You just count your blessings an' let 'em go.
'Those were young braves, just out for a lark. They wasn't huntin' scalps, but you go after them, and they will. We lost some cows. Let's move out of here.' 'To where?' 'Any place but here. They might get to thinkin' on it and come back.' Tired as we were, we put out our fire, loaded our gear, and headed off up the trail.
We found a meadow three miles farther on and bedded them down.
Nobody set by the campfire that night; nobody wanted a second cup of coffee.
Everybody crawled into his bed, and only the night guard was left.
Day after day, we plodded on; we had lost cattle one way or another until at least a third of them were gone. Old Baptiste killed a mountain sheep, and we dined well, but it had been weeks since we had seen a buffalo. There was little talk now during the day. Fleming looked sour and discontented. He seemed to have been expecting something that did not happen.
'Overlanders have come this way,' Cap said, 'but it's been a while.' All the tracks we found were old, and we were getting more and more worried.
'Beats me where we're to meet Logan, if he's alive.' 'That feller said he was dead,' Fleming said, 'that he'd been killed.' 'He's a hard man to kill.' 'A bullet will do it for anybody,' Fleming said. 'If he's hit in the right place, on
man is no tougher than another.' 'Seems like we've been pushin' these cows forever,' Shorty said. 'I wouldn't mind standin' up to a bar for a drink.' 'Be a while,' Tyrel said. 'You boys set easy. Goin' back will be easy as pie.' 'If we ever,' Fleming said.
Nettie and Mary had been keeping out of the way. They knew this was a trying time, and they had done their best to help. Both of them had become good hands, although Mary--well she'd been born a hand.
'If my brother is out here,' Nettie asked Orrin, 'where do you think he would be?' Orrin shrugged. 'There's Barkerville, and there's Clinton. I don't know many of the towns, but I can tell you this. If he's in this country or has been, some of those folks will know. This is a big country, but she's right scarce of people. A body can be away up yonder at the forks of the creek, and somebody will have seen him. There's nothing happens up here somebody doesn't know about.' Fleming chuckled. It was a dry, rather unpleasant, skeptical chuckle. Nobody said anything.
We'd been keeping our eyes open for sign.
All three of us Sacketts expected it, and we knew the sort of sign one Sackett was apt to leave for another.
We found nothing.
We waded rivers, fourteen crossings in one day, and wove our way through some fir trees whose wet branches slapped us wickedly as we passed. The horses were game. They struggled through the muskeg, and finally we topped out on some reasonably solid ground.
Supplies were running low, and game was scarce. All day we had seen nothing. Ducks flew over, the V's of their flight pattern pointing south. In the morning when we awakened, there was a chill in the air.
'Wonder what become of those Injuns we had followin' us?' Cap asked one day. 'I kind of miss 'em?' 'Little Bear,' I said, 'now there was a lad.' 'If we don't get something to eat soon,' Lin suggested, 'we'll have to slaughter a beef.' Now there's little goes more against the grain of a good cattleman than killing his own beef. But we'd left buffalo country behind, and we were fresh out of bear. Me, I was of no mind to tackle a grizzly unless he came hunting trouble, which they often did. A grizzly has been king in his own world for so long, he resents anybody coming around.
Only man threatens his world, and whether he avoids or fights men depends pretty much on his mood at the moment.
Down San Francisco way during the gold rush, some of the gamblers used to pit bears in cages with lions, tigers, and most anything that would fight. The grizzly almost always won in quick time.
In one particular case, a full-grown African lion lasted less than three minutes.
There were a lot of grizzlies in these mountains, but mostly they kept out of the way, not because they were afraid, but because they simply did not want to be bothered.
Orrin, who reads a lot, was reading me a piece in a magazine, Century or Atlantic, I think, about some explorers coming back from some foreign country where they'd been hunting some wild creature. They were busy hunting for a few weeks and came back saying there was no such thing. Now I've lived in panther or mountain lion country most of my life and never seen but one or two that weren't treed by hounds.
