  Pogosa's face darkened. She understood the laugh. "Send him away," she commanded Eugene, all of which made Kelley grin with pleasure.

  The whole enterprise now began to take on poetry to Wetherell. The wilderness, so big, so desolate, so empty to him, was full of memories to this brown old witch. To her the rushing stream sang long-forgotten songs of war and the chase. She could hear in its clamor the voices of friends and lovers. This pathway, so dim and fluctuating, so indefinite to the white man, led straight into the heroic past for her. Perhaps she was treading it now, not for the meat and flannel which Kelley had promised her, but for the pleasure of reliving the past. She was young when her husband was banished. In these splendid solitudes her brave young hunter adventured day by day. Here beside one of these glorious streams her children were born in exile; here they suffered the snows of winter, the pests of summer; and here they had died one by one, till only she remained. Then, old and feeble, she had crawled back into the reservation, defiant of Washakie, seeking comfort as a blind dog returns to the fireside from which he has been cruelly spurned.

  As she slept, the men spread a map on the ground, and for the hundredth time Wetherell measured the blank space lying between Bonneville Basin and Frémont's Peak marked "unexplored," and exclaimed:

  "It's wonderful how a mountain country expands as you get into it. Don't look much on the map, but, gee! a fellow could spend ten years looking for this mine, and then be no better off than when he started."

  "Yes," responded Kelley, "it's certainly up to you to cherish the old lady."

  In the morning Wetherell dressed hastily and crept into the little tent where Pogosa lay. "How are you, granny?" he asked. She only shook her head and groaned.

  "She say her back broke," Eugene interpreted.

  A brisk rubbing with a liniment which he had brought from his kit limbered the poor, abused loins, and at last Pogosa sat up. She suddenly caught Wetherell's hand and drew it to her withered breast.

  "Good white man," she cried out.

  "Tell her I'll make her eyes well, too," he commanded Eugene. "The medicine will hurt a little, but it will make her eyes stronger to see the trail."

  Kelley could not suppress his amusement as he watched Wetherell's operations. "You'll spoil gran'ma," he remarked. "She'll be discontented with the agency doctor. I'm not discouragin' your massage operations, mind you, but I can't help thinking that she'll want clean towels, and an osteopath to stroke her back every morning, when she goes back to her tepee."

  "If she only holds out long enough to help us to find the mine she can have a trained nurse, and waiting-maid to friz her hair—if she wants it frizzed."

  "You don't mean to let her in as a partner?"

  "I certainly do! Isn't she enduring the agonies for us? I'm going to see that she is properly paid for it."

  "A hunk of beef and plenty of blankets and flannel is all she can use; but first let's find the mine. We can quarrel over its division afterward."

  "I do
ubt if we get her ahorse to-day. She's pretty thoroughly battered up."

  "We must move, Andy. Somebody may trail us up. I want to climb into the next basin before night. Let me talk to her."

  She flatly refused to move for Kelley, and Eugene said: "She too sick. Legs sick, back sick, eyes sick. Go no further."

  Kelley turned to Wetherell. "It's your edge, Andy. She's balked on me."

  Wetherell took another tack. He told her to rest. "By and by I'll come and rub your back again and fix your eyes. To-morrow you will feel strong and well." To this she made no reply.

  All the day Kelley kept his eyes on the back trail, expecting each moment to see some dusky trailer break from the cover. As night began to fall it was Wetherell who brought a brand and built a little fire near the door to Pogosa's tent so that the flame might cheer her, and she uttered a sigh of comfort as its yellow glare lighted her dark tepee walls. He brought her bacon, also, and hot bread and steaming coffee, not merely because she was useful as a guide, but also because she was old and helpless and had been lured out of her own home into this gray and icy world of cloud.

  "Eddie," he said, as he returned to his partner, "we're on a wild-goose chase. The thing is preposterous. There isn't any mine—there can't be such a mine!"

  "Why not? What's struck you now?"

