'Well, he tried it, and it brought on his rheumatism again and he's laid up.
On'y things about him ain't ailin' is his trigger finger and his jaw.
'A man down yonder panned gold out of this stream, and he told us of it, so I done left a note to tell pa where I'd gone, an' then I hightailed it up here.'
'You came all the way by yourself?'
'No, sir. I got a mule down yonder. A fast-walkin' mule and just like me he'll take nothing from nobody I've also got a dog that's half bear.'
'You're funnin'--half bear? It won't work.'
'You should of told his ma that. Anyway, I reckon that ol' he-bear wasn't askin' any questions. I tell you I got a dog that's half bear.'
She glanced up at me as we walked along. 'You said you took up with a Trelawney girl out west. Which one was it?'
'You mean there's more than the two of you come west? How much can this country stand, all to one time? Her name was Dorinda.'
'Oh-oh-oh! Maybe I got to look at you in daylight, mister. If Dorinda took up with you there must be more to you than I figured. She was a beautiful one, Dorinda was.'
'Yes, ma'am, but not to be trusted. Back in the mountains we could always count on a Trelawney girl to do her best, but that one! That Dorinda usually done her worst. She nigh got me killed.'
We'd come up to a shelving shore where she'd put together a lean-to under some trees Sure enough, there was a mule, a big, rawboned no-nonsense Missouri mule that must have weighed fifteen hundred pounds and every bit of it meanness.
I heard a low growl. Mister, if that dog wasn't half bear he was half of something that was big, and he was mean and ugly. He must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a head like a bull mastiff and teeth that would give one of them dinnysouers a scare.
'It's all right, Neb,' Nell said. 'He's friendly.'
'If I wasn't,' I said, 'I'd start being. That's the biggest durned dog I ever did see.'
'He's big, all right.'
'What do you feed him? A calf a day?'
'He rustles his own grub. Maybe he eats people. I wouldn't know. He goes off in the woods now and again, and when he comes back he's licking his chops.'
'Where'd you latch onto him?'
'He took up with me. I was huntin' elk up top and this here dog came up out of the bottoms. There's a place where the run drops off about twelve hundred feet, and I had just killed me an elk, when this dog showed up.
'He stretched out with his head on his paws, like, and I figured him for a bear, so I slung him a chunk of meat. After that he sort of stayed with me.'
'In Shalako, too? Why, he'd stampede every horse in the valley!'
'He don't stampede Jacob. Jacob an' him, they get along.'
Jacob, I took it, was the mule.
'Well,' I got up. 'Those boys yonder will think I went to get a drink and the hogs et me. I'd better start back, but you come down and see us. We'll be around for a day or two ... and you keep an eye open for those men I spoke of. They ain't pleasant folks. Nobody you'd invite to a quiltin' or a box social, like.'
By the time I got back to the fire everybody was settin' about. They'd eaten and we're drinking coffee and listening for trouble. I made no effort to be quiet, and, when I was within distance, I hailed the fire, as a gentleman should. The ungentlemanly often ended up with a bellyful of buckshot.
A man who shoots when you don't call out doesn't have too many friends, but his enemies are surely all dead.
'What took you so long?' Orrin asked The Tinker was looking at me kind of wise and so was Judas Priest.
'I was keepin' comp'ny,' I said. 'I was settin out with a gal.'
'Up here?' Orrin scoffed.
'I think he's telling the truth,' the Tinker said 'He doesn't act like he'd been out among the bears.'
So I explained to them about Nell Trelawney and about old Jack Ben Trelawney down at Shalako waiting for his daughter to pan out enough gold to get them out of hock.
Orrin shook his head. 'That's hard work for a man,' he grumbled, 'and no woman should be doing it.'
'Jack Ben's all crippled up,' I said. 'What would you have her do? Set still while they starve?'
'All the Treawney girls could cook,' he suggested 'and the food isn't all that good in these mining towns.'
'That needs cash money to lay out for flour and the like. You got to have a place.'
'I agree with Mr. Orrin,' Judas said positively. 'It is no task for a woman.'
We had our own problems, and that night I got out the daybook again I gave it to Orrin to read to us.
I have been writing in secret, but it is far from easy. I think Pettigrew suspects what I am doing, but he is a secretive man and merely smiles that sly smile and says nothing.
Somebody has found gold! This morning Pierre found a small hole, dug near a tree and hastily filled in. The marks near the tree were of Pettigrew's boots.
Later, alone with Pierre, I told him the tracks were faked to implicate Pettigrew. He scoffed at me and didn't believe it. I told him they wanted to eliminate anyone who might be on his side and they would probably try to raise suspicion about me next, and if that didn't work, there would be another Indian attack. He was angry and demanded to know what I meant by that. I told him there had been no Indians, I had found no tracks. Had there been Indians, they would have returned to destroy us.
He was listening by then, and he asked who would fake such an attack and why. I told him I thought it was Andre and Swan. He was annoyed because I accused his brother-in-law. I said it seemed clear that Andre didn't mind killing and neither did he seem to mind Swan's brutality to Angus.
Pierre did not like it, but he listened. 'You think gold has been found and held out?' he said. I told him that was exactly what I believed.
I took to sleeping away from the others, on a pretense of watching for Indians, and I made my bed among leaves and branches that could not be walked over without noise.
Moreover I watched my back.
We read on Pa had apparently been doing some scouting around and he had come up with a camp location-- two locations, in fact. He argued with Pierre Bontemps that there had been friction within the detachment. The story was that the Utes had attacked them, killed many, and that some had died of starvation later. Only a few men were supposed to have escaped. For several reasons, the story did not make a lot of sense, for this hadn't been a patrol, but a large body of men--perhaps as many as three hundred. Pa believed there were less.
He figured there had been difficulties in the camp and they had separated. Under such primitive conditions animosities could develop, and something had obviously happened there. Pa found two camps, both with stone walls roughly put together, and he found pestholes--the posts were rotted away but the holes could be cleaned out. Rough shelters--he found a button or two, and a broken knife.
Pa was shot at twice in the woods, but merely commented it must be Indians.
Meanwhile he stopped telling anyone his conclusions. From bones he dug up and other signs, he decided one camp was doing a lot better than the other. The men in that part of the French military detachment were eating better, living better ... must be an Indian or a mountain man in that outfit.
May 24: On the run. Wounded. We found the gold, or some of it. Andre and Swan acted at once. Luckily I'd spread my bed as usual, then being uneasy I moved back into the aspen. Had a devil of a time finding a place to stretch out, so close they were. Suddenly I awakened and heard movement, then a roar of rifles.
They'd slipped up and shot into my bedding. Unable to get close, they stood back and fired. They must have poured a dozen rounds into the place where my bedding was.
I heard Andre say, 'Now for Pettigrew. Move quickly, man. Tell him it's Indians and when you get close ...' Swan asked him what to do about Pierre, and Baston said, 'Leave 'im to me.'
I couldn't get to both of them in time, but I ran toward Pierre, moving silently as could be.
We didn't need no pictures to tell us what was happening there atop the mountain. Baston and Swan had
