CHAPTER XXIV. “BITTER CREEK JONES.”

A dull, booming crash that shook the ground under their feet, followed within a few seconds. A cloud of dust and rocks arose from the cave mouth. Suddenly Ralph broke into a shout:

“The rock! The rock! It’s moving!”

“Hold on, boy,” warned the prospector, laying a hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “Watch!”

The big boulder hesitated, swayed, and then, with a reverberating crash, as the blasted terrace under it gave way, it rolled down the hillside. An instant after, Jim Bothwell burst from the cavern and ran toward them. It was all that Ralph, in his joy, could do to keep from embracing him, but just then a sudden shout from Bitter Creek Jones caught and distracted his attention. In their excitement they had forgotten all about[230] the tethered ponies. The great rock was now bounding toward them with great velocity.

It shook the ground as its ponderous weight rumbled down the hillside. The ponies whinnied with terror and tugged and strained at their ropes. But just as it appeared inevitable that they must be crushed, the huge rock struck a smaller one and its course was diverted. Down it went, but on a safe track now, and terminated its career in the clump of thick growing alders that fringed the stream.

“Wow, a narrow escape!” ejaculated Ralph breathlessly.

“Yep, we come pretty durn near killin’ two birds—or ponies, rayther—with one stone,” grinned Bitter Creek Jones; “but all’s well as turns out all right, as the poet says.”

“Bitter, you’re all right,” cried Jim, clutching the hand of the prospector who had turned up so opportunely.

“Shucks! That’s all right, Jim. It wasn’t[231] much to do fer you, old pal,” responded Bitter returning the pressure. “And now,” he went on, as if anxious to change the subject, “you’d better skin that lion and be gettin’ on yer way. It’s drawin’ in late, and this is a bad part of the country to get benighted in, more specially with a bunch of Bloods hanging about all lit up with fire-water.”

“Reckon you’re right, Bitter,” was the response as Mountain Jim deftly made the necessary incisions and he and his friend skinned the dead cougar with skillful hands.

It was not long after that they parted company. Bitter Creek Jones continuing toward the south, while Ralph and Mountain Jim swung on to their ponies and resumed their journey toward the northwest. The last they saw of Bitter Creek Jones he was waving a hearty adieu to them and shouting:

“See you in Alaska north of fifty-three, some time.”

[232]

Then a shoulder of mountain shut him out and they saw him no more.

“There’s a white man,” said Jim with deep conviction, as the ponies carried them from the scene. “He’s rough as a bear, is Bitter, but white right down to his gizzard.”

Ralph regretted that he could not have taken one of the cubs along, but on the rough trip that still lay before them it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to transport it. So the little den of young cougars had to be left behind to await the return of their wounded mother, an event which, Mountain Jim declared, would take place within a short time.

“Maybe I ought to have killed the whole boiling of them young termagents,” he said. “They’ll grow up and make a heap of trouble for sheepmen, but let ’em be. I ain’t got the heart to make away with a lot of babies like them.”

It was dark when, on topping a backbone of desolate mountain, they saw in a valley below[233] them a light shining amidst the blackness. Jim declared that this must be the ranch for which they were searching, and they made their best speed toward the lonely beacon. If it had been hard traveling by daylight through the forest, it was doubly difficult to make their way by night. But Jim appeared to possess in a superlative degree that wonderful sense of location peculiar to persons who have passed their lives in the great silent places of the earth. It has been noted by travelers that a young Indian boy, who has apparently not noted in the slightest the course followed on a hunting expedition into the great woods, has been able, without any apparent mental effort, to guide back to camp the party of which he formed a member. Such a faculty has been ascribed as more due to instinct, the sense that brings a carrier pigeon home over unknown leagues, than to anything else.

Through the darkness they blundered on, through muskegs, fallen timber and swollen[234] creeks—the latter due to the heavy rains of the afternoon. At length, after it appeared to Ralph almost certain that they must have lost their way, they came out on a plateau and saw shining not half a mile from them the light for which Mountain Jim had been aiming.

A sea captain, with all the resources of highly perfected instruments, could not have made a more successful land-fall. But as they drew nearer to the light, a puzzled expression could have been observed on Mountain Jim’s face had it been clearly visible. Ralph, too, soon became aware of a great noise of shouting and singing proceeding from the vicinity of the light.

“Must have some sort of a party going on,” he observed to his companion.

“I dunno,” was Mountain Jim’s rejoinder. “Donald Campbell used to be a bachelor and no great shakes for company. Maybe he’s married and they’re havin’ a pink tea or something.”

Soon after, they rode up to a rough looking[235] house, behind which, bulking blackly against the darkness, were the outlines of haystacks. Several horses were hitched in front of the place and the door was open, emitting a ruddy stream of light that fell full on one of the animals. Ralph recognized the cayuse with a start. It was one of those that had been ridden by the Bloods. There was no mistaking the animal’s pie-bald coat and wall-eye. He was what is known among cowmen as a “paint-horse.”

Ralph gasped out his information to Mountain Jim. His companion only nodded.

“I’ve been thinking for some time that there is something queer about this place,” he said, “but there’s no help for it, we’ve got to see it through now.”

