"I hear Ike," said Terry.
At the corner just beyond the Eldorado Hotel somebody stationed beside a flaring pitchy torch was declaiming in a loud voice, before a large tent. But it wasn"t Pine Knot Ike. It was the red-headed Mr. Reilly. On a placard across the tent front was the announcement, rudely charcoaled:
"SEE IT! SEE IT! SEE IT!
The Ferocious Head of Chief b.l.o.o.d.y Knife!
Cannibal of the Plains!
Slain in Hand-to-Hand Conflict by the Noted Frontiersman Black Panther!
Admission 50c gold."
Evidently this was the show to which Mr. Reilly had referred. Standing on a barrel, and occasionally coughing from the smoke of the torch fastened to an upright against the barrel, he strenuously invited the public inside. He accepted the price, and waved each patron to pa.s.s within. However, business was not at all brisk; and suddenly catching the eye of Harry, he beckoned.
"Go inside, gentlemen," he bade. "It"s my treat. Walk in; view the ferocious cannibal head and the equally ferocious scout who cut it off after killing the wearer of it."
"Aw----!" attempted Terry; but Harry, with a nudge, interrupted him.
"Go on in, Terry. I"ll talk with Mr. Reilly a minute."
The tent contained several whiskered, booted miners and emigrants, gazing at the hideous head of Thunder Horse, also on a barrel--Ike"s barrel--and on a stool beside the barrel was seated Ike himself, alias the "noted frontiersman, Black Panther." Ike"s thick black hair and whiskers were s.h.a.ggier than ever. He was attired in the same greasy slouch hat, but furthermore in a shabby, red-flannel-trimmed buckskin shirt whose gaudy fringes fell to his boot-tops. Around his waist were belted two revolvers and a butcher-knife, and against his knees rested a battered, large-muzzled yager or smooth-bore musket--fortunately harmless by reason of lacking a trigger.
From amidst his hair and whiskers Ike stared before him fiercely and fixedly, occasionally slowly blinking in the light of a tallow candle lantern.
It all was so perfectly absurd that--but hold on! Look out! Bang! Bang!
Without a word a red-shirted miner who had been intently gazing and swaying as if drunk had whipped out his revolver and fired. At the first shot, away spun the head, and simultaneously with the second shot away, uttering a loud shout, had dived Black Panther the noted frontiersman--half through the tent and half under the tent, disappearing while almost tumbling the canvas on top of the company. He was gone before his stool had ceased rolling.
"Set "em up ag"in!" roared the red-shirted miner. "Fetch on the rest o"
that Injun! Whoop-ee! Whar"s that air Panther man? I want to show him some shootin"! I"m an Injun killer myself from Pike County, Missoury!"
Into the tent, now filled with shouts and laughter and powder smoke, rushed Mr. Reilly, close followed by the alarmed Harry. The miner"s friends led him out. Mr. Reilly picked up the head, which, weathered as hard and as dry as a mummy"s head, now was drilled right through from nose to back of skull--which did not improve its face any. But Mr.
Reilly seemed delighted.
"That bullet hole"s the best thing yet," he declared. "I"ll have to change the name of the scout to Dead-Shot Bill. But wait till I ketch that other man--the measley rabbit, ripping my tent to pieces and disgracing the clothes I lent him. How"d one of you boys like to be Dead-Shot Bill, for a spell?"
"Nope, thank you," laughed Harry. "Come on, Terry. We"ve got more business to "tend to."
"Well, we can sell him the cart and Duke for $50," informed Harry, outside. "He"s getting together a show. It will be a soft job for Duke; no heavy hauling, just standing "round and eating and looking wild."
"I wouldn"t sell him Duke if Ike"s to be in the show, too," declared Terry.
"Ike," a.s.sured Harry, "will never be back. He"s probably running yet.
And maybe we won"t have to sell Duke. Now for the Russells, anyway.
We"ll try the Eldorado."
