Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
nort’!’ It dell me de lie. Am I to plame?”
Henselman dropped the hand bag and energetically hammered his breast.
“Dose gompass is a shackass!” he said. “Uff ve foller heem some more,
efery dime we shall come right back to dis hill uff iron. T’ree dimes ve
haf tried it alretty yet. And now we iss back here again. What shall ve
do? Smash de gompass? Dot don’t fint us de vay nort’!”
“It would do no good to smash the compass. Let us rejoice, rather, that
we have been led to such a phenomenon as this singular hill of magnetic
iron. I observe from here that the top of the hill splits into two parts
that slightly resemble horns. I shall have to add that detail to the
notes I have taken.”
The tall man brought from an inner pocket of his black coat a
leather-bound book, which held a pencil, and after squinting through his
eyeglasses at the top of the hill, he began to write in the book with
the pencil. Meanwhile, the rotund German stood looking about, with
ill-concealed displeasure.
“Honest men, I take them to be,” thought the scout. “Like me, they have
been fooled by that magnetic hill, and have lost their way.”
When the scout rose into view behind the cactus the taller man stared at
him blankly, while the stubby German tumbled backward with a sort of
howl.
“Mein gracious!” he exclaimed. “Who iss dis?”
“I observe that the magnetic mountain has fooled you, the same as it did
me,” said the scout, smiling at the German and speaking to the tall man.
“And so we meet here, guided to this hill by the crazy antics of our
compasses.”
The tall, severe-looking man fitted his eyeglasses to his prominent
nose, and surveyed the scout.
“Do you belong here, my man?” he questioned. “Yes, we have lost our way.
This is a magnetic hill, and the compass deviates to it and refuses to
point to the magnetic pole. Hence, we were led out of our course, and
now must be far astray, as we think we have been going in a wrong
direction for a long time. If you can help us in our predicament we
shall be greatly obliged, I assure you. I am Professor Felix Bounderby,
and this is my servant. Fritz Henselman, a most estimable German, though
at times a bit excitable. We are here in the interests of scientific
knowledge.”
Buffalo Bill introduced himself, repressing the smiles he felt inclined
to indulge in.
“You are an American scout, over here in Mexico, eh?” said Bounderby.
“Or is this still Mexico? We’re not sure on that point. We’re not sure
of anything, having lost our way and wandered we do not know how many
miles.”
“I happen to be in the same boat,” said the scout, yet cheerily. “We
can, of course, sit down here and wait until we get some sunshine to
guide us, or we can make a guess at the direction we wish to go, and set
out, trusting to luck.”
Professor Bounderby turned to Fritz Henselman.
“Henselman,” he said, “just chip off a piece of that ore, will you, and
put it in the bag. I shall wish to use it in illustration of the lecture
I shall give on this mountain, when we return to the university.”
The German took a hammer from the hand bag and began to beat at one of
the small stones, trying to break it.
“I think I have heard that name—Buffalo Bill,” said Bounderby,
addressing the scout.
“Yaw! I heert heem,” said the rotund German, hammering the stone. “Id
vas in Yarmany, vhere I vas pefore I come to Unitet States.”
“This is a most remarkable hill,” remarked the professor. “I think it
affected our compass many miles away. We were on a dim trail across
there somewhere. We had been told to go north and to leave the trail at
a certain point. We thought we went north, but now I am not sure of the
direction which we followed. And you say that you were misled in like
manner? It is truly wonderful.”
“Vhat trouples me,” said Henselman, cracking off a piece of the ore and
throwing it into the hand bag, “is how are ve going to ged oudt uff dis?
Vhen ve haf noddings to show de vay nort’ hew can ve fint id?”
“As I said, we can camp down here until we get a sight of the sun,” said
the scout, “or we can set out and run the risk of not going in the right
direction. Does the light seem a bit brighter, professor, than a while
ago?”
“No, it seems even darker,” said Bounderby. “The atmosphere is very
peculiar. I shall not be surprised if I learn eventually that there have
been volcanic disturbances in this region, and that the darkness which
we observe is attributed to gases and smoke from some volcano.”
The scout produced his knife and set the blade on his thumb nail, in the
hope of getting a shadow, but failed again. He explained to Bounderby
and Henselman what he was doing.
To all appearances, they were just what they claimed to be, and he saw
that they were likely to get into all sorts of difficulties, in an
unfamiliar region. Bounderby was no doubt a highly educated man along
certain lines, but in the ability to meet such an emergency as this he
was helpless as a child. Henselman was no better.
“If we had left any tracks,” said Bounderby, “we might hope to trace
them back, and get out in that way. But the earth here is of volcanic
formation, you will observe. At one point we crossed a small sand plain,
and if we could find that, we could find the footprints we made in it.”
“Yaw! I made feet tracks in id more as a foot deep!” said Henselman.
“But the wind was blowing, you will recollect, Henselman, and those
tracks may be covered over. Besides, I doubt if we could find them, even
if they were not.”
The professor fitted his glasses to his nose and gazed at the hill, then
took them off and looked round in a helpless sort of manner.
Henselman held up his hand excitedly.
“Brofessor, I haf an itea!”
