The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Caroline Lockhart

  III

  "THE GAME BUTCHERS"

  "Ain't this an awful world!" By this observation Uncle Bill Griswold,standing on a narrow shelf of rock, with the sheep's hind quarters onhis back, meant merely to convey the opinion that there was a great dealof it.

  The panting sportsman did not answer. T. Victor Sprudell was looking forsome place to put his toe.

  "There's a hundred square miles over there that I reckon there never wasa white man's foot on, and they say that the West has been went overwith a fine-tooth comb. Wouldn't it make you laugh?"

  Mr. Sprudell looked far from laughter as, by placing a foot directly infront of the other, he advanced a few inches at a time until he reachedthe side of his guide. It _was_ an awful world, and the swift glance hehad of it as he raised his eyes from the toes of his boots and lookedoff across the ocean of peaks gave him the feeling that he was about tofall over the edge of it. His pink, cherubic face turned saffron, and heshrank back against the wall. He had been in perilous places before, butthis was the worst yet.

  "There might be somethin' good over yonder if 'twas looked into right,"went on Uncle Bill easily, as he stood with the ball of his feet hangingover a precipice, staring speculatively. "But it'll be like to staythere for a while, with these young bucks doin' all their prospectin'around some sheet-iron stove. There's nobody around the camps thesedays that ain't afraid of work, of gittin' lost, of sleepin' out oftheir beds of nights. Prospectin' in underbrush and down timber is nocinch, but it never stopped me when I was a young feller around sixty orsixty-five." A dry, clicking sound as Sprudell swallowed made the oldman look around. "Hey--what's the matter? Aire you dizzy?"

  Dizzy! Sprudell felt he was going to die. If his shaking knees shouldsuddenly give way beneath him he could see, by craning his neckslightly, the exact spot where he was going to land. His chest, plumpand high like a woman's, rose and fell quickly with his hard breathing,and the barrel of his rifle where he clasped it was damp with nervousperspiration. His small mouth, with its full, red lips shaped like thetraditional cupid's bow, was colorless, and there was abject terror inhis infantile blue eyes. Yet superficially, T. Victor Sprudell was abrave figure--picturesque as the drawing for a gunpowder "ad," a man offifty, yet excellently well preserved.

  A plaid cap with a visor fore and aft matched his roomy knickerbockers,and canvas leggings encased his rounded calves. His hob-nailed shoes werethe latest thing in "field boots," and his hunting coat was a credit tothe sporting house that had turned it out. His cartridge belt was newand squeaky, and he had the last patents in waterproof match safes andskinning knives. That goneness at his stomach, and the strangesensations up and down his spine, seemed incongruous in such valoroustrappings. But he had them unmistakably, and they kept him cringingclose against the wall as though he had been glued.

  It was not entirely the thought of standing there that paralyzed him; itwas the thought of going on. If accidentally he should step on arolling rock what a gap there would be in the social, financial, andpolitical life of Bartlesville, Indiana! It was at this point in hisvision of the things that _might_ happen to him that he had gulped.

  "Don't look down; look up; look acrost," Uncle Bill advised. "You'reliable to bounce off this hill if you don't take care. Hello," he saidto himself, staring at the river which lay like a great, green snake atthe base of the mountains, "must be some feller down there placerin'.That's a new cabin, and there's a rocker--looks like."

  "Gold?" Sprudell's eyes became a shade less infantile.

  "Gold a-plenty; but it takes a lard can full to make a cent and there'sno way to get water on the ground."

  Uncle Bill stood conjecturing as to who it might be, as though it wereof importance that he should know before he left. Interest in hisneighbor and his neighbor's business is a strong characteristic of theminer and prospector in these, our United States, and Uncle BillGriswold in this respect was no exception. It troubled him for hoursthat he could not guess who was placering below.

  "Looks like it's gittin' ready for a storm," he said finally. "We'dbetter sift along. Foller clost to me and keep a-comin', for we don'twant to get caught out 'way off from camp. We've stayed too long in themountains for that matter, with the little grub that's left. We'll pullout to-morrow."

  "Which way you going?" Sprudell asked plaintively.

  "We gotta work our way around this mountain to that ridge." Uncle Billshifted the meat to the other shoulder, and travelled along the steepside with the sure-footed swiftness of a venerable mountain goat.

