The Price of the Prairie Part 14

"I've been thinking for twelve hours," said my aunt. "Until you try that place don't give up the hunt."

"But I don't know how to get there."

"Then make a way. You are not less able to do impossible things than the Pilgrim Fathers were. If you ever find O'mie it will be in that place. I feel it, I can't say why. But, Phil, you will need the boys and Father Le Claire. Take time to get breakfast and get yourself together. You will need all your energy. Don't squander it the first thing."

Dear Aunt Candace! This many a year has her grave been green in the Springvale cemetery, but greener still is her memory in the hearts of those who knew her. She had what the scholars of to-day strive to possess--the power of poise.

I ate my breakfast as calmly as I could, and before I left home Aunt Candace made me read the Ninety-first Psalm. Then she kissed me good-bye and bade me G.o.d-speed. Something kept telling me to hurry, hurry, as I tried to be deliberate, and quickened my thought and my step. At the tavern Cam Gentry met us.

"It ain't no use to try, boys, O'mie's down in the river where the cussed Copperheads put him; but you're good to keep tryin'." He sat down in a helpless resignation, so unlike his natural buoyant spirit it was hard to believe that this was the same Cam we had always known.

"Judson's baby's to be buried to-day, but we can't even bury O'mie. Oh, it's cruel hard." Cam groaned in his chair.

The dew had not ceased to glitter, and the sun was hardly more than risen when Father Le Claire and the crowd of boys, reinforced now by Tell Mapleson and Jim Conlow, started bravely out, determined to find the boy who had been missing for what seemed ages to us.

"If we find O'mie, we'll send word by the fastest runner, and you must ring the church bell," Le Claire arranged with Cam. "All the town can have the word at once then."

"We'll go to the Hermit's Cave first," I announced.

The company agreed, but only Bud Anderson seemed to feel as I did. To the others it was a wasted bit of heroism, for if none of us had yet found the way to this retreat, why should we look for O'mie there? So the boys argued as we hurried to the river. The Neosho was inside its banks again, but, deep and swift and muddy, it swept silently by us who longed to know its secrets.

"Philip, why do you consider the cave possible?" Le Claire asked as we followed the river towards the cliff.

"Aunt Candace says so," I replied.

"Well, it's worth the trial if only to prove a woman's intuition--or whim," he said quietly.

The same old cliff confronted us, although the many uprooted trees showed a jagged outcrop this side the sheer wall. We looked up helplessly at the height. It seemed foolish to think of O'mie being in that inaccessible spot.

"If he is up there," Dave Mead urged, "and we can get to him, it will be to put him alongside Judson's baby this afternoon."

All the other boys were for turning back and hunting about Fingal's Creek again, all except Bud. Such a pink and white boy he was, with a dimple in each cheek and a blowsy tow head.

"Will you stay with me, Bud, till I get up there?" I asked him.

"Yeth thir! or down there. Let'th go round an' try the other thide."

"Well, I guess we'll all stay with Phil, you cottontop," Tell Mapleson put in.

We all began to circle round the bluff to get beyond this steep, forbidding wall. Our plan was to go down the river beyond the cave, and try to climb up from that point. Crossing along by the edge of the bluff we pa.s.sed the steepest part and were coming again to where the treetops and bushes that clung to the side of the high wall reached above the crest, as they do across the street from my own home. Just ahead of us, as we hurried, I caught sight of a flat slab of the shelving rock slipped aside and barely balancing on the edge, one end of it bending down the treetops as if newly slid into that place. All about the stone the thin sod of the bluff's top was cut and trampled as if a struggle had been there. We examined it carefully. A horse's tracks were plainly to be seen.

"Something happened here," Le Claire said. "Looks like a horse had been urged up to the very edge and had kept pulling back."

"And that stone is just slipped from its place," Clayton Anderson declared. "Something has happened here since the rains."

As we came to the edge, we saw a pile of earth recently sc.r.a.ped from the stone outcrop above.

"Somebody or something went over here not long ago," I cried.

"Look out, Phil," Bill Mead called, "or somebody else will follow somebody before 'em--"

Bill's warning came too late. I had stepped on the balanced slab. It tipped and went over the side with a crash. I caught at the edge and missed it, but the effort threw me toward the cliff and I slid twenty feet. The bushes seemed to part as by a well-made opening and I caught a strong limb, and gained my balance. I looked back at the way I had come.