“Dear me, Henselman, you startled me! You have an idea? That is
remarkable. What is it, Henselman?”
“Gif me de gompass unt I vill illustration id to you.”
“It is in the hand bag, Henselman.”
The fat German extracted the compass from the hand bag, shook it as if
he would make sure it was in working order, and set it on the ground.
“You vill opserve, brofessor, unt likevise our frient here, dat dose
gompass iss now bointing to dis magnedic iron moundain!”
“Yes, that is true,” Bounderby assented.
“Vale! Ton’d you see?”
“I see the needle pointing to the mountain, if that is what you mean,
Henselman.”
“But de odder end uff de needle! Vere iss id bointing?”
“In the opposite direction, of course, Henselman.”
“Vale! Ven id vas bointing to de moundain ve follered id, unt id prought
us here to dis place. Unt now uff ve foller yoost back again de vay de
odder end uff de needle is bointing, we vill arrife at de blace vere ve
comed from. Dot iss yoost so easy I vhonder I neffer dinks me uff id
till dis minute.”
“But, see here, Henselman! On the other side of this hill the south pole
of the needle points in a direction the very opposite of what it does
here. Wherever the compass is placed, in going round this hill, the
needle points at the hill. Your plan might do, if we knew just where we
approached the hill, and could likewise be sure that in coming up to it
we had not deviated any from a direct line. But as we can’t do that,
your plan won’t work. We would be going away from the hill, it is true,
but in which direction we should be going we could not know. We might be
going south, when we wish to go north.”
The fat German dropped back to the ground with so heavy a thump that the
breath was knocked out of him.
“Dot iss true!” he admitted. “So long as ve don’t know, vichefer vay ve
go ve are sure to go wrong.”
---------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI.
TRACKS IN THE SAND.
As Buffalo Bill wished to keep moving, he determined to risk a guess at
what was a northerly direction, and also to set out at once; and as
Bounderby and the fat German did not care to remain behind, they
accompanied him.
It did seem as if there were about three hundred and sixty-five chances
of going wrong to where there was one of going right, as Bounderby
asserted, yet the attempt to do something seemed better than inaction.
This brought a surprising discovery.
Within an hour’s time they reached a sandy area, which both Bounderby
and the German declared to be the one they had crossed.
A search was instituted for the tracks which it was hoped could be
readily found—the tracks they had made in crossing the sand on their way
to the magnetic mountain.
They did not find the tracks, even though they covered a large area, but
in a depression of the sandy plain Buffalo Bill came upon footprints of
a woman. The thing was almost too surprising for belief, and he at once
called the attention of his companions to his discovery.
“The tracks of a white woman,” he said, “here in a spot where one would
think no white woman had ever been; and the tracks have not been long
made. The woman was not an Indian, and she was not a Mexican, or, if a
Mexican, she was not of the peon class. You will observe, too, that the
woman walked with an alert, rapid, springy step.”
Bounderby and his German servant stared at the footprints.
“All of which,” the scout went on, “convinces me that the woman was an
American, and that she was young. But what a young American woman is
doing here passes my comprehension.”
“Maype she is fooled yoost de same as ve vas py de iron mountain?”
suggested Henselman. “Unt now she iss trying to git avay from id. Nein?”
Buffalo Bill looked about, and he let his eyes follow as far as possible
the tracks in the sand.
“That would not explain what a young American woman is doing here,” he
said. “Come! I’m going to follow these tracks, and see what they mean.”
“Unt maype ve lost our own vay again!” Henselman protested.
“We haven’t found it yet, recollect!”
“Yaw! Go ahead.”
“The American young woman of fashion,” said the professor, in a learned
tone, “is usually urban in her tastes. She may venture forth out of a
city, but she never gets far from one. Therefore, I am under the
impression, Mr. Cody, that if we continue to follow these steps we shall
arrive sooner or later at or in the neighborhood of a city. That is
scientific reasoning. I have more than once found a bone, and from that
bone alone have been able to reconstruct the animal of which it was a
part. We see these tracks, and——”
“Look there!”
The exclamation came from the scout, who had hurried on, unheeding the
professor’s learned lecture. He was fairly trembling, as he pointed to
other tracks, which joined those made by the woman he had declared to be
a young American.
The low, sandy surface which held the tracks of the woman passed at this
point close to higher ground, and from this higher ground, as from a
leaping board, had sprung the maker of the other footprints.
What struck the scout more than anything else was the shape and
character of these new tracks.
They resembled in some essentials the footprints of a man, in other
respects they were like those of a bear, and in still others they looked
like nothing the scout had ever seen in the way of tracks, and his
experience and observation had been large.
Instead of waiting to find the explanation, he hurried on again,
observing that the larger tracks kept close by those of the woman, as if
the creature making them had been pursuing her. A hundred yards beyond,
near the point where the sandy land ended in volcanic rocks, the tracks
of the woman disappeared.
Buffalo Bill stared ahead, and drew his revolver.
“See that?” he said, when he was joined by Bounderby and the German.
“I see that the woman’s tracks no longer show,” said Bounderby. “And why
not?”
“She musd haf vings,” said the German.