The Heart of Thunder Mountain Part 39

Light came with unutterable mystery. Yet Haig lay for a moment waiting, mistrustful of the peace that encompa.s.sed him. Then he cautiously raised his head, and looked. Trixy stood near him, panting and wild-eyed. The whole surface of the plateau was glistening wet; a cold breeze poured over him, without violence; and the sky above him was as innocent and bright as a baby's smile.

Where, then, was the storm? He moved his head painfully, and searched the horizon; and yonder, around the icy parapets of Silver Tip, with roll on roll of reverberations in its wake, the black storm was in full flight. His eyes followed it with a curious and exaggerated interest; for he had seen its birth, and tested its power, and it had given him a new experience.

Presently he tried to rise, and found that his limbs were numb. His right arm ached to the tips of his fingers. His head swam, and he had difficulty in arranging his impressions in any sort of orderly succession, especially those in which Sunnysides partic.i.p.ated.

"I wonder how much of it really happened!" he mused.

Unexpectedly his eyes lighted on his revolver, where it lay among the stones at his side. Ah! It had burned his fingers. He picked it up, and examined it curiously. But none of the cartridges had been exploded. The gun, then, had been knocked out of his hand before he could lift and aim it; and the storm had taunted him with Sunnysides, and cheated him. No matter! The game was not yet up.

He struggled to his feet, and stretched himself, and pounded his chest, which ached from his heavy breathing. Then his eyes sought the trail ahead, scanning the level s.p.a.ces and the heaped-up ma.s.ses of granite; and an instant later a cry escaped his lips. For there, perhaps half a mile away, and mounting rapidly a gray ridge of rock, his body outlined against the blue sky, was Sunnysides. It had been no vision, then, no figment of his tortured brain. But where had the horse been all this time, to have been caught in the same storm with his pursuer, despite his half-hour start, his greater speed, and the night that came between them? True, there had been a storm in the night; that might have delayed, but it should not have kept him. True, too, he might have lost the trail, and wandered over the plateau; but Haig could not have missed him, if he had been anywhere in sight before the storm revealed him. No, nothing could explain it; and there remained only one hypothesis, which was untenable, preposterous and mad. And yet it fascinated and held him. He had once said jocularly that Sunnysides was not a real horse at all; that he was a demon--a spirit. Well, it was a real horse, right enough, that had crushed him, and thrown him again, and broken Bill Craven's leg, and fled; and that was a real horse yonder, outlined against the sky. If some devilish instinct in the brute, or some agent of Destiny, or mere fling of chance had held him on the plateau to tantalize and lead on his pursuer--

"Dreaming again!" Haig muttered, with a wry smile, and yet with a vague uneasiness that he could not put down.

But in another instant he had leaped to his horse, tested the cinches with trembling fingers, climbed stiffly into the saddle, and dug the spurs into Trixy's flanks. When he looked again toward the ridge, the outlaw had disappeared; but there was no ignis-fatuus trick in that; and the horse would be seen again when Haig too had topped the rise.

For the trail was now leading him in a relatively straight line toward the exact spot where Sunnysides had vanished; and more a.s.suring than all else, a very material and comforting proof that this was a real horse he followed, was the discovery he made halfway up the slope.

There, among the stones, lay the outlaw's saddle. Clearly the runaway had only just now been able to shake it off, and its condition, bruised and cut and dirty, showed that Sunnysides had been put to some trouble to be rid of it, having doubtless rolled over and over on it in his efforts to be free. And there, too, was a plausible explanation of the fact that Sunnysides was not now far on the trail.

From the top of the ridge, Haig saw the outlaw picking his way through a wilderness of rocks that had the grewsome aspect of a cemetery--the graveyard of the G.o.ds. Following through this depressing scene, he lost sight of Sunnysides, and on emerging upon another floor-like expanse of solid stone he received a surprise that caused him to rein up Trixy with a jerk. The quarry was nowhere in sight, though Haig's position gave him a sweeping view of the flat ahead of him, even to the edge of the summit, now scarcely three quarters of a mile away.

There was no possibility that the horse could have traversed that distance in the time Haig was pa.s.sing through the "cemetery;" neither was there any place on that part of the plateau where it could be concealed.

