CHAPTER XXXI.
THE WOMEN'S CAMP.
Filditch and his son, with the other whites, crossed the gorge andproceeded towards the bandits' camp, where some smoke was ascending ina mass.
Men on the frontier are kept in so nearly the same condition by thesimilitude of their habits, food, exercises, occupations, that whena race for life ensues, the fugitive, with a reasonable start beyondgunshot, is rarely overtaken. In this case, Kidd and his eight or tencompanions rather gained than lost by the pursuers being forced, forprudence sake, not to rush on straight, but to circle each large stoneand tree stump where the enemy might have halted to fire.
At the end of the canyon Kidd's party were not only well ahead, butthey had even halted more than once to breathe freely. Two had fallenand been secured, for the Indians had set up a yell of delight.
"Cheer up!" cried the captain, "We are out of the valley, andthe golden tract is only just beyond. The thing is fixed for oursatisfaction after all if we only press on pretty stiff."
But the words were hardly out of his pale lips and beginning toinspirit his band as they emerged from the jaws of the long troughbefore cheers arose behind them. From the high points Ridge and a fewPiegans saw a numerous corps of cavalry sweep round from the southeast,clear the spurs of the east bluff, and gallop through the mad rootswamp to intercept the flying men.
Nevertheless, good cavaliers as were these Mexicans of Peralta, thetreacherous morass soon hampered and terrified the horses, and thetroop was thrown into disarray.
This sight warmed the frozen heart of Kidd once more.
"They are only 'greasers,'" cried he, scornfully. "And, after all,better to perish having our revenge on them than waiting for thosemurderous savages to come up. Who'll come on with me? Won't the fear ofhellish torture make any backward spirit brave? For the golden land,right through the yallerfaces! Hurrah, boys!"
Whilst hesitating, two bullets of several shots whistled into thebodies of a pair of his companions. The pursuers had arrived withinrange. At this, more potent than the harangue, the gold grabbers ranat the heels of their leader, straight along the firm ground forminga natural bridge in the bog, firing at the floundering horsemen andyelling to increase the alarm of the steeds.
Five ran the gauntlet successfully, though each was wounded by theMexicans' cutlasses, so close were the encounters. But Kidd seemed tobear a charmed life. He turned, his bosom swelling with exultation. Allthe foes were on the other side of him. The Yellowstone Region was athis foot. Surely in his bounding heart he had not a doubt that he wasdestined to conceal himself among the wonders in some enchanted cave,in some petrified forest, in some hollow under a waterfall and bafflethe Yager of the Yellowstone himself.
Indeed, the trampling horses cut up the quaking morass; black waterand yellow slime oozed up and covered the grass. Where the bandits hadleaped along the mud rose, or the calamus root was sinking as if pulleddown by the hands of elves. The subtle obstacle was mysterious. All theIndians paused on the solid ground, whilst Ridge and the trappers alonewere cool enough to assist the Mexicans to where they stood.
To add to the horror, bodies of the Crows slain in the previous battle,till now submerged in the pitchy, sulfurous fen, slowly bubbled up, sobesmeared as but dimly to suggest the shapes of men.
Kidd and his companions, among whom was Margottet, the only Half-breed,had impudently stopped, the swamp between. They were the more plainlydiscernible as at their back the steam from a water volcano formed awhite veil.
Suddenly the wind died away. There was audible a mournful, tremendoussound in the haunted realm, like a giant's breathing; it was thepumping underground of the indescribable forces to extract and driveto the surface tons upon tons of water for the colossal hot waterfountains, whose heat and moisture tempered the atmosphere even here.
Kidd made a contemptuous gesture, turned, and leisurely led the wayover the few score yards between the swamp's edge and the lovelyoutskirts of an ever vernal wood. Already they caught glimpses ofstartled but unterrified wild animals under beautiful boughs, fruitladen, staring incredulously at the bloodstained, smoke blackenedstrangers.
All at once they felt an excessive rise in temperature. They beganstreaming with perspiration, and their wounds re-opened and bledprofusely. At each step a hollow sound arose. Then one foot, heavierthan another, sank as in a crust of snow in a calcareous soil. It wasno sooner drawn forth than the other was worse embogged, and those whocame to their comrade's help began to be mired. Kidd stopped; he lookedround to order a change of route, when a scream of terror burst fromhis and every lip, frightening the animals into flight and curdlingthe blood of the observers at the canyon's mouth. Margottet, both feetentangled, had broken bodily through the unsafe surface, and where hehad been sucked down a flaming dust had been belched up, exactly aswhen demons vanish down a trap on the stage.
With one accord, like men do instinctively upon thin ice, the wretchesthrew themselves flat on the ground. With the same impulse--anunaccountable one, stronger than mere interest in their disappearedcomrade--all heads were turned to the gap where he had found a gatewayto death. Blinded at first, their vision became accustomed to theradiance that emanated from within. It seemed to them that they peeredinto a chasm where a lake of pure glowing fire slowly moved in sullenupheaval. Meanwhile, the heat increased. They were like men who hadcrept into a limekiln for warmth, and by mischance were stupefiedby the fumes and were being roasted. They rolled away hither andthither, only thinking to avoid contact, for the weight of two bodiesconcentrated on one space might cause the repetition of Margottet'sfate. Their hair and beards were singed, their wounds were dried up nowand cauterised. They shrieked for help and mercy and that they wouldsurrender. Then unendurable anguish made them swoon. And helplesslythey were dragged thence by the lassoes of the Mexicans, who venturedinto the swamp to execute their deliverance this way.
