THE LONELY CAMP-FIRE.
The twinkling light of a camp-fire at such a time as this, and in such a place, was enough to make any one cautious, and Egbert Rodman approached it as stealthily as a Comanche would have done himself.
He was somewhat surprised when yet some distance away to observe that there was a single person sitting near it, in the attitude either of deep meditation or intense listening.
“There must be others close at hand, or else he is not aware of the danger he runs,” muttered the young man, as he continued his advance. “Strange, but there is something about him that reminds me of Lightning Jo; and,” he added, the next moment, “Lightning Jo it is; helloa! old fellow, how came you here?”
And forgetful of all else for the time, except his delight in seeing the true and tried comrade, Egbert Rodman rushed forward to give him appropriate greeting.
He saw at once that something was the matter with the scout. He was sitting upon a large stone, with his rifle between his knees, and supporting his chin, was looking absently into the fire, like one whose thoughts were entirely removed from his present surroundings. He merely looked up at the spontaneous greeting of the young friend from whom he had become separated some time before, and staring at him for a moment, again lowered his gaze without saying a word or shifting his position.
But, if he was in a sullen, thoughtful mood, Egbert was not, nor did he intend to keep any prolonged silence in deference to such a whim. He believed he understood the scout well enough to know how to approach him, and in a cheery manner, free from any rude familiarity, he placed himself beside him, and touching his shoulder, said:
“Come, Jo, don’t sit idle here. You seem to be depressed; but rally, and tell me what the matter is.”
The scout seemed to appreciate the consideration shown him, and straightening up, he heaved a great sigh, looked fixedly at his young friend again, but still refused to speak. Egbert was determined to press the matter.
“What is it that troubles you, Jo? Come, out with it; what are you thinking about?”
“Little Lizzie Manning!” was the reply of the scout, in a voice that was sepulchral in its solemnity.
The shaft of a Comanche’s poisoned arrow, driven to the heart of Egbert Rodman, could not have startled him more than did this reply. He gave a gasp as if of pain, and almost fell to the earth, before he could compose himself sufficiently to sit down and collect his thoughts. When he did so, he looked across from the opposite side of the camp-fire, and asked, pleadingly:
“What about her, Jo? Is she living or dead? Can you tell me what has become of her? Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“You didn’t seem in quite so much suspense a little while ago,” he remarked, somewhat resentfully; and then, as if regretting the words, he hastened to add, in a more considerate voice:
“That’s just the trouble, Roddy; you know when the fresh came, we hadn’t any time to look after each other, but we went spinning down the kenyon as if Old Nick was arter us. I heerd you yell, and of course you heerd my answer, but there wasn’t much to be seen then, and so we each kept on sailing on our own hook.”
“But Lizzie! Did you hear nothing of her?” inquired the breathless lover.
“Yes; I did hear her,” replied Jo, with another sigh; “some time arter that I heerd her call out somebody’s name.”
“Whose was it?” asked Egbert, with a painful throb of his heart, and a staring, eager look that brought a wan smile to the face of Jo for the instant, but passing instantly as he made answer:
“As near as I could make out, it was your’n. In course you didn’t hear it, but as I did, I called back to her, and she know’d me on the instant. I axed her how she was fixed, and she said she was on the back of her horse, but had no idea where she was going, or how it was possible for her to get out of this scrape. You can understand that it wasn’t very easy to gabble at such a time, with the roar of the kenyon in your ears. I told her to hang on to her hoss, no matter where he went, and there was a chance of her getting through somewhere. At the same time I didn’t think there was much chance of any one ever coming out of that place alive. I could tell by the sound of the gal’s voice that she wasn’t very far away, and I worked as never a poor wretch worked before to get to her. I tired my hoss out, and when we got down to that ’ere lake, or whatever you’re a mind to call it, I struck out fer myself. The minute I left the mustang, I sung out to her, but I didn’t hear any answer. I yelled ag’in and ag’in, but it warn’t no use, and I swum ashore and made up my mind—well, no—confound it,” added the scout, fretfully, “I haven’t made up my mind, either, that the little gal has been drowned, and we ain’t never more to hear her sweet voice. That’s what I’ve been feeling, and what I was thinking about when you come sneaking up so sly that you thought nobody could hear you.”
“You think, then, that there is a possibility that she may have escaped, after all?”
“Well, there’s the trouble,” returned Lightning Jo, with something of his old familiar look. “When I set to thinking about it, I can’t see any way under heaven by which she could have come out alive, and I s’pose I couldn’t have seen any way how you folks were ever to get out of Dead Man’s Gulch, if I could have knowed how things were there. It is mighty hard, and you feel it, too, if you thought half as much of that little gal as I do.”
Poor Egbert was inexpressibly shocked at this remark, and looked reprovingly at the scout. He made no reply and assumed a thoughtful attitude upon the other side of the small camp-fire; but just then the scout roused up.
“Confound it! what’s the use! I ain’t going to make a fool of myself! This will never do!”
And stretching and yawning, he suddenly raised his voice, and emitted his peculiar yell, that rung among and through the rocks, gorges and ravines with a power that must have carried it a long distance over the prairie.
“What in the name of heaven do you mean by that?” asked the astonished Rodman, suspecting that he was out of his head.