The trail itself solved the mystery. It did not lead straight on, as Haig had imagined; and he experienced some difficulty in finding it on the smooth floor, from which the elements had all but obliterated the crosses made by the pioneers. Then his astonishment was great to find that it turned at a sharp angle to the left, dropped sheer over the edge of the flat rock, coiled down a slope littered with debris to another field of loose stones, and in a quarter of a mile brought up at the brink of a cliff. Sunnysides, then, had crossed the summit, and was descending to whatever lay below.

In ten minutes Haig himself was at the margin of the chasm; for little wider than a chasm was that deep and narrow gulch, far up the side of Thunder Mountain, into which he now looked in wonderment and perplexity. A thousand feet or more below him lay a tiny patch of meadow of a brilliant green, with a thread of water sparkling through it, and on all sides, excepting that nearest him, black forests encompa.s.sed it, and mounted dense to the timber line save where, at his right, the stream ran down through its gorge. There, evidently, would go the trail also, dropping into the Black Lake country, of evil reputation.

But where now was the trail? He dismounted, and leaned over the edge of the precipice; and there he discovered that he had missed the exact point of departure by some fifteen yards, and that at this distance to his left there was a break in the sharp brink, where the trail fell off precipitately to a heap of broken stone and sand. The cliff had been shattered in some convulsion of nature, or loosened and disintegrated by the elements, and enormous ma.s.ses of it had fallen into the gulch. These ma.s.ses appeared to be in a state of instability, and it was not clear to Haig, from where he lay, how a trail could ever have been picked out among those jutting rocks and slides of debris, or how, once found, it could have remained intact on that s.h.i.+fting foundation. Was it possible that any living thing had ever made its way down (much less _up_) that steep and treacherous rubble heap?

He was studying it incredulously, when Sunnysides suddenly resolved all doubts. From behind a projecting rock the horse came out on one of the many rough ledges that had been formed by lateral cleavage of the cliff in its fall. Hesitating a moment there, he plunged down a short declivity, and landed sprawling on another shelf perhaps twenty feet lower down, and somewhat to the right of the first, where he once more vanished from Haig's sight.

"All right!" cried Haig. "If you can do that we can. Eh, Trixy?"

He mounted quickly, urged the reluctant mare to the break in the edge of the cliff, and forced her over. For some thirty feet the trail went down the face of the precipice, much like a fire escape on the wall of a tenement house, barely wide enough to accommodate horse and rider,--so narrow, indeed, that Haig's left leg was sc.r.a.ped and bruised by hard contact with the stone. At the bottom of this incline, his amazement was great at finding a solid platform of rock, on which, he was able easily to turn and go down another incline underneath the first. Plainly all this was not the result of accident; the hands of men had been busy here; and picks and shovels had supplemented the work of nature. But below the next platform there certainly had been a secondary slide of rock, for the trail was nowhere discernible, though it should evidently have slipped down, at a greater angle from the cliff than before, to a third turning point on a shelf some forty feet away to the left. Here the debris was loose and fine, and with a little urging Trixy was induced to take the descent, carrying quant.i.ties of sand and stones with her as she slid and sprawled safely to the next goal.

Thus they went, sometimes finding the trail plain over solid rock and hard-packed debris, sometimes slipping and scrambling among stones and sand, but always drawing nearer and nearer in a zigzag course, now easy and then difficult, to the green vale below. There were moments when Trixy was on her knees, moments when she was on her haunches, moments when she stood swaying above the pit, and moments when all traces of the trail had vanished. But somewhere below was Sunnysides.

Far down the declivity, so near the valley that Haig was able to look across into the tops of the tallest pines, they came to what appeared to be the last of the rocky ledges. Having for some minutes seen nothing of the outlaw, Haig supposed that the runaway had already reached the meadow, and was by now on the trail through the forest.

But just as Trixy's shod hoofs struck the platform with a clatter, Haig caught sight of Sunnysides far out on the narrow shelf. He was trotting briskly along, for the shelf was smooth and level. But, on a sudden he stopped, stood a moment with his head thrust forward and down, and then turned cautiously around, his four feet bunched together on the narrow footing.

