Pluck on the Long Trail Part 29

That green bear-pelt and Jed together were almost too heavy, so that we went slow and careful and stopped often, to rest us. The sun was setting when at last we got down to camp again--and we arrived, a very different party from that which had gone out twelve hours before. It was a sorry home-coming. But we must not lament or complain over what was our own fault. We must do our best to turn it to account. We must be Scouts.

We made Jed comfortable on a blanket bed. His leg we let alone, as the bandage seemed to be all right. And his shoulder we of course let alone.

Then we took stock. Major Henry decided very quickly.

"Jed can't travel. He will have to stay here till his wounds heal more, and Kit Carson will have to stay with him. I'd stay, instead, because I'm to blame for wasting some men and some time; but the general pa.s.sed the command on to me and I ought to go as far as I possibly can. We'll fix Kit and Jed the best we're able, and to-morrow we'll hustle on and make night marches, if we need to."

This was sense. Anyway, although we had wasted men and time, we were now stocked up with provisions; all that bear meat! While Fitzpatrick and Red Fox Scout Ward were cooking supper and poor Jed looked on, two of us went at the meat to cut it into strips for jerking, and two of us stretched the pelt to grain it before it dried.

We cut the meat into the strips and piled them until we could string them to smoke and dry them. We then washed for supper, because we were pretty b.l.o.o.d.y with the work of cutting. After supper, by moonlight, we strung the strips with a sailor's needle and cord which the Red Fox Scouts had in their kit, and erected a scaffolding of four fork-sticks with two other sticks laid across at the ends. We stretched the strings of meat in lines, back and forth. Next thing was to make a smudge under and to lay a tarp over to hold the smudge while the meat should smoke.

(Note 60.)

Pine smoke is no good, because it is so strong. Alder makes a fine sweet smoke, but we didn't have any alder, up here. We used aspen, as the next best thing at hand. And by the time we had the pelt grained and the meat strung and had toted enough aspen, we were tired.

But somebody must stay awake, to tend to Jed and give him a drink and keep him company, and to watch the smudge, that it didn't flame up too fierce and that it didn't go out. By smoking and drying the meat all night and by drying it in the sun afterward, Major Henry thought that it would be ready so that we could take our share along with us.

If we had that, then we would not need to stop to hunt, and we could make short camps, as we pleased. You see, we had only four days in which to deliver the message; and we had just reached the pa.s.s!

This was a kind of miserable night. Jed of course had a bed to himself, which used up blankets. The others of us stood watch an hour and a half each, over him and over the smudge. He was awful restless, because his leg hurt like sixty, and none of us slept very well, after the excitement. I was sleepiest when the time came for us to get up.

We had breakfast, of bear steak and bread or biscuits and gravy. The meat we were jerking seemed to have been smoked splendidly. The tarp was smoked, anyhow. We took it off and aired it, and left the strips as they were, to dry some more in the sun. They were dark, and quite stiff and hard, and by noon they were brittle as old leather. The hide was dry, too, and ready for working over with brains and water, and for smoking.

(Note 61.)

But we left that to Kit. Now we must take the trail again. We spent the morning fussing, and making the cabin tight for Jed and Kit; at last the meat had been jerked so that our share would keep, and we had done all that we could, and we were in shape to carry the message on over the pa.s.s and down to Green Valley.

"All right," spoke Major Henry, after dinner. "Let's be off. Scout Carson, we leave Scout Smith in your charge. You and he stay right here until he's able to travel. Then you can follow over the pa.s.s and hit Green Valley, or you can back-track for the Ranger's cabin and for home.

Apache will come in soon and you'll have him to pack out with. You'll be ent.i.tled to just as much honor by bringing Jed out safe as we will by carrying the message. Isn't that so, boys?"

"Sure," we said.

But naturally Kit hated to stay behind. Only, somebody must; it was Scouts' duty. We all shook hands with him and with wounded Jed (who hated staying, too), and said "Adios," and started off.

Apache had not appeared, and we were to pack our own outfit. We left Jed and Kit enough meat and all the flour (which wasn't much) and what other stuff we could spare (they had the bearskin to use for bedding as soon as it was tanned) and one rope and our twenty-two rifle, and the Ranger's fry-pan and two cups, and we divided among us what we could carry.

"Now we've got three days and a half to get through in," announced Major Henry. We counted the days on the trail to make sure. Yes, three days and a half. "And besides, these Red Fox Scouts must catch a train in time to make connections for that Yellowstone trip. We've put in too much time, and I think we ought to travel by night as well as by day, for a while."

"Short sleeps and long marches; that's my vote," said Fitz.

"Don't do it on our account," put in the Red Fox Scouts. "But we're game. We'll travel as fast as you want to."

So we decided. And now only three Elk Scouts, instead of six, and two Red Fox Scouts, again we took the long trail. In the Ranger's cabin behind was our gallant leader General Ashley, and in this other cabin by the lake were Jed Smith and Kit Carson. Thus our ranks were being thinned.

We followed the trail from the lake and struck the old Indian trail again, leading over the pa.s.s. About the middle of the afternoon we were at the pa.s.s itself. It was wide and smooth and open and covered with gravel and short gra.s.s and little low flowers like daisies. On either side were brownish red jagged peaks and rimrock faces, specked with snow. The wind blew strong and cold. There were many sheep-tracks, where bands had been trailed over, for the low country or for the summer range. It was a wild, desolate region, with nothing moving except ourselves and a big hawk high above; but we pressed on fast, in close order, our packs on our backs, Major Henry leading. And we were lonesome without Kit and Jed.