  Sprudell shut his trembling lips together and followed as best he could.He was paying high, he felt, for the privilege of entertaining theBartlesville Commercial Club with stories of his prowess. He doubted ifhe would get over the nervous strain in months, for, after all, Sprudellwas fifty, and such experiences told. Never--never, he said to himselfwhen a rolling rock started by his feet bounded from point to point toremind him how easily he could do the same, never would he take suchchances again! It wasn't worth it. His life was too valuable. Inwardlyhe was furious that Uncle Bill should have brought him by such a way.His heart turned over and lay down with a flop when he saw that personstop and heard him say:

  "Here's kind of a bad place; you'd better let me take your gun."

  Kind of a bad place! When he'd been frisking on the edge of eternity.

  Uncle Bill waited near a bank of slide rock that extended from themountain top to a third of the way down the side, after which it wentoff sheer.

  "'Tain't no picnic, crossin' slide rock, but I reckon if I kin make itwith a gun and half a sheep on my back you can make it empty-handed.Step easy, and don't start it slippin' or you'll slide to kingdom come.Watch me!"

  Sprudell watched with all his eyes. The little old man, who boasted thathe weighed only one hundred and thirty with his winter tallow on,skimmed the surface like a water spider, scarcely jarring loose a rock.Sprudell knew that he could never get across like that. Fear would makehim heavy-footed if nothing else.

  "Hurry up!" the old man shouted impatiently. "We've no time to lose.Dark's goin' to ketch us sure as shootin', and it's blowin' up plumbcold."

  Sprudell nerved himself and started, stepping as gingerly as he could;but in spite of his best efforts his feet came down like pile drivers,disturbing rocks each time he moved.

  Griswold watched him anxiously, and finally called:

  "You're makin' more fuss than a cow elk! Step easy er you're goin' tostart the whole darn works. Onct it gits to movin', half that bank'llgo."

  Sprudell was nearly a third of the way across when the shale began tomove, slowly at first, with a gentle rattle, then faster. He gave ashout of terror and floundered, panic-stricken, where he stood.

  The old man danced in frenzy:

  "Job in your heels and run like hell!"

  But the mass had started, and was moving faster. Sprudell's feet wentfrom under him, and he collapsed in a limp heap. Then he turned over andscrabbled madly with hands and feet for something that would hold.Everything loosened at his touch and joined the sliding bank of shale.He could as easily have stopped his progress down a steep slate roof.

  "Oh, Lord! There goes my dude!" Uncle Bill wrung his hands and swore.

  Sprudell felt faint, nauseated, and his neck seemed unable to hold hisheavy head. He laid his cheek on the cold shale, and, with his arms andlegs outstretched like a giant starfish, he weakly slid. His body,moving slower than the mass, acted as a kind of wedge, his head servingas a separator to divide the moving bank. He was conscious, too, of acurious sensation in his spine--a feeling as though some invisible powerwere pulling backward, backward until it hurt. He wanted to scream, tohear his own voice once more, but his vocal cords would not respond; hecould not make a sound.

  Griswold was shouting something; it did not matter what. He heard itfaintly above the clatter of the rocks. He must be close to the edgenow--Bartlesville--the Commercial Club--Abe Cone--and then Mr. Sprudellhit something with a bump! He had a sensation as of a h
atpin--manyhatpins--penetrating his tender flesh, but that was nothing compared tothe fact that he had stopped, while the slide of shale was rushing by.He was not dead! but he was too astonished and relieved to immediatelywonder why.

  Then he weakly raised his head and looked cautiously over his shoulderlest the slightest movement start him travelling again. What miracle hadsaved his life? The answer was before him. When he came down the slidein the fortunate attitude of a clothespin, the Fates, who had otherplans for him, it seemed, steered him for a small tree of the stoutmountain mahogany, which has a way of pushing up in most surprisingplaces.

  "Don't move!" called Griswold. "I'll come and get ye!"

  Unnecessary admonition. Although Sprudell was impaled on the thick,sharp thorns like a naturalist's captive butterfly, he scarcelybreathed, much less attempted to get up.

  "Bill, I was near the gates," said Sprudell solemnly when Griswold, atno small risk to himself, had snaked him back to solid ground. "_Fortunaaudaces juvat!_"

  "If that's Siwash for 'close squeak,' it were; and," with an anxiousglance at the ominous sky, "'tain't over."