"What's up now?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Haig.

And then he saw it. Twice before he had noted where a similar error might have been made, on other ledges farther up; and he himself had avoided them only by carefully studying the aspect of the declivity below him. Sunnysides had undoubtedly lost time through such mistakes; and now he was trapped. At the point where he stood, the shelf ended abruptly "in the air"; and between him and the exit at the other end of the platform was Haig. The trail had come down to about the middle of this platform, which was like an unrailed balcony, scarce three feet in width, with a high wall of rock on one side, and on the other a straight drop of twenty feet to a veritable chute of stones that terminated in a widespread litter of debris on the meadow.

"Caught like a rat!" cried Haig. "I've got you now!"

But what could he do with him? His rope was useless on that meager footing, where there was barely room for his horse to stand, much less for Haig to swing a noose. And worse: if Sunnysides was trapped, so was his enemy; for the horse was already, through fright or belligerency, moving slowly toward Haig. In a flash it was clear to Haig that the outlaw meant to have it out with him then and there; and that there would be no time to turn Trixy, and find the outlet into the valley.

"It's too bad, but--"

He drew his revolver, and waited. There was yet a chance, he thought, or hoped, that the horse would halt, and postpone the issue. He did not want to kill him; he had not come across Thunder Mountain to kill him; he had come to take him back to Paradise Park. And so he waited--fatally. The outlaw came slowly until half the s.p.a.ce between him and Haig had been covered. Then, at a distance of perhaps a hundred feet, when no choice was left to him, Haig swung up his gun, and fired. At that very instant, Sunnysides uttered a savage cry, a shrill neigh ending in a scream; and, charged at the horse and rider in his path.

Haig fired again, and missed; threw himself forward on Trixy's neck, jerked the pony's head in toward the wall, and fired again; and missed. He tried to shoot once more, into the very face of the oncoming brute, but too late. There was a vision of flaming black eyes and white teeth, in a yellow blur; and then a tremendous impact, a crash. Trixy was flung back on her haunches, with one hind leg over the edge of the shelf, Haig barely hanging in the saddle. The outlaw leaped back, and lunged again; thrust himself between Trixy and the wall; toppled pony and rider off into the void; and pa.s.sed on, with a shriek of triumphant rage.

Haig and Trixy turned in the air, struck the chute of stones and sand, and rolled over and over as they went down in a flying slide of debris. But Haig did not know that, for his head struck a stone at the first contact with the chute.

Sentience returned to him through mists of pain. He lay in a twisted heap on a patch of gra.s.s, surrounded by the scattered detritus of the cliff. At first he could not remember, and could not see. His head rang with pain, and his eyes were filled with dust, and with something wet. He managed presently to lift an arm and wipe his eyes with his hand; and saw dimly that the hand was covered with blood. His eyes then filled again; and he swept his sleeves across them and his forehead. That was better. Blinking, and wiping his face again and again, he looked dully around him until memory came back, and brought recognition of his plight.

He tried to sit up, but sank down quickly with a groan. One leg was bent almost double under the other, and would not move. This fact struck him at first as very queer--an inexplicable phenomenon. Then he tried it again. His left leg moved at his will, and that encouraged him. His right hip and part of the thigh too moved, but the leg below lay loose and dead.

The blood was in his eyes again. It exasperated him; he could do nothing unless he were able to see. He wiped his face again with his sleeve, then put his hand to his head, and winced a little as the fingers touched a gash just above the left temple, from which the blood still flowed. By turning his head he found that the blood ran down away from his eyes instead of into them. The new position also gave him a view of several things that held his attention.

First there was the clutter of stones around him. Then his eyes swept upward to the ledge whence he had come rolling down--how far? He calculated the distance curiously. Eighty feet--a hundred, surely. How did he come to be still alive? he wondered. And Trixy! Where was she.

Once more he tackled the problem of sitting up, and it became easier now in his full understanding of his condition. By ignoring the dead leg entirely, since it was of no further use to him, he contrived to raise himself with his hands on the ground behind him for support.