But they were relieved from entering the crowded Eldorado by encountering Journalist Villard and another man just stepping out.
"Ah!" spoke Mr. Villard, recognizing them, in the dusk. "If you wish to ask Mr. Green Russell anything, here he is."
"Yes; we want to ask him if he remembers a man in his party of last summer by the name of Jones," said Harry, quickly, for it was apparent that Messrs. Villard and Russell were in a hurry.
"I sh.o.r.ely do," responded Mr. Russell. He was a broad-shouldered man, with spa.r.s.e beard and long-pointed moustache--had a cool eye and a deliberate speech.
"He is this boy"s father," continued Harry. "He came home with some dust and claimed to have located a mine about a day"s travel from here, on the Platte."
"If that was Fifty-eight, "tain"t wuth looking after now," decided Mr.
Russell. "Too close in. I reckon it was yonder whar we had some dry diggin"s that we-all worked out, "round Placer Camp."
"Captain Russell"s an old miner, you know," put in Mr. Villard. "He"s prospected through here pretty closely, since he came out first, and so have his brothers; and they"re convinced that the only paying mines will be found in the mountains."
"Yes," drawled Mr. Russell. "These hyar sandy creeks peter out. You have to get up higher, into the gravel and rock."
He and Mr. Villard pa.s.sed on, only to be repeatedly stopped and questioned in their progress.
"That settles us, I think," said Harry, as he and Terry turned for their camp. "We"ll pack Jenny and light out for the Gregory Gulch region.
We"ve got to have a mine ready for your father when he comes, so as to pay him back the "grub-stake.""
"And another ready for George to work," reminded Terry. "He"ll expect an elephant, too."
As the two partners recrossed the foot-bridge into Denver City, night had cloaked the mountains in the west and had enfolded all the plains.
Down here lights flickered in tents and through the c.h.i.n.king of windowless, floorless and sometimes roofless cabins, twinkled among the other gold-seekers" camps spread over the broken brush, and on the trails in north and south and yonder for Gregory Gulch.
CHAPTER X
FORWARD MARCH TO GREGORY GULCH
"What"ll we do with all our gunny sacks?" queried Terry, when after an early breakfast they drove across for Auraria, to deliver Duke and the cart and make their purchases.
"They don"t weigh much, but they take up a lot of room. I have a scheme, though," answered Harry.
Early as they were, the emigrant camps on the plain, and Denver City and Auraria in the midst, were astir: smoke was welling from camp-fires and chimneys, shouts and calls arose as outfits prepared to journey onward, people were moving busily, and the procession beyond the Platte was wending in a long file mountain-ward.
Already another announcement was displayed on Mr. Reilly"s show tent.
"Also (it said) the Only Genuine Wild Buffalo Now in Captivity, and the Identical Wagon That He Drew Across the Plains."
Mr. Reilly was working on the first announcement, to make it read, "The Bullet-Pierced Head of the Ferocious Chief b.l.o.o.d.y Knife," and to change the frontiersman"s name from "Black Panther" to "Dead-Shot Bill."
"It"s a pity one of you fellers won"t hire out to be my scout," he proffered. ""Tother one might take in the tickets at the door. I got the shirt and weepon back from that man Ike, but he won"t work again.
Anyhow, you can unhitch and help me get that buffalo inside this tent, out of sight. We"ll tie him to a stake, and roll the wagon in afterward."
This was done, after the flaps had been thrown wide. Duke limped in rather gladly, was stationed at the far end beside the head of the late Thunder Horse, and the wagon, unloaded of its few goods, was pushed and pulled to another position.
"You might stay with Jenny and the stuff, while I do our marketing,"
proposed Harry to Terry, as he shouldered the big roll of gunny sacks, for some mysterious purpose, and lugged it away.
He disappeared in the doorway of the store under the _News_ office.
Jenny hee-hawed after him. She missed him and Duke.