  "This country has been traversed for a century. It is 'sheeped' and cattle-grazed and hunted and forest-ranged—"

  Kelley waved his hand out toward the bleak crags which loomed dimly from amid the slashing shrouds of rain. "Traversed! Man, nobody ever does anything more than ride from one park to another. The mine is not in a park. It's on some of these rocky-timbered ridges. A thousand sheep-herders might ride these trails for a hundred years and never see a piece of pay quartz. It's a big country! Look at it now! What chance have we without Pogosa? Now here we are on our way, with a sour old wench who thinks more of a piece of bread than she does of a hunk of ore. It's up to you, Andy—you and your 'mash.'"

  "Well, I've caught the mind-reading delusion. I begin to believe that I understand Pogosa's reasoning. She is now beginning to be eaten by remorse. She came into this expedition for the food and drink. She now repents and is about to confess that she knows nothing about the mine. She and Eugene have conspired against us and are 'doing' us—good."

  "Nitsky! You're away off your base. The fact is, Pogosa is a Sioux. She cares nothing for the Shoshoni, and she wants to realize on this mine. She wants to go back to her people before she dies. She means business—don't you think she don't; and if her running-gear don't unmesh to-night or to-morrow she's going to make good—that's my hunch."

  "I hope you're right, but I can't believe it."

  "You don't need to. You keep her thinking you're the Sun-god—that's your job."

  It rained all that day, and when night settled down it grew unreasonably warm for that altitude, and down on the marshes the horses stood, patiently enduring the gnats and mosquitoes. They plagued Pogosa so cruelly that Wetherell took his own web of bobinet and made a protecting cage for her head and hands. Never before had she been shielded from the pests of outdoor life. She laughed as she heard the baffled buzzing outside her net, and, pointing her finger, addressed them mockingly. Wetherell took the same joy in this that a child takes in the action of a kitten dressed as a doll. To Eugene he said:

  "You tell her Injun plenty fool. He don't know enough to get gold and buy mosquito netting. If she is wise and shows me the mine she will never be bitten again. No flies. No mosquitoes. Plenty beef. Plenty butter and hot biscuits. Plenty sugar and coffee. White man's own horse carry her back to her people."

  It took some time to make the old woman understand this, and then she replied briefly, but with vigor, and Eugene translated it thus: "White man all same big chief. Go find mine, sure, for you. No want other white man to have gold. All yours."

  The morning broke tardily. The rain had ceased, but the gray mist still hid the peaks, and now and then the pines shook down a shower of drops upon the tent cloth as if impatient of the persistent gathering of moisture. Otherwise the forest was as still as if it were cut from bronze.

  Kelley arose and, going outside, began kicking the embers together. "Wake up, Andy. It's a gray outlook we have," he announced, after a careful survey. "The worst sign is this warmth and stillness. We're in the heart of the storm, and the mosquitoes are hellish."

  As Wetherell was creeping from the tent door one of the pines quivered and sent down a handful of drops, squarely soaking the back of his neck, and a huge mosquito stuck savagely to the end of his nose. He was not in the best of humor as he straightened up.

  "I can stand cold and snow, or wet and cold, but this hot, sticky, dark weather irritates me. Let's climb high and see if we can't reach the frost-line."

  "We'll be frosty enough when this storm passes," Kelley said, comfortingly. Then in a note of astonishment and surprise, "Well, look at that!"

  Wetherell looked where he pointed, and beheld Pogosa squatting before a meager fire at her tent door, her head carefully draped in her bobinet. He forgot his own lumps and bumps, and laughed. "So doth the white man's civilization creep upon and subdue the Amerind, destroying his robust contempt for the elements and making of him a Sybarite."

  Eugene appeared, grinning ruefully. "Heap dam' moskeets. Drink my blood all night."

  "I reckon you got gran'ma's share," said Kelley.

  Pogosa met Wetherell's glance with an exultant smile and pointed at the net as if to say: "See, I am safe. The angry brutes cannot touch me."

  "The old girl is on her taps this morning. She deserves a reward. Wait a jiffy. There"—and Kelley uncorked a flask and poured a wee drop of an amber-colored liquid into the cup of coffee which Wetherell was about to take to her—"say nothing and see what happens."