“Some of the poor dogs may have managed to crawl out as did you, and that’ll tell them where to look for me. What do you s’pose I kindled this fire for?”
“To dry your clothes and keep the chill off.”
“Not a bit of it; the night ain’t cold, and there’s nothing in damp clothes that you or I need mind. If it hadn’t been fur these sticks burning, you’d never have found your way here, and it may do the same for others. No, Roddy,” said Jo, in a more natural voice, “we’ve got nothin’ to do but to wait where we are till morning. Then we’ll take our reckoning, and make a search for the gal.”
“And never give up till we find her, dead or alive,” added Egbert, in a low, earnest voice.
“That’s the style. I’m with you there. I s’pose you feel a little hungry and tired?”
“I have hardly had time to think of such a thing as hunger, while I have become sensible of the weariness only after seating myself here—wondering all the time how it was you managed to have such a fire in so short a time.”
“No trouble ’bout that; you see I come down ahead of all the rest, and I wa’n’t in the basin two seconds afore I paddled out. I’ve been in these hills so often before that I know ’em purty well, but there was a little too much darkness for me to make out where I was. I pitched over a half-dozen precipices something less than a mile high, and finally lit here. It wa’n’t any trouble to start a fire, as this rain was a quick and not a soaking one. Falling right on the top of things, it floated off, and I found all the dried leaves I wanted; and after they was started the rest was easy enough.”
It came out further, that overwhelmingly sudden as was the flood that overtook them in the canon, it had not found Lightning Jo unprepared. His rifle was securely “corked” at the muzzle, so as to keep out the water, and his ammunition and a quantity of matches were all preserved in waterproof casings, so that, barring the saturation of his garments, he came out of the terrible bath as well as he went in.
True he had parted from his horse, but that cost him scarcely a thought. The mustang was so well trained that if he succeeded in escaping with his own life, he would manage to find his master with little difficulty; and, in case he had perished, there was no dearth of animals in the West, and there was little fear of Lightning Jo suffering long for such a part of his outfit as a horse.
As Egbert saw his companion heap more fuel on the fire, he could not avoid the thought that he was incurring great risk thereby, as both of them were rendered the best of targets for any skulking foe.
There were trees growing around, most of them of a stunted nature—but the light of the fire could be seen for quite a distance through the hills. The night-wind soughed with a dull, desolate wailing, through the branches, and the roar of the canon sounded distant and faint, growing less every hour, and proving that it was being emptied as rapidly as it was filled.
Finally Egbert Rodman could not forbear asking the question:
“Is there nothing to be feared in the shape of Indians, Jo?”
“No; there’s none here, except—except that Thing that you saw on his hoss. Didn’t I tell you that his coming was to give us notice that something else was coming, and it was on us afore we knowed it. It’s always so.”
“Then you have seen it before?” asked Egbert, who was rather curious to hear what the scout had to say about the creature, which certainly had caused him no little wonderment since he had first set eyes upon it.
“I should think I had,” was the reply, in a hurried voice. “It’s five years since I first heard of it, though Kit Carson did tell me something about some such thing as that being seen in the Apache country more than ten years ago. But the chap that told me was the only one that was left out of an emigrant party of over twenty. He said it come up to their camp one night just as the sun was setting, and arter looking at them for a few minutes rode away at a gallop, and it wa’n’t two hours afore the red-skins was down upon ’em.”
“Is its appearance always the same?”
“I b’l’eve it is, but I ain’t sart’in. Leastways, I could never see any thing different. It always had the blanket thrown over it, and its head was as black as a stack of black cats. The first time I run ag’in’ it was down in the Staked Plain, where a party of us were arter a lot of Comanches that had made a raid on one of the settlements near the Texan frontier. I remember there was a kind of a drizzling rain falling and we was smoking our pipes, with our blankets drawn up round our chins, when the critter rode down on us, and stopped jist as he did with you. There was four of us that blazed away at him, each one aiming at the spot where his heart would have been had he been like other animals; and, when his horse turned about and galloped away with him, without his showing the least oneasiness, you can make up your mind that we was slightly surprised. There was several of us that heard of the Terror of the Prairie, as he is called by some, and we concluded that this was the gentleman, and that a row was sure to take place; so we made ready for ’em, and we had one of the tallest scrimmages that night that any of us ever got mixed up in; but you see we was used to that sort of business, and it wasn’t good policy for the Terror to come down on us and tell us to make ready. We was a little too much ready, and the red-skins got a little more than they counted on. We riddled a dozen of ’em, and got away without losing a man or a hoss, though most of us have got scars that were made in that muss.”
“Wal,” added Jo, “I won’t take time to tell all I know ’bout that critter, which ain’t much, ’cept in the way he has played the mischief round the country. I s’pose when he took a look at you down in the gulch, it meant that he and his folks was coming to visit you, and we got there just ahead of ’em.”
“Captain Shields seemed to know nothing about him, at least he told nothing of what you have just described.”
“Shields was in that party down on the Staked Plain, and got two bullets in him, that he carries to this day: so I reckon he does know something, arter all.”
“And he is somewhere in our neighborhood, unless he has taken a sudden departure.”
“Yes,” added Lightning Jo, in a husky whisper, and with a wild, scared look; “and he ain’t fifty feet from where you’re setting this minute.”