"One of the wonders of the Yellowstone, gentlemen," said Jim Ridge. "Inever try to enter the Park that road."
"A manifestation of the Spirit of Fire," said Red Knife. "Where thespirits of our fathers rove in enjoyment no such evil things could beallowed to enter."
All was ended here. Leaving the miserable bandits to be brought on atleisure, the chiefs retraced their steps to ascertain before nightfallhow the detachment sent to attack or outwit the reserve of goldgrabbers had executed their task. The column of smoke thence arisingmust have a meaning.
The women's camp was in a flutter. Not only had all seen white jets ofsmoke from the firearms on the opposite slope, amid patches of green,brown, and grey, but Joe had, in passing among the captives, acquaintedMiss Maclan with the news that the final moment had come. Now or neverthe joined forces of mongrels and ruffians were to be crushed on thesill of the Yellowstone Region.
Suddenly Miss Maclan beckoned several of the more energetic women toher side. Ferreting in one of the wagons, she had discovered packagesof weapons: there were cutlasses enough to arm all of them.
But hardly had she ranged the Amazons in defence before the war whoopof the Cherokee split all ears as he and his band clambered upon theplateau. It needed no more to start the ruffians into a rout, and thosedeliverers not gone in hot pursuit were being thanked by the tearfulwomen.
In three days the victors had reposed from the strife, and the red menfeasted. In that period, too, the strange force from the north arrived,being a band of Mormon "destroying angels," or police, in search of theslayer of Gideon Kidd. Their captain was added to the tribunal formedto try Kidd and Steelder, Jim's prisoner, sole survivors of the goldgrabbers' corps.
Both denied the charge that they were allies, forgers, horse thieves,vendors of whisky to the Indians, and that they detained the women,except to preserve them from the savages. But at the appearance ofthe Carcajieu in the witness stand Kidd trembled and turned pale,muttering, "I am a lost man!"
"Starr, detective," muttered Dave Steelder, only less disconcerted."Just so. John E. Starr, Chief of the U.S. Detective Police o
fLouisiana," said the ex-Carcajieu, forcibly. "I have been hanging closeon you a long while, marking down everything you said and did. If youwill allow me, Judge, I'll _valet_ for these rogues."
Without giving time for anybody's opposition, he sprang upon thetwo stupefied prisoners, tore off the false hair that muffled theirfeatures, and rubbed their faces with his handkerchief, dipped in someantigrease liquid. The "cleaning up process," as a miner would say,resulted in a transformation even more remarkable than that of theGovernment official from the bandit's lieutenant.
The judges immediately pronounced the pair worthy of death; only theydecreed that Kidd, or Hank Brown, or Mathias Corvino, should be theIndians' prize for torture, and Steelder, or Don Miguel Tadeo, simplyhanged. At this, whilst Don Miguel smiled feebly, the rage of hisaccomplice burst forth:
"Give me over to those red fiends!" he roared. "You must think me thebigger villain, and I am not. I'll leave it to Bill Williams here. Isany man so base as he who tracked a harmless old man up in the LonelyPasses, and assassinated him, not for any grudge, but to possess thesecret lure by which beavers are decoyed into traps. Yes, gentlemen,Don Miguel Tadeo, over thirty years ago, was plain 'Spanish Mike,' thehanger-on at the Kansas trading forts. It was he who stole, upon oldBill Williams and murdered him. Look in the deerskin shirt he wears,and in the crescent piece at the armpit, which is double, you willfind the very recipe for mixing the beaver medicine, taken from theold trapper's warm body. Now, am I to be torn to pieces for an Injinholiday, and this cowardly slayer to be let off with a clean, easy,smoothly greased rope? Come, Judge Lynch, fair play!"
All eyes turned towards Bill Williams, whose features were stronglyconvulsed. By that moment of inattention the wretched Don Miguelendeavoured to profit. He burst away from the guards, and boundedthence in the only direction open. Alas, it led to the brink of theabyss, for the tribunal was held at the Medicine Rock.
With a savage yell, the trapper's son leaped after him. The Californianhalted on the giddy verge. During that wavering the avenger reachedhim, stabbed him, removed his scalp, lashed him in the face with it, sothat the blood blinded him, and, at the dagger point, goaded him on, on!
"Without pity for that old man, expect none now!" hissed the chief."Over! And be the sandworm's pickings!"
The unfortunate man walked into the air, and fell with a prolongedscream.
Bill sat down on a projecting crag, muffled, his face in his blanket,and seemed to sob convulsively. The white men regarded the mutefigure with awe and surprise. Taking advantage of this emotion, adozen Blackfeet rushed upon Corvino at a sign from Red Knife, andoverpowering him, despite a fierce resistance, bore him away to anunspeakable fate.
EPILOGUE.--Sir Ranald and Ulla Maclan returned to the old country towed. But the memory of their American adventures does not fade, andcannot perish and the parting words of the old hunter haunt them.
"The men with the felling axes and the railroad spike drivers aretracking me up but I have not turned cold round the heart yet. I'llname a big, bold mountain peak after you, sir, and a pure and prettylake after you, lady, and send you the newspaper with particulars. I'venicked my rifle to that effect."
Leon, or Lewis, and his sister accompanied their father and DonGregorio to the latter's farms in Lower California, and dwell happilythere.
THE END.
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