It was utterly useless for Van to protest his ignorance of the reservation ground. He owned a deposit of placer gold. Success had crowned his efforts. It was something to get in touch with success, rub shoulders with a man who had the gold.
His friends were there in the red-faced mob. They said they were his friends, and they doubtless knew. Some were, indeed, old acquaintances whom Van would gladly have a.s.sisted towards a needed change of fortune.
He was powerless, not only to aid these men, but also to escape.
Despite his utmost endeavors they held him there an hour, and to make up the time, he chose the hottest, roughest trail through the range, when at last he was clear of the town.
The climb he made on his pony to slice a few miles from his route was over a mountain and through a gulch that was known as The Devil"s Slide. It was gravel that moved underfoot with never-failing treachery, gravel made hot by the rays of the sun, and flinging up a scorching heat while it crawled and blistered underfoot. On midsummer days men had perished here, driven mad by the dancing of the air and the dread of the movement where they trod. The last two miles of this desolate slope Van walked and led his broncho.
He entered "Solid Canyon" finally, and mounting once more let Suvy pick the way between great boulders, where gray rattlesnakes abounded in exceptional numbers. These were the hardships of the ride, all there were that Van felt worth the counting. He had reckoned without that far-off storm, which had raged in the darkness of the night.
He came to the river, the ford between the banks where he and Beth had found a shallow stream. For a moment he stared at it speechlessly. A great, swiftly-moving flood was there, tawny, roiled with the mud torn down and dissolved in the water"s violence, and foaming still from a plunge it had taken above.
It was ten to twenty feet deep. This Van realized as he sat there on his sweating horse, measuring up the banks. The depth had encroached upon the slope whereon he was wont to ascend the further side. There was one place only where he felt a.s.sured a landing might be achieved.
"Well, Suvy," he said to the animal presently, "it looks more like a swim than a waltz quadrille, and neither of us built web-footed."
Without further ado he placed Beth"s letter in his hat, then rode his pony down the bank and into the angry-looking water. Suvy halted a moment uncertainly, then, like his master, determined to proceed.
Five feet out he was swimming, headed instinctively up the stream and buried deep under the surface. Van still remained in the saddle. He was more than waist under, loosely clinging to his seat and giving the pony the reins.
Suvy was powerful, he swam doggedly, but the current was tremendous in its sheer liquid ma.s.s and momentum. Van slipped off and swam by the broncho"s side. Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress. It required tremendous effort to forge ahead and not be swept headlong to a choppy stretch of rapids, just below.
"Up stream, boy, up stream," said Van, as if to a comrade, for he had noted the one likely place to land, and Suvy was drifting too far downward.
They came in close to the bank, as Van had feared, below the one fair landing. Despite his utmost efforts, to which the pony willingly responded, they could not regain what had been lost. The broncho made a fine but futile attempt to gain a footing and scramble up the almost perpendicular wall of rock and earth by which he was confronted. Time after time he circled completely in the surge, to no avail. He may have become either confused or discouraged, Whichever it was, he turned about, during a moment when Van released the reins, and swam st.u.r.dily back whence he come.
Van, in the utmost patience, turned and followed. Suvy awaited his advent on the sh.o.r.e.
"Try to keep a little further up, boy, if you can," said the man, and he mounted and rode as before against the current.
The broncho was eager to obey directions, eager to do the bidding of the man he strangely loved. All of the first hard struggle was repeated--and the current caught them as before. Again, as formerly, Van slipped off and swam by his pony"s side. He could not hold his shoulder against the animal, and guide him thus up the stream, but was trailed out lengthwise and flung about in utter helplessness, forming a drag against which the pony"s most desperate efforts could not prevail.
They came to the bank precisely as they had before, and once again, perhaps more persistently, Suvy made wild, eager efforts to scramble out where escape was impossible. Again and again he circled, pawed the bank, and turned his eyes appealingly to Van, as if for help or suggestions.
At last he acknowledged defeat, or lost comprehension of the struggle.
He swam as on the former trial to the bank on the homeward side.
There was nothing for Van but to follow as before. When he came out, dripping and panting, by the animal, whose sides were fairly heaving as he labored for breath, he was still all cheer and encouragement.
"Suvy," said he, "a failure is a chap who couldn"t make a fire in h.e.l.l.
We"ve got to cross this river if we have to burn it up."
He took the broncho"s velvety nose in his hands and gave him a rough little shake. Then he patted him smartly on the neck.
"For a pocket-size river," he said as he looked at the flood, "this is certainly the infant prodigy. Well, let"s try it again."
Had the plunge been straight to sudden death that broncho would have risked it unswervingly at the urging of his master. Suvy was somewhat exhausted by the trials already made, in vain. But into the turgid down-sweep he headed with a newly conjured vigor.
