Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch; Schoolgirls Among Cowboys», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XVII – THE STAMPEDE
Be it said of the group of thoughtless cowboys (of whom were the wildest spirits of Number Two camp) that their first demonstration as they dashed out of the coulie upon the two girls was their only one. Their imitation of an Indian attack was nipped in the bud by the bursting of the electric storm. There was no time for the continuance of the performance arranged particularly to startle Jane Ann and Ruth Fielding. Ruth forgot the patter of the approaching ponies. She had instantly struck into her song – high and clear – at her comrade’s advice; and she drew Freckles closer to the herd. The bellowing and pushing of the cattle betrayed their position in any case; but the intermittent flashes of lightning clearly revealed the whole scene to the agitated girls.
They were indeed frightened – the ranch girl as well as Ruth herself. The fact that this immense herd, crowding and bellowing together, might at any moment break into a mad stampede, was only too plain.
Caught in the mass of maddened cattle, the girls might easily be unseated and trampled to death. Ruth knew this as well as did the Western girl. But if the sound of the human voice would help to keep the creatures within bounds, the girl from the Red Mill determined to sing on and ride closer in line with the milling herd.
She missed Jane Ann after a moment; but another flash of lightning revealed her friend weaving her pony in and out through the pressing cattle, using the quirt with free hand on the struggling steers and breaking them up into small groups.
The cowboys who had dashed out of the coulie saw the possibility of disaster instantly; and they, too, rode in among the bellowing steers. With so many heavy creatures pressing toward a common center, many would soon be crushed to death if the formation was not broken up. Each streak of lightning which played athwart the clouds added to the fear of the beasts. Several of the punchers rode close along the edge of the herd, driving in the strays. Now it began to rain, and as the very clouds seemed to open and empty the water upon the thirsty land, the swish of it, and the moaning of the wind that arose, added greatly to the confusion.
How it did rain for a few minutes! Ruth felt as though she were riding her pony beneath some huge water-spout. She was thankful for the slicker, off which the water cataracted. The pony splashed knee-deep through runlets freshly started in the old buffalo paths. Here and there a large pond of water gleamed when the lightning lit up their surroundings.
And when the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, the cattle began to steam and were more troublesome than before. The lightning flashes and thunder continued, and when a second downpour of rain began it came so viciously, and with so great a wind, that the girls could scarcely ride against it.
Suddenly a shout came down the wind. It was taken up and repeated by voice after voice. The camp at the far end of the herd had been aroused ere this, of course, and every man who could ride was in the saddle. But it was at the camp-end of the herd, after all, that the first break came.
“They’re off!” yelled Darcy, riding furiously past Ruth and Jane Ann toward where the louder disturbance had arisen.
“And toward the river!” shouted another of the cowboys.
The thunder of hoofs in the distance suddenly rose to a deafening sound. The great herd had broken away and were tearing toward the Rolling River at a pace which nothing could halt. Several of the cowboys were carried forward on the fore-front of the wave of maddened cattle; but they all managed to escape before the leaders reached the high bank of the stream.
Jane Ann screamed some order to Ruth, but the latter could not hear what it was. Yet she imitated the Western girl’s efforts immediately. No such tame attempts at controlling the cattle as singing to them was now in order. The small number of herdsmen left at this point could only force their ponies into the herd and break up the formation – driving the mad brutes back with their quirts, and finally, after a most desperate fight, holding perhaps a third of the great herd from running wildly into the stream.
This had been a time of some drought and the river was running low. The banks were not only steep upon this side, but they were twenty feet and more high. When the first of the maddened beeves reached the verge of the bank they went headlong down the descent, and some landed at the edge of the water with broken limbs and so were trampled to death. But the plunging over of hundreds upon hundreds of steers at the same point, together with the washing of the falling rain, quickly cut down these banks until they became little more than steep quagmires in which the beasts wallowed more slowly to the river’s edge.
This heavy going did more than aught else to retard the stampede; but many of the first-comers got over the shallow river and climbed upon the plain beyond. All night long the cowboys were gathering up the herd upon the eastern shore of the river; those that had crossed must be left until day dawned.
And a very unpleasant night it was, although the stampede itself had been of short duration. A troop of cattle had dashed through the camp and flattened out the tent that had sheltered the lady visitors. Fortunately the said visitors had taken refuge in the supply wagon before the cattle had broken loose.
But, led by The Fox, there was much disturbance in the supply wagon for the time being. Fortunately a water-tight tarpaulin had kept the girls comparatively dry; but Mary Cox loudly expressed her wish that they had not come out to the camp, and the other girls were inclined to be a little fractious as well.