And then a minute later he made an odd inquiry:

“Where’ve you got the money for the ponies, Ralph?”

“Right in my inside coat pocket. Why?”

[236]

“Oh, I dunno. Better put it in a safer place; you might lose it.”

Ralph could not quite understand the drift of his companion’s remark, but he shifted the money—one hundred dollars in bills—to his belt, which had a money pocket for such purposes. By this time they were up to the long hitching post where the other ponies were tied and they dismounted and secured their own animals.

“Let me do the talking,” warned Mountain Jim as they approached the door. The noise of their arrival had been noticed within, and a short, stocky figure of a man with a flaming red beard blocked the light from the doorway as they approached.

“Great Blue Bells of Scotland, that ain’t Donald Campbell, by a long shot!”

“Maybe he’s moved on,” said Ralph, recollecting the phrasing of the notice in the deserted log cabin.

[237]

“Maybe,” responded Jim briefly. The next minute the man in the doorway hailed them.

“Evening, strangers.”

“Evening,” responded Jim. “Donald Campbell about?”

“Naw. He ain’t lived here in quite a spell. Gone up the valley ten miles or more. Lookin’ for him?”

“Well, I calculated on seeing him,” was Jim’s response. “Can we stay here to-night?”

The man hesitated an instant, but then spoke swiftly as if to cover up his momentary vacillation.

“Yep. Come right in. Guess we kin get you supper and a shake-down. That’s all you want, ain’t it?”

“That’s all,” responded Jim as they passed the threshold. Inside they found themselves in a rough looking room lighted by a hanging lamp which reeked of kerosene. At a table under it some men had been sitting, but they vanished with[238] what appeared suspicious haste as the two strangers came in. The host left them alone soon after, promising to give them some bacon and eggs and coffee. The noise that they had heard as they drew close to the ranch had died out, and now all was as silent as a graveyard. Ralph lowered his voice as he addressed Mountain Jim.

“What sort of a place is this, anyhow?”

In the same low tones Jim made his reply:

“Dunno, but it looks to me like what they call up in this section a ‘whisky ranch.’ It’s the resort of bad characters and is stuck back here in the woods so as to be beyond the ten-mile limit. You see the Canadian government, knowing what harm that stuff does, won’t let liquor be sold within ten miles of a public roadway.”

“Then that’s what brought those Indians here?”

“Looks that way. But this fellow would be in mighty bad if it was found out by the mounted police. But—hush! I reckon he’s coming now.”

[239]

Sure enough the red-bearded man re-entered the room at this juncture. He bore a big dish of bacon and eggs in one hand and in the other he had a blackened tin pot from which came the savory aroma of coffee.

From a corner cupboard he got tin plates and cups and wooden-handled knives and forks. He asked them what their business was as he laid the table, which required no cloth, being covered with a strip of white oil-cloth.

“We wanted to buy some ponies from Donald Campbell,” spoke Ralph before Jim’s heavy foot kicked him under the table. For an instant there was a sharp glint in the red-bearded man’s eyes.

“Buyin’ ponies, eh? Must have lots of money. Ponies is high right now.”

“In that case we can’t afford ’em,” said Jim, taking the conversation into his own hands. He had noticed the momentary flash in the man’s eyes when Ralph spoke of buying ponies, and rightly interpreted it. The man stood by them[240] while they ate and told them that he had bought the ranch some time before, but that it was a poor place and he could make nothing out of it He appeared anxious to impress them that he was a rancher and nothing else, and spoke much of crops and stock. Jim and Ralph listened, replying at intervals.

When they had finished eating, the red-bearded man offered to escort them to bed. He wanted to put them in separate rooms, but Mountain Jim demurred to this.

“My partner here is a heavy sleeper,” he said, “and we’ve got to be up early to-morrow. I’d rouse up the whole house waking him if you put him in another room.”

“All right, I can put you in the attic,” said the man, “but you’ll not be over comfortable.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jim airily. “We’re used to roughing it.”

“You may be, but your partner don’t look over and above husky,” said the red-bearded man,[241] glancing at Ralph’s slender form, which rather belied the boy’s real strength and activity. He conducted them upstairs and left them in an unceiled attic in which were two rough cots. He took the lamp with him when he went, saying that it was too dangerous to leave a kerosene lamp up there so close to the rafters.

“Don’t sleep too sound,” whispered Jim as they got into their cots. “I’ve a notion that our friend with the vermilion chin coverings isn’t any better than he ought to be. I’m sorry you made that crack about buying ponies; it’s given him the idea that we are carrying a lot of money. I saw it in his eyes as soon as he spoke.”

Ralph hadn’t much to say to this. He realized that he had made a bad mistake and blamed himself bitterly. But he determined to try to retrieve his error by keeping awake to watch for any sudden alarm. But try as he would, his exhausted eyelids drooped as if weighted with lead, and before long, tired nature had asserted her[242] sway and the lad was sound asleep on his rough couch.

Just what hour it was Ralph could not determine, but he was suddenly awakened by a noise as if someone had pushed a chair across the room or had stumbled on it. Broad awake in an instant he sat up in the cot, his every sense alert and his heart throbbing violently.