Wild animals don't want to be seen, and it's sheer accident if you see them.
We were climbing all the while, getting higher and higher, and the nights were getting colder. Then, one morning, Tyrel come to me. 'Tell,' he said, 'there's a fringe of ice on the lake, yonder.' Well, that sent a chill through me. A fringe of ice--and we had some distance to go. I wasn't sure how much.
Now we were moving up some magnificent valleys, green and lovely with great walls of mountain rising on either side; often these were sheer precipices of bare rock, or with an occasional tree growing from some rock a body could no way get to. We caught fish, and one night I got three ducks in three shots with a rifle, two sitting, one just taking off. They were needed, as grub was getting low. We had flour, salt, and the like, but we needed meat.
Every morning now there was frost. The sky was gray often enough, and one night, when there were no clouds, we saw the Northern Lights, a tremendous display brightening the whole heavens. I'd heard of it but seen it but once before, in Montana, but never like this.
It was late afternoon, and Tyrel was riding point.
It was an easy trail, across some green meadows and up along a trail through huge boulders and scattered clumps of fir. Me, I was riding on the flank when I saw Tyrel pull up short.
Well, my rifle snaked into my hands, and I saw Cap Rountree out with his, but Tyrel wasn't drawing. He was looking at a big gray boulder beside the trail.
Coming down off the slope, I rounded the head of the herd and pulled up alongside him. I started to say, 'What's wrong, Tye?' and did say it before I looked past him and saw the mark on the face of the boulder.
Scratched on the face of the rock was CLINCH-S-Dease--his 'Well,' Orrin had come up, 'he isn't dead then.' 'Who isn't dead?' It was Fleming.
Orrin an' Tyrel glanced at me, and I said, 'We're losin' time, boys. We've got a far piece to go.' Fleming stared hard at the scratching on the rock. 'What's that mean?' he wondered. 'It don't make no sense!' 'Doesn't, does it?' Tyrel said mildly. He turned his mount. 'Hustle them along, Charlie. We've a ways to go.' Reluctantly, Charlie Fleming turned away.
Nettie Molrone rode up with Mary McCann. 'What is it, Orrin?' 'Just some scratching on a rock,' he said.
'We were wondering about it, that's all.' She looked at him quickly, her eyes searching his. She glanced at the rock. 'It doesn't make sense. Except'--she paused, studying it--'there's a Dease River up here somewhere and a Dease Lake.' 'There is?' Orrin looked surprised.
'What d'you know about that?' She looked at him again, half angry.
In the morning, Charlie Fleming was gone.
Chapter XXIII
Fleming was gone, and a light rain was falling that froze as it reached the ground. We drank our coffee standing around the hissing fire in our slickers.
'I'd like to know where he went,' Orrin said, 'but it's not worth following him.' 'D'you think he made sense out of Logan's message?' 'If he did,' Shorty said, 'he's smarter than me.' 'We've been passing messages around for years,' Orrin said. 'Started back in the feuding days, I reckon. The 'Clinch S' just means he's a Clinch Mountain Sackett, which is one branch of the family, descended from old Yance. 'Dease?'' simply means we should head for the Dease River, and the destination after that is in doubt.' 'Unless you were one of the family,' Tyrel commented, 'it's unlikely you'd guess.' 'Why'd you say he was still alive? That message might have been written days ago.' 'Could be, but it's scratched on there with some of that chalk rock he picked up, and had it been more'n a few days old, it would have washed away.' Cap came riding in as they were mounting. 'Took a look at the trail,' he said. 'There's a marker there. Could be by one of you boys, but that trail is one thin cow wide, and with this ice--' 'Think we can make it?' 'Maybe. There's no tellin' the luck of a lousy cow. Anyway, it doesn't seem like we have much choice.' 'It's up to me, then,' I said, and rode out with old Brindle falling in behind.