When Jane Ann and Ruth rode in, however, after the trouble was all over, and the rain had ceased, a new fire was built and coffee made, and the situation took on a more cheerful phase. Ruth was quite excited over it all, but glad that she had taken a hand in the herding of the cattle that had not broken away.
“And if you stay to help the boys gather the steers that got across the river, to-morrow, I am going to help, too,” she declared.
“Tom and Bob will help,” Helen said. “I wish I was as brave as you are, Ruth; but I really am afraid of these horned beasts.”
“I never was cut out for even a milkmaid, myself,” added Heavy. “When a cow bellows it makes me feel queer up and down my spine just as it does when I go to a menagerie and hear the lions roar.”
“They won’t bite you,” sniffed Jane Ann.
“But they can hook you. And my! the noise they made when they went through this camp! You never heard the like,” said the stout girl, shaking her head. “No. I’m willing to start back for the ranch-house in the morning.”
“Me, too,” agreed Madge.
So it was agreed that the four timid girls should return to Silver Ranch with Ricarde after breakfast; but Ruth and Jane Ann, with Tom Cameron and Bob Steele, well mounted on fresh ponies, joined the gang of cow punchers who forded the river at daybreak to bring in the strays.
The frightened cattle were spread over miles of the farther plain and it was a two days’ task to gather them all in. Indeed, on the second evening the party of four young folk were encamped with Jib Pottoway and three of the other punchers, quite twenty miles from the river and in a valley that cut deeply into the mountain chain which sheltered the range from the north and west.
“It is over this way that the trail runs to Tintacker, doesn’t it, Jib?” Ruth asked the Indian, privately.
“Yes, Miss. Such trail as there is can be reached in half an hour from this camp.”
“Oh! I do so want to see that man who killed the bear, Jib,” urged the girl from the Red Mill.
“Well, it might be done, if he’s over this way now,” returned Jib, thoughtfully. “He is an odd stick – that’s sure. Don’t know whether he’d let himself be come up with. But – ”
“Will you ride with me to the mines?” demanded Ruth, eagerly.
“I expect I could,” admitted the Indian.
“I would be awfully obliged to you.”
“I don’t know what Mr. Hicks would say. But the cattle are in hand again – and there’s less than a hundred here for the bunch to drive back. They can get along without me, I reckon.”
“And surely without me!” laughed Ruth.
And so it was arranged. The Indian and Ruth were off up the valley betimes the next morning, while the rest of the party started for the river, driving the last of the stray beeves ahead of them.
CHAPTER XVIII – A DESPERATE CASE
Jane Ann and Tom Cameron had both offered to accompany Ruth; but for a very good – if secret – reason Ruth did not wish any of her young friends to attend her at the meeting which she hoped would occur between her and the strange young man who (if report were true) had been hanging about the Tintacker properties for so long.
She had written Uncle Jabez after her examination with the lawyer of the mining record books at Bullhide; but she had told her uncle only that the claims had been transferred to the name of “John Cox.” That was the name, she knew, that the vacuum cleaner agent had given Uncle Jabez when he had interested the miller in the mine. But there was another matter in connection with the name of “Cox” which Ruth feared would at once become public property if any of her young friends were present at the interview to which she now so eagerly looked forward.
Freckles, now as fresh as a pony could be, carried Ruth rapidly up the valley, and as the two ponies galloped side by side the girl from the Red Mill grew quite confidential with the Indian. She did not like Jib Pottoway as she did the foreman of the Bar Cross Naught ranch; but the Indian was intelligent and companionable, and he quite evidently put himself out to be entertaining.
As he rode, dressed in his typical cowboy costume, Jib looked the full-blooded savage he was; but his conversation smacked of the East and of his experiences at school. What he said showed that Uncle Sam does very well by his red wards at Carlisle.
Jib could tell her, too, much that was interesting regarding the country through which they rode. It was wild enough, and there was no human habitation in sight. Occasionally a jackrabbit crossed their trail, or a flock of birds flew whirring from the path before them. Of other life there was none until they had crossed the first ridge and struck into a beaten path which Jib declared was the old pack-trail to Tintacker.
The life they then saw did not encourage Ruth to believe that this was either a safe or an inhabited country. Freckles suddenly shied as they approached a bowlder which was thrust out of the hillside beside the trail. Ruth was almost unseated, for she had been riding carelessly. And when she raised her eyes and saw the object that had startled the pony, she was instantly frightened herself.
Crouching upon the summit of the rock was a lithe, tawny creature with a big, round, catlike head and flaming green eyes. The huge cat lashed its tail with evident rage and bared a very savage outfit of teeth.
“Oh! what’s that?” gasped Ruth, as Freckles settled back upon his haunches and showed very plainly that he had no intention of passing the bowlder.
