CHAPTER XXIX.
JIMMIE FINDS A FATHER.
The goat itself simplified matters for the frightened boy. Its loweredhead collided with his rotund form like a battering ram, and the nextinstant Persimmons described a graceful parabola above the snowfield.As for the goat, it dashed on, but came to a sudden halt as a shotcracked from Jim’s rifle and the bullet sped to its heart.
The boys, however, paid little attention to this at the time. Theirminds were concentrated upon poor Persimmons’ predicament. The boy hadbeen hurtled head foremost into a pile of snow and all that was visibleof him were his two feet feebly waving in the air.
“Gracious, I hope he’s not badly hurt!” exclaimed Ralph, as he and therest ran toward the snow bank.
Thanks to the soft snow, the lad was found to be uninjured, and afterhe had been hauled out, he sat down on a rock with a comically ruefulexpression on his face, and picked the snow out of his hair and eyes.
“What do you think you are, anyhow,” demanded Harry, “a bullfighter?”
“Ouch, don’t joke about it,” protested the boy. “I thought an expresstrain had hit me. Wh-wh-what became of the buck?”
“There he lies yonder, dead as that rock, but I don’t see where youcome in for any credit for killing him.”
“You don’t, eh? Didn’t I attract him this way so you could shoot him?”demanded the other youth indignantly. “I’ll tell you, fellows, shootingthe chutes, the loop-the-loop and all of them can take a back seat. Forpure unadulterated, blown-in-the-bottle excitement, give me a butt bya mountain goat. It’s like riding in an airship.”
“If you ever take another such ride it may prove your last one, youngman,” spoke Mountain Jim severely.
“Yes; I wouldn’t advise you to get the habit,” commented Harry Ware.
Not long after, they watched Jim separate the fine heads of the threedead animals, and, as it proved, there was one for Harry Ware, afterall. Mountain Jim had shot so many of the goats in his time that a headmore or less meant nothing to him, and he gladly gave his to Harry whenhe saw the latter’s rather long face.
They took the choicest parts of the meat back to camp with them. Notall of a mountain goat is very good eating, some of the flesh beingstrong flavored and coarse, so that they had no more than they couldeasily carry amongst them. That night, as you may imagine, Persimmons“rode the goat” all over again amidst much laughter and applause, andthe other young hunters told their stories till they all grew so sleepythat it was decided to turn in.
Three days of traveling amidst the big peaks followed, and they allhelped the professor collect specimens to his heart’s content. His notebooks were soon bulging, and he declared that his trip had added muchto the knowledge of the world concerning the Canadian Rockies.
One evening as they mounted a ridge, Mountain Jim paused and pointeddown to the valley below them. Through it swept a great green ribbon ofwater amidst rocky, pine-clad slopes.
“That’s it,” declared Jim.
“What?” demanded Persimmons eagerly, not quite understanding.
“The Big Bend of the Columbia River,” was the rejoinder.
The party broke into a cheer. The end of one stage of their journey wasat hand, for they were to return by a more civilized route. And yetthey were half sorry, for they had enjoyed themselves to the full inthose last days amidst the great silences.
It is at the Big Bend that the mighty Columbia turns after its erraticnortheast course and starts its southern journey to the Pacific Ocean,which it enters near Portland, Oregon.
In the sunset light, which lay glowingly on the great peaks behindthem, the heart of whose mysteries they had penetrated, they roderapidly down the trail, sweeping up to the store in a grand manner.That night they had an elaborate supper and related some of theiradventures to the store-keeper, a French Canadian, who, in turn, toldmany of his experiences. They were still talking when a man came in andannounced himself as Bill Dawkins from “up the trail a ways.”
“I heard that one of your party is a doctor or suthin’ sim’lar,” hesaid, “and maybe he can do suth’in for a poor cuss that’s just beenthrowed from his horse and had his head busted, up the road a piece.”
“I am not a doctor, but I have some knowledge of medicine,” said theprofessor. “Where is the man?”
“In my cabin. I’ll take you to him.”
They all streamed out into the night and followed Bill Dawkins upthe trail. It was not a great way and they were soon standing at thebedside of a well-built, but pitifully ragged-looking man. His head wasbandaged, but enough of his face was visible to cause Ralph to give agreat start as they saw him.
“It’s the mysterious man! The horse thief!” he cried, clutchingMountain Jim’s arm.
“Are you sure?”
“Certain.”
Jim turned to the man who had brought them.
“Is the horse that threw him outside?” he asked.
“Sure, pard’ner, right under the shed,” was the reply; “good-lookingpony, too.”
Jim borrowed a lantern and he and Ralph went out. There was no questionabout it. One look was enough. It was the missing pony.
“Well, that’s what I call poetic justice,” said Jim.
“Hark!” cried Ralph suddenly. “What was that?”
“Somebody hollered,” declared Jim; “it came from the hut. Maybe thatscallywag is dead.”
Ralph set off running. The cry had been in Jimmie’s voice. He hadrecognized it. What could have happened?