Then with a jerk that brought a cry of pain, he sat erect, swaying but resolute. At this instant he heard a soft whinny behind him. Twisting himself around, he saw Trixy lying some twenty feet away, with her forelegs doubled up beneath her, and her head lifted and pointed toward him. He studied the little mare a moment.

"Trixy! Get up!" he commanded suspiciously.

She lifted her head higher, made a desperate effort to rise, sank back, and whinnied piteously.

"So! Yours too, eh! Nice fix, Trixy!"

He surveyed the scene. They were in a bright green meadow about two hundred yards in width and perhaps half a mile in length. Across the meadow from where he lay the black forest mounted toward the sky. At one end the vale narrowed into a mere ravine, which vanished upward in deep woods; at the other it widened to the forest, and by the way the pine-ma.s.ses came down to this spot from both sides he knew that there the trail ran down the mountain toward the Black Lake country. The vale was very still under the bright blue sky; there was just a murmur in the forest; and no sound of birds came to his ears.

"A beautiful site--for a graveyard!" he said aloud, and smiled.

The blood still trickled into his eyes, and annoyed him greatly. It must be stopped, or he could do nothing that needed to be done. In an inside pocket of his coat he found a handkerchief, which he bound around his head, after he had wiped his face once more. The pain in his head had subsided to a dull throbbing, which did not matter.

But--

"G.o.d! I'm thirsty!" he muttered.

He looked again across the meadow. The thread of water that he had seen from the top of the cliff was a considerable brook that ran silently through about the middle of the green. He measured the distance,--fifty or sixty yards, maybe seventy, or more. He could do it, by dragging himself along the ground, he thought. But was it worth the effort, and the pain? It would hurt him like the devil--that broken leg. Never did like pain; would probably howl; and that would not be nice, even with no creature but Trixy to hear him. No; he would stay where he was. Then suddenly he thought of Pete's whisky, and thrust his hand into his pocket, only to encounter fragments of gla.s.s.

"That's a lesson," he thought grimly. "Never carry whisky in gla.s.s bottles."

And now his roving eyes lighted once more on Trixy. No good letting her suffer. He would send her away first. On the thought, his hand went back to the holster at his hip; and stayed there, while his heart stood still, and a chill went over him, and thought ceased. The holster was empty.

After a while he was able to think about it. One of two things would happen to him. There were, very probably, mountain lions in those forests. But they were not the worst thing he faced. To be eaten were perhaps preferable to dying little by little, of hunger and thirst. He had been near starvation, twice in his life; and once he had been thirsty,--that is to say, _thirsty_,--and G.o.d save him from dying of thirst! But wait! He hesitated; then held his breath; and in a total suspension of thought slowly reached his hand down into a side pocket of his trousers. And then he almost yelled aloud for joy. His pocketknife was there!

Meanwhile--Trixy. It was cruel not to be able to end her suffering.

What had become of the gun? It was in his hand when he toppled over the edge of the platform, and must have fallen with him. So it could not be far away, though perhaps buried out of sight. He began patiently to inspect every square foot of the ground around him, as far as he could trust his eyes to see clearly, separating the s.p.a.ce into imaginary segments of a circle, and scrutinizing each of them until he had set apart every tuft of gra.s.s from every other tuft, and every stone from its neighbors. Minute after minute, with dogged perseverance, he kept himself at this exhausting task until the sweat was rolling down, his face, and his eyes burned deep in his head. Then suddenly something leaped inside of him,--some nerve that was quicker than thought in its response to vision.

"Ah!"

The gun lay against a stone, its muzzle upward, at a distance of about forty feet, beyond and somewhat to the left of Trixy. It would take some crawling; and that would hurt. But when he had fixed the gun's position in his mind, so that he might not miss it, he set his teeth together, and started.

No great distance, after all, is forty feet. That is to say, no great distance after you've covered it. And the pain did not matter now. He lay on the ground again, flattened out, panting and gazing up at the blue sky. The sweat stood in big cold drops on his face; and he trembled as if stricken with ague. He could not shoot in that condition; he must rest, and wait. But the thirst was torture now.

After a time, he turned himself half around in order to face Trixy, and rested his right elbow on the ground, with the gun up in the air.