  She ate a rousing breakfast and was especially pleased with the coffee. Kelley repeated the dose, and she, much invigorated, ordered Eugene to bring her pony to her. This tickled Kelley mightily.

  "You see how it is! She's already the millionairess. Who ever heard of an Injun getting up a horse for an old squaw? Look at Eugene!"

  Eugene was indeed in open rebellion, and Wetherell, not caring to have trouble with him, went down and brought up the pony himself. He also gave the old woman his slicker and insisted on her wearing it, whereat Eugene wondered again.

  The rain was beginning as they took their way over the meadow, and Wetherell was near to being bogged the first crack out of the box. "Do we go up that cliff?" he asked.

  Pogosa waved her forefinger back and forth as though tracing the doublings of the trail.

  Kelley scanned the wall narrowly. "I don't quite see it," he remarked, openly, "but I reckon I can find it," and he spurred his horse to the front.

  "No! No!" screamed Pogosa in a sudden fury, her voice shrill and nasal. Kelley stopped, and she motioned Wetherell to his place in the lead.

  With a comical look in his eyes the trailer fell back. "'Pears like I ain't good enough to precede her Majesty. Go ahead, Andy."

  Wetherell, in much doubt of his ability to scale that cliff, started forth. The old trail could be seen dimly, and also the recent tracks of three horses. They were not precisely fresh, but they gave some uneasiness.

  "Who made 'em, Eugene, and when?" he asked.

  "One man riding—white man," announced Eugene. "Two pack-horse—very light pack—made—mebbe so—three days ago."

  "The forest-ranger from the other side, possibly."

  Wetherell, by watching the hoof-marks, by studying the conformation of the cliff before him, and by glancing back now and again at Pogosa, contrived to find the way. Slowly and for several hours they climbed this vast dike. It was nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea here, and Kelley himself breathed with effort as he climbed.

  "I begin to see why people don't use this trail much," he said, as they stopped to rest on one of the broad shelves. "I'm beginning to wonder how we're going to pack our ore to market over this r
oad."

  "It will take mighty rich ore to pay its own freight," responded Wetherell.

  Pogosa seemed strangely excited. Her eyes were gleaming, her face working with emotion.

  "See the old girl!" said Kelley. "We must be hot on the trail of the mine. It don't look like mineral formation, but gold is where you find it."

  "Go on," signed Pogosa.

  The way seemed interminable, and at times Wetherell despaired of getting his withered commander into the park which he was sure lay above this dike. At noon they halted long enough to make coffee. Kelley flavored it as before, and Pogosa was ready to go on an hour later.

  As they rose above the dike and Bonneville's Peak came into view a low humming sound startled the hunters. It came from Pogosa. With eyes lit by the reviving fires of memory, she was chanting a hoarse song. She seemed to have thrown off half the burden of her years. Her voice gradually rose till her weird improvisation put a shiver into Wetherell's heart. She had forgotten the present; and with hands resting on the pommel of her saddle, with dim eyes fixed upon the valley, was reliving the past.

  "She singing old hunting song," Eugene explained. "Many years ago she sing it. This heap fine hunting-ground then. Elk, big-horn, bear. All fine things in summer. Winter nothing but big-horn. Sheep-eaters live here many summers. Pogos' young and happy then. Now she is old and lonesome. People all gone. Purty soon she die. So she say."

  Even the unimaginative mind of Tall Ed Kelley thrilled to the tragic significance of this survivor of a dying race chanting her solitary song. Her memory was quickening under the touch of these cliffs and the sound of these streams. She was retracing the steps of her youth.

  Kelley interpreted it differently. "She's close to it," he called. "It's here in this valley, in some of these ridges."

  Resolutely, unhesitatingly, Pogosa rode down the first stream which ran to the north, making directly for a low hill on which could be discerned a low comb of deflected rocks of a dark color. At last, riding up the ledge, she slipped from her horse and, tottering forward, fell face downward on the grass beside an upturned giant slab of gray stone.