Inside the hut there was a strange scene. Jimmie was on his knees atthe bedside of the wild-looking man and was crying out:
“Father! It’s me! Jimmie! Father, don’t you know me?”
But the man on the bed was delirious. He shouted incoherently.
“It’s silver! I tell you it’s silver! Jimmie? Who says Jimmie? Why,that’s my boy. But he’s dead, is Jimmie. Dead-dead-dead!”
The cracked voice broke off in a wail. Suddenly the delirious manthrust his hands into his pockets and drew out some fragments of rock.
“Scramble for it, you dogs!” he cried. “It’s silver! Jimmie’s dead andI don’t want it. But they’re after me,--after me yet!”
The professor picked up a bit of the rock.
“It’s rich in fine silver!” he exclaimed. “This man has found a minesomewhere.”
“Yes; but Jimmie called him ‘father.’ What does it all mean?” demandedRalph.
“It must remain a puzzle for the present,” said the professor. “Thisman has been badly injured in his fall. I think he will live, but Ican’t answer for it. Bill Dawkins’ partner has ridden off for a doctor.In the meantime. I’ll do what I can.”
Soon afterward the doctor arrived and they were all ordered from theroom. It was then that Jimmie told his story to the curious group thatsurrounded him.
His father, whom he had so strangely recovered, had been cashier of acity bank many years before, when Jimmie was a baby. Before that he hadfollowed the sea for a time, and sailor fashion, he had had tattooed onhis arms his own initials,--H. R., Horace Ransom,--and the initials ofJimmie’s mother,--A. S., Anna Seagrim. There came a day when shortagewas discovered in the bank and Jimmie’s father, wrongfully suspected,fled to Canada rather than face the chance of being convicted, as heknew that had happened to many another innocent man.
Beyond the fact that he had gone to the Canadian Rockies, then a wilderregion even than they are to-day, Jimmie’s mother knew nothing. Timewent on and it was found out that Horace Ransom was innocent, but hecould not be found. Jimmie’s mother fell ill and died, but before shepassed away she left a paper with her son describing the marks on hisfather’s arm and where he had last been heard of.
Jimmie was too young to understand what it all meant then. He wassent to an orphans’ home, but ran away as soon as he was old enoughto make his escape. He drifted about, selling newspapers, performingwith circuses and doing many other things, but all the time he clungto the precious bit
of paper his mother had entrusted to him. Jimmie’sone ambition had been to find his father if he were alive, and to makehim happy. He saved and scrimped and at last got money enough togetherfor railroad fares back to the States for his father and himself. Buthe had, as we know, to make his way to the Rockies without financialassistance, traveling as best he could.
The boys’ stories of the wild man had worked on his imagination anda feeling that the man might be his father had come to possess him.But, of course, he had no proof of the matter till he knelt at thebedside of the raving man and saw the tattoo marks. Such, in brief, wasJimmie’s strange story.
With this, our party had to be content for the time being, and leavingJimmie with the neighborhood doctor at Bill Dawkins’ hut, they wentdown the trail to pitch camp at the Big Bend. They decided to remain atthis place at least until Jimmie’s new-found father was out of dangerand his plans for the future were made.
Some days later Mr. Ransom rallied enough to talk haltingly,--and toJimmie’s joy he talked rationally! The surgeon in attendance declaredthat, as is not altogether unusual, the sudden blow on the head hadrestored the man’s senses. He felt assured that some particularlysevere experience during Mr. Ransom’s years of loneliness and hardshipin the Rockies had deprived him temporarily of his mental poise, andthat he had been subject to periods of wildness.
What the crucial strain was, no one could discover. He seemed veryuncertain when questioned about his past and apparently was unable torelate one incident to another as he recalled them.
It was left for Jimmie, who could hardly be tempted to leave hisfather’s bedside, by day or night, to tell him of his early history andto piece together the later experiences as they fell from the injuredman’s lips.
It seemed that Mr. Ransom had accidentally blundered upon the boys’camp on one of his lone pilgrimages amidst the mountains, for doubtlesshe had searched only during his sane periods for gold or silver. Thesound of boyish voices had evidently stirred memories of his own son,Jimmie, who he had realized must be a grown lad, although he had lefthim a baby in arms.
But the fear of being arrested for the crime of which, as he supposed,he still stood accused, always haunted him and had made him afraid ofmeeting the travelers from the States face to face. He had followedthem at a distance, his half-crazed brain fascinated by them. In theterrible passage of the _brulee_ his own pony had died under him, andthe next night he had stampeded the travelers’ ponies and stolen oneof them. In the same way, when necessity arose, he had stolen some oftheir provisions. He was still on their trail when the accident thatrestored to him his son, his senses and the knowledge of his completeclearance of suspicion of the bank shortage, had occurred to him.
But still he could not account for years of his past. Jimmie patientlywent over with him the story of his long-ago flight and of his recentmining researches, but between the two experiences yawned a bafflinghiatus.