The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
Pedro’s neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the
runaways had vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had
come into such straits. He was helped stiffly on the mare, and the three
horses in single file took up their journey once more, and came slowly
among the mountains. The perpetual desert was ended, and they crossed a
small brook, where they missed the trail. The Virginian dismounted to
find where the horses had turned off, and discovered that they had gone
straight up the ridge by the watercourse.
“There’s been a man camped in hyeh inside a month,” he said, kicking up
a rag of red flannel. “White man and two hawsses. Ours have went up his
old tracks.”
It was not easy for Balaam to speak yet, and he kept his silence. But he
remembered that Shorty had spoken of a trapper who had started for Sunk
Creek.
For three hours they followed the runaways’ course over softer ground,
and steadily ascending, passed one or two springs, at length, where
the mud was not yet settled in the hoofprints. Then they came through
a corner of pine forest and down a sudden bank among quaking-asps to a
green park. Here the runaways beside a stream were grazing at ease, but
saw them coming, and started on again, following down the stream.
For the present all to be done was to keep them in sight. This creek
received tributaries and widened, making a valley for itself. Above
the bottom, lining the first terrace of the ridge, began the pines, and
stretched back, unbroken over intervening summit and basin, to cease at
last where the higher peaks presided.
“This hyeh’s the middle fork of Sunk Creek,” said the Virginian. “We’ll
get on to our right road again where they join.”
Soon a game trail marked itself along the stream. If this would only
continue, the runaways would be nearly sure to follow it down into the
canyon. Then there would be no way for them but to go on and come out
into their own country, where they would make for the Judge’s ranch of
their own accord. The great point was to reach the canyon before dark.
They passed into permanent shadow; for though the other side of
the creek shone in full day, the sun had departed behind the ridges
immediately above them. Coolness filled the air, and the silence, which
in this deep valley of invading shadow seemed too silent, was relieved
by the birds. Not birds of song, but a freakish band of gray talkative
observers, who came calling and croaking along through the pines, and
inspected the cavalcade, keeping it company for a while, and then flying
up into the woods again. The travellers came round a corner on a little
spread of marsh, and from somewhere in the middle of it rose a buzzard
and sailed on its black pinions into the air above them, wheeling
and wheeling, but did not grow distant. As it swept over the trail,
something fell from its claw, a rag of red flannel; and each man in turn
looked at it as his horse went by.
“I wonder if there’s plenty elk and deer hyeh?” said the Virginian.
“I guess there is,” Balaam replied, speaking at last. The travellers had
become strangely reconciled.
“There’s game ’most all over these mountains,” the Virginian continued;
“country not been settled long enough to scare them out.” So they fell
into casual conversation, and for the first time were glad of each
other’s company.
The sound of a new bird came from the pines above--the hoot of an
owl--and was answered from some other part of the wood. This they did
not particularly notice at first, but soon they heard the same note,
unexpectedly distant, like an echo. The game trail, now quite a defined
path beside the river, showed no sign of changing its course or fading
out into blank ground, as these uncertain guides do so often. It led
consistently in the desired direction, and the two men were relieved to
see it continue. Not only were the runaways easier to keep track of,
but better speed was made along this valley. The pervading imminence of
night more and more dispelled the lingering afternoon, though there was
yet no twilight in the open, and the high peaks opposite shone yellow
in the invisible sun. But now the owls hooted again. Their music had
something in it that caused both the Virginian and Balaam to look up at
the pines and wish that this valley would end. Perhaps it was early for
night-birds to begin; or perhaps it was that the sound never seemed to
fall behind, but moved abreast of them among the trees above, as they
rode on without pause down below; some influence made the faces of the
travellers grave. The spell of evil which the sight of the wheeling
buzzard had begun, deepened as evening grew, while ever and again along
the creek the singular call and answer of the owls wandered among the
darkness of the trees not far away.
The sun was gone from the peaks when at length the other side of the
stream opened into a long wide meadow. The trail they followed, after
crossing a flat willow thicket by the water, ran into dense pines, that
here for the first time reached all the way down to the water’s edge.
The two men came out of the willows, and saw ahead the capricious
runaways leave the bottom and go up the hill and enter the wood.
“We must hinder that,” said the Virginian; and he dropped Pedro’s rope.
“There’s your six-shooter. You keep the trail, and camp down there”--he
pointed to where the trees came to the water--“till I head them hawsses
off. I may not get back right away.” He galloped up the open hill
and went into the pine, choosing a place above where the vagrants had
disappeared.
Balaam dismounted, and picking up his six-shooter, took the rope off
Pedro’s neck and drove him slowly down toward where the wood began.