Van now waited merely for the pony to get started on his way, when he lifted away from the saddle, with the water"s aid, and clung snugly up to the stirrup. He swam with one hand only. To keep himself afloat and offer no resistance to the broncho was the most that he could do, and the best.
The struggle was tremendous. Suvy had headed more obliquely than before against the current, and having encountered a greater resistance, with his strength somewhat sapped, was toiling like an engine.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, he forged his way against the liquid wall that split upon him. Van felt a great final quiver of muscular energy shake the living dynamic by his side, as Suvy poured all his fine young might into one supreme effort at the end. Then he came to the landing, got all his feet upon the slope, and up they heaved in triumph!
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
THE CLOUDS OF TROUBLE GATHER
By the route beyond the river that Van was obliged to choose, the distance from his claim to Starlight was more than forty miles. His pony had no shoes, and having never been ridden far, was a trifle soft for a trip involving difficulties such as this mountain work abundantly afforded. When they came to Phonolite Pa.s.s, the last of the cut-offs on the trail, Van rode no more than a hundred yards into its shadows before he feared he must turn.
Phonolite is broken shale, a thin, sharp rock that gives forth a pleasant, metallic sound when struck, like shattered crockery. For a mile this deposit lay along the trail across the width of the pa.s.s.
For the bare-footed pony there was cruelty in every step. The barrier of rock was far more formidable than the river in its flood.
Van was not to be halted in his object. He had a letter to deliver; he meant to take it through, though doom itself should yawn across his path. The hour was late; the sun was rapidly sinking. Van pulled up his broncho and debated.
Absolute silence reigned in the world of mountains. But if the place seemed desolate, it likewise seemed secure. Nevertheless, death lurked in the trail ahead. Barger was there. He was lying in the rocks, concealed where the chasm was narrow. He had ridden four hours--on the mare Beth had lost--to arrive ahead of Van Buren. The muzzle of a long black revolver that he held in hand rested upon a shattered boulder.
His narrow eyes lay level with a rift in the group of rocks that hid him completely from view. Van was in sight, and the convict"s breath came quickly as he waited.
Van dismounted from his pony"s back and picked up one of his hoofs.
"Worn down pretty flat," he told the animal. "Perhaps if I walk we can make it." He started on foot up the tinkling way, watching the broncho with solicitude.
Suvy followed obediently, but the pointed rocks played havoc with his feet. He lurched, in attempting to right his foot on one that turned, and the long la.s.soo, secured to the saddle, flopped out, fell back, and made him jump. Van halted as before. The convict was barely fifty yards away. His pistol was leveled, but he waited for a deadlier aim, a shorter shot.
"Nope! We"ll have to climb the hill," Van decided reluctantly.
"You"re a friend of mine, Suvy, and even if you weren"t, you"d have to last to get back." He turned his back on death, unwittingly, to spare the horse he loved.
Delayed no less than an hour by this enforced retreat, he patiently led the broncho back to the opening of the pa.s.s, and, still on foot, led the steep way up over the mountain.
Barger rose up and cursed himself for not having risked a shot. He dared not attempt a dash upon his man; he could not know where Van might again be intercepted; he was helpless, baffled, enraged. Half starved, keenly alive only in his instinct to accomplish his revenge, the creature was more like a hunted, retaliating animal than like a man. He had sworn to even the score with Van Buren; he was not to be deflected from his course. But to get his man here was no longer possible. The horse Beth had lost, now in the convict"s possession, was all but famished for water, not to mention food. There was nothing to choose but retreat towards the river, to the northward, where the mountains might yet afford an ambush as Van was returning home.
Far away in the mountains, at the "Laughing Water" claim, while the sun was setting on a scene of labors, all but concluded for the day, the group of surveyors, with Lawrence in charge, appeared along the southern ridge.
Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were still in the water by the sluices.
They were grimed, soiled with perspiration, wearied by the long, hard day of toil. Shovel in hand old Gettysburg discovered the men with an instrument who trekked along the outside edge of the claim. Chain-man, rod-man, and Lawrence with his shining theodolite, set on its three slender legs, they were silhouetted sharply against the evening sky.
Their movements and their presence here were beyond the partners"
comprehension. It was Gettysburg who climbed up the slope, and anch.o.r.ed himself in their path.
"What you doin"?" he said to the rod-man presently, when that tired individual approached and continued on his way.
"What does it look like--playing checkers?" said the man. "Can"t the Government do nuthin"--run no county line ner nuthin" without everybody sittin" up to notice?"
No less than fifty men they had met that day had questioned what the Government was doing. The "county line" suggestion had been the only hint vouchsafed--and that had sufficed to allay the keenest suspicion.
"That all?" said Gettysburg, and, watching as he went, he slowly returned to his partners. His explanation was ample. The surveyors proceeded on.