And then I gave a great shout. The anxious faces peering down at me changed a little.

"What is it?" came the query.

I pointed upward.

"The nicest set of hand-holds and steps clear up," I called. "You can't see for the shelf. But right under there where Bud's head is, is the best place to get a grip and there's a foothold all the way down." I stared up again. "There's a rope fastened right under there. Bend over, Bud, careful, and you'll find it. It will let you over to the steps.

Swing in on it."

In truth, a set of points for hand and foot partly natural, partly cut there, rude but safe enough for boy climbers like ourselves, led down to my tree lodge.

"And what's below you?" shouted Tell.

"Another tree like this. I don't know how far down if you jump right," I answered back.

"Well, jump right, for I'm nekth. Ever thee a tow-headed flying thquirrel?" And Bud was s.h.i.+nning down over the edge clawing tightly the stone points of vantage.

Many a time in these sixty years have I seen a difficult and dreaded way grow suddenly easy when the time came to travel it. When we were only boys idling away the long summer afternoons the cliff was always impossible. We had rarely tried the downward route, and from below with the river, always dangerously deep and swift, at the base, our exploring had brought failure. That hand-hold of leather thongs, braided into a rope and fastened securely under the ledge out of sight from above, gave the one who knew how the easy pa.s.sage to the points of rock. Then for nearly a hundred feet zigzagging up stream by leaping cautiously to the right place, by clinging and swinging, the way opened before us. I took the first twenty feet at a slide. The others caught the leather rope, testing to see if it was securely fastened. Its two ends were tied around the deeply grooved stone.

Father Le Claire and Jim Conlow stayed at the top. The one to help us back again; the other, as the swiftest-footed boy among us, to run to town with any message needful to be sent. The rest of us, taking all manner of fearful risks, crashed down over the side of that bluff in headlong haste.

The Hermit's Cave opened on a narrow ledge such as runs below the "Rockport" point, where Marjie and I used to play, off Cliff Street. We reached this ledge at last, hot and breathless, hardly able to realize that we were really here in the place that had baffled us so long. It was an almost inaccessible climb to the crest above us, and the cliff had to be taken at an angle even then. I believe any one accustomed only to the prairie would never have dared to try it.

The Hermit's Cave was merely a deep recess under the overhanging shelf.

It penetrated far enough to offer a retreat from the weather. The thick tangle of vines before it so concealed the place that it was difficult to find it at first. Just beyond it the rock projected over the line of wall and overhung the river. It was on this point that the old Hermit had been wont to sit, and from which tradition says he fell to his doom.

It was here we had seen Jean Pahusca on that hot August afternoon the summer before. How long ago all that seemed now as the memory of it flashed up in my mind, and I recalled O'mie's quiet boast, "If he can get up there, so can I!"

I was a careless boy that day. I felt myself a man now, with human destiny resting on my shoulders. As we came to this rocky projection I was leading the file of cliff-climbers. The cave was concealed by the greenery. I stared about and then I called, "O'mie! O'mie!"

Faintly, just beside me, came the reply: "Phil, you 've come? Thank G.o.d!"

I tore through the bushes and vines into the deep recess. The dimness blinded me at first. What I saw when the glare left my eyes was O'mie stretched on the bare stones, bound hand and foot. His eyes were burning like stars in the gloom. His face was white and drawn with suffering, but he looked up bravely and smiled upon me as I bent over him to lift him. Before I could speak, Bud had cut the bands and freed him. He could not move, and I lifted him like a child in my strong arms.

"Is the town safe?" he asked feebly.

"Yes, now we've found you," Dave Mead replied.

"How did you get here, O'mie?" Clayton Anderson asked.

But O'mie, lying limply in my arms, murmured deliriously of the ladder by the shop, and wondered feebly if it could reach from the river up to the Hermit's Cave. Then his head fell forward and he lay as one dead on my knee.

A year before we would have been a noisy crew that worked our way to this all but inaccessible place, and we would have filled the valley with whoops of surprise at finding anything in the cavern. To-day we hardly spoke as we carried O'mie out into the light. He s.h.i.+vered a little, though still unconscious, and then I felt the hot fever begin to pulse throughout his body.

Dave Mead was half way up the cliff to Father Le Claire. Out on the point John Anderson waved, to the crest above, the simple message, "We've found him."

Bud dived into the cavern and brought out an empty jug, relic of Jean Pahusca's habitation there.