Its interior was already dim, and Balaam saw that here must be their
stopping-place to-night, since there was no telling how wide this pine
strip might extend along the trail before they could come out of it and
reach another suitable camping-ground. Pedro had recovered his strength,
and he now showed signs of restlessness. He shied where there was not
even a stone in the trail, and finally turned sharply round. Balaam
expected he was going to rush back on the way they had come; but the
horse stood still, breathing excitedly. He was urged forward again,
though he turned more than once. But when they were a few paces from the
wood, and Balaam had got off preparatory to camping, the horse snorted
and dashed into the water, and stood still there. The astonished Balaam
followed to turn him; but Pedro seemed to lose control of himself,
and plunged to the middle of the river, and was evidently intending to
cross. Fearing that he would escape to the opposite meadow and add to
their difficulties, Balaam, with the idea of turning him round, drew his
six-shooter and fired in front of the horse, divining, even as the flash
cut the dusk, the secret of all this--the Indians; but too late. His
bruised hand had stiffened, marring his aim, and he saw Pedro fall over
in the water then rise and struggle up the bank on the farther shore,
where he now hurried also, to find that he had broken the pony’s leg.
He needed no interpreter for the voices of the seeming owls that had
haunted the latter hour of their journey, and he knew that his beast’s
keener instinct had perceived the destruction that lurked in the
interior of the wood. The history of the trapper whose horse had
returned without him might have been--might still be--his own; and he
thought of the rag that had fallen from the buzzard’s talons when he had
been disturbed at his meal in the marsh. “Peaceable” Indians were still
in these mountains, and some few of them had for the past hour been
skirting his journey unseen, and now waited for him in the wood which
they expected him to enter. They had been too wary to use their rifles
or show themselves, lest these travellers should be only part of a
larger company following, who would hear the noise of a shot, and catch
them in the act of murder. So, safe under the cover of the pines, they
had planned to sling their silent noose, and drag the white man from his
horse as he passed through the trees.
Balaam looked over the river at the ominous wood, and then he looked
at Pedro, the horse that he had first maimed and now ruined, to whom he
probably owed his life. He was lying on the ground, quietly looking over
the green meadow, where dusk was gathering. Perhaps he was not suffering
from his wound yet, as he rested on the ground; and into his animal
intelligence there probably came no knowledge of this final stroke of
his fate. At any rate, no sound of pain came from Pedro, whose friendly
and gentle face remained turned toward the meadow. Once more Balaam
fired his pistol, and this time the aim was true, and the horse rolled
over, with a ball through his brain. It was the best reward that
remained for him.
Then Balaam rejoined the old mare, and turned from the middle fork of
Sunk Creek. He dashed across the wide field, and went over a ridge, and
found his way along in the night till he came to the old trail--the
road which they would never have left but for him and his obstinacy. He
unsaddled the weary mare by Sunk Creek, where the canyon begins, letting
her drag a rope and find pasture and water, while he, lighting no fire
to betray him, crouched close under a tree till the light came. He
thought of the Virginian in the wood. But what could either have done
for the other had he stayed to look for him among the pines? If the
cow-puncher came back to the corner, he would follow Balaam’s tracks or
not. They would meet, at any rate, where the creeks joined.
But they did not meet. And then to Balaam the prospect of going onward
to the Sunk Creek Ranch became more than he could bear. To come without
the horses, to meet Judge Henry, to meet the guests of the Judge’s,
looking as he did now after his punishment by the Virginian, to give the
news about the Judge’s favorite man--no, how could he tell such a story
as this? Balaam went no farther than a certain cabin, where he slept,
and wrote a letter to the Judge. This the owner of the cabin delivered.
And so, having spread news which would at once cause a search for the
Virginian, and having constructed such sentences to the Judge as would
most smoothly explain how, being overtaken by illness, he had not wished
to be a burden at Sunk Creek, Balaam turned homeward by himself. By the
time he was once more at Butte Creek, his general appearance was a thing
less to be noticed. And there was Shorty, waiting!
One way and another, the lost dog had been able to gather some ready
money. He was cheerful because of this momentary purseful of prosperity.
“And so I come back, yu’ see,” he said. “For I figured on getting Pedro
back as soon as I could when I sold him to yu’.”
“You’re behind the times, Shorty,” said Balaam.
Shorty looked blank. “You’ve sure not sold Pedro?” he exclaimed.
“Them Indians,” said Balaam, “got after me on the Bow Leg trail. Got
after me and that Virginia man. But they didn’t get me.”
Balaam wagged his bullet head to imply that this escape was due to his
own superior intelligence. The Virginian had been stupid, and so the
Indians had got him. “And they shot your horse,” Balaam finished. “Stop
and get some dinner with the boys.”
Having eaten, Shorty rode away in mournful spirits. For he had made so
sure of once more riding and talking with Pedro, his friend whom he had
taught to shake hands.
XXVII. GRANDMOTHER STARK
Except for its chair and bed, the cabin was stripped almost bare. Amid
its emptiness of dismantled shelves and walls and floor, only the tiny
ancestress still hung in her place, last token of the home that had
been. This miniature, tacked against the despoiled boards, and its