Old Pilot Peak gradually sank behind us; the country before began to spread out into timber and meadow and valley. Pretty soon we caught up with a little stream. It flowed in the same direction that we were going, and we knew that we were across the pa.s.s and that we were on the other side of the Medicine Range, at last! Hurrah!

We were stepping long, down-hill. We came to dwarf cedars, and buck brush, showing that we were getting lower. And at a sudden halt by the major, in a nice golden twilight we threw off our packs and halted for supper beside the stream, among some aspens--the first ones.

About an hour after sunset the moon rose, opposite--a big round moon, lighting everything so that travel would be easy. We had stocked up on the jerked bear-meat, roasted on sharp sticks, and on coffee from the cubes that the Red Fox Scouts carried, and we were ready. The jerked bear-meat was fine and made us feel strong. So now Major Henry stood, and swung his pack; and we all stood.

"Let's hike," he said.

That was a beautiful march. The air was crisp and quiet, the moon mounted higher, flooding the country with silver. Once in a while a coyote barked. The rabbits all were out, hopping in the s.h.i.+ne and shadow. We saw a snowshoe kind, with its big hairy feet. We saw several porcupines, and an owl as large as a buzzard. This was a different world from that of day, and it seemed to us that people miss a lot of things by sleeping.

Our course was due west, by the North Star. We were down off the pa.s.s, and had struck a valley, with meadow and scattered pines, and a stream rippling through, and the moonlight lying white and still. In about three hours we came upon sign of another camp, where somebody had stopped and had made a fire and had eaten. There were burro tracks here, so that it might have been a prospectors' camp; and there was an empty tin can like a large coffee can.

"I think we had better rest again," said Major Henry. "We can have a snack and a short sleep."

We didn't cook any meat. We weren't going to take out any of the Red Fox dishes, but Fitz started to fill the tin can with water, to make soup in that. It was Red Fox Scout Ward who warned us.

"Here," he objected. "Do you think we ought to do that? You know sometimes a tin can gives off poison when you cook in it."

"And we don't know what was in this can," added Van Sant. "We don't want to get ptomaine poisoning. I'd rather unpack ten packs than run any risk."

That was sense. The can _looked_ clean, inside, and the idea of being made sick by it hadn't occurred to us Elks. But we remembered, now, some things that we'd read. So we kicked the can to one side, that n.o.body else should use it, and Fitz made the soup in a regulation dish from the Red Fox aluminum kit. (Note 62.)

We drank the soup and each chewed a slice of the bear-meat cold. It was sweet and good, and the soup helped out. Then we rolled in our blankets and went to sleep. We all had it on our minds to wake in four hours, and the mind is a regular clock if you train it.

I woke just about right, according to the stars. The two stars in the bottom of the Little Dipper, that we used for an hour hand, had been exactly above a pointed spruce, when I had dozed off, and now when I looked they had moved about three feet around the Pole Star. While I lay blinking and warm and comfortable, and not thinking of anything in particular, I heard a crackle of sticks and the scratch of a match. And there squatting on the edge of a shadow was somebody already up and making a fire.

"Is that you, Fitz?" asked Major Henry.

"Yes. You fellows lie still a few seconds longer and I'll have some tea for you."

Good old Fitz! He need not have done that. He had not been ordered to.

But it was a thoughtful Scout act--and was a Fitz act, to boot.

Scouts Ward and Van Sant were awake now; and we all lay watching Fitz, and waiting, as he had asked us to. Then when we saw him put in the tea--

"Levez!" spoke Major Henry; which is the old trapper custom. "Levez! Get up!" (Note 63.)

Up we sprang, into the cold, and with our blankets about our shoulders, Indian fas.h.i.+on, we each drank a good swig of hot tea. Then we washed our faces, and packed our blankets, and took the trail.

It was about three in the morning. The moon was halfway down the west, and the air was chill and had that peculiar feel of just before morning.

Everything was ghostly, as we slipped along, but a few birds were twittering sleepily. Once a coyote crossed our path--stopped to look back at us, and trotted away again.

Gradually the east began to pale; there were fewer stars along that horizon than along the horizon where the moon was setting. The burro tracks were plain before us, in the trail that led down the valley. The trail inclined off to the left, or to the south of west; but we concluded to follow it because we could make better time and we believed that the railroad lay in that direction. The Red Fox Scouts ought to be taken as near to the railroad as possible, before we left them. They had been mighty good to us.

The moon sank, soon the sun would be up; the birds were moving as well as chirping, the east was brightening, and already the tip of Pilot Peak, far away behind us with Kit and Jed sleeping at his base, was touched with pink, when we came upon a camp.

Red Fox Scout Van Sant, who was leading, suddenly stopped short and lifted his hand in warning. Before, in a bend of the stream that we were skirting, among the pines and spruces beside it was a lean-to, with a blackened fire, and two figures rolled in blankets; and back from the stream a little way, across in an open gra.s.sy spot, was a burro. It had been grazing, but now it was eying us with head and ears up. Red Fox Scout Van had sighted the burro first and next, of course, the lean-to camp.

We stood stock-still, surveying.

"Cache!" whispered Major Henry (which means "Hide"); and we stepped softly aside into the brush. For that burro looked very much like Sally, who had been taken from us by the two recruits when they had stolen Apache also--and by the way that the figures were lying, under a lean-to, they might be the renegade recruits themselves. It was a hostile camp!

"What is it?" whispered Red Fox Scout Ward, his eyes sparkling. "Enemy?"