“Puma,” returned the Indian, laconically.
His mount, too, was circling around the rock with mincing steps, quite as unfavorably disposed toward the beast as was Freckles.
“Can it leap this far, Jib?” cried Ruth.
“It’ll leap a whole lot farther in just a minute,” returned the Indian, taking the rope off his saddle bow. “Now, look out, Miss!”
Freckles began to run backward. The puma emitted a sudden, almost human shriek, and the muscles upon its foreshoulders swelled. It was about to leap.
Jib’s rope circled in the air. Even as the puma left the rock, its four paws all “spraddled out” in midair, the noose dropped over the savage cat. The lariat caught the puma around its neck and one foreleg, and before it struck the ground Jib had whirled his horse and was spurring off across the valley, his captive flying in huge (but involuntary) leaps behind him. He rode back in ten minutes with a beaten-out mass of fur and blood trailing at the end of his rope, and that was the end of Mr. Puma!
“There isn’t any critter a puncher hates worse than a puma,” Jib said, gruffly. “We’ve killed a host of ’em this season.”
“And do you always rope them?” queried Ruth.
“They ain’t worth powder and shot. Now, a bear is a gentleman ‘side of a lion – and even a little old kiote ain’t so bad. The lion’s so blamed crafty and sly. Ha! it always does me good to rope one of them.”
They rode steadily on the trail to the mines after that. It was scarcely more than fifteen miles to the claims which had been the site, some years before, of a thriving mining camp, but was now a deserted town of tumble-down shanties, corrugated iron shacks, and the rustied skeletons of machinery at the mouths of certain shafts. Money had been spent freely by individuals and corporations in seeking to develop the various “leads” believed by the first prospectors to be hidden under the surface of the earth at Tintacker. But if the silver was there it was so well hidden that most of the miners had finally “gone broke” attempting to uncover the riches of silver ore of which the first specimens discovered had given promise.
“The Tintacker Lode” it had been originally called, in the enthusiasm of its discoverers. But unless this strange prospector, who had hung about the abandoned claims for so many months, had struck into a new vein, the silver horde had quite “petered out.” Of this fact Ruth was pretty positive from all the lawyer and Old Bill Hicks had told her. Uncle Jabez had gone into the scheme of re-opening the Tintacker on the strength of the vacuum-cleaner agent’s personality and some specimens of silver ore that might have been dug a thousand miles from the site of the Tintacker claims.
“Don’t look like there was anybody to home,” grunted Jib Pottoway, as they rode up the last rise to the abandoned camp.
“Why! it’s a wreck,” gasped Ruth.
“You bet! There’s hundreds of these little fly-by-night mining camps in this here Western country. And many a man’s hopes are buried under the litter of those caved-in roofs. Hullo!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Ruth, startled as she saw Jib draw his gun suddenly.
“What’s that kiote doing diggin’ under that door?” muttered the Indian.
The skulking beast quickly disappeared and Jib did not fire. He rode his pony directly to the shack – one of the best of the group – and hammered on the door (which was closed) with the butt of his pistol.
“Hullo, in there!” he growled.
Ruth was not a little startled. “Why was the coyote trying to get in?” she asked.
“You wait out here, Miss,” said Jib. “Don’t come too close. Kiotes don’t usually try to dig into a camp when the owner’s at home.”
“But you spoke as though you thought he might be there!” whispered the girl.
“I – don’t – know,” grunted Jib, climbing out of his saddle.
He tried the latch. The door swung open slowly. Whatever it was he expected to see in the shack, he was disappointed. When he had peered in for half a minute, he stuck the pistol back into its holster and strode over the threshhold.
“Oh! what is it?” breathed Ruth again.
He waved her back, but went into the hut. There was some movement there; then a thin, babbling voice said something that startled Ruth more than had the puma’s yell.
“Gee!” gasped Jib, appearing in the doorway, his face actually pale under its deep tan. “It’s the ‘bug’.”
“The man I want to see?” cried Ruth.
“But you can’t see him. Keep away,” advised Jib, stepping softly out and closing the door of the shack.
“What is the matter, Jib?” cried Ruth. “He – he isn’t dead?”
“Not yet,” replied the Indian.
“What is it, then?”
“Mountain fever – or worse. It’s catching – just as bad as typhoid. You mustn’t go in there, Miss.”
“But – but – he’ll die!” cried the girl, all her sympathy aroused. “Nobody to help him – ”
“He’s far gone. It’s a desperate case, I tell you,” growled Jib. “Ugh! I don’t know what we’d better do. No wonder that kiote was trying to dig under the door. He knew– the hungry beast!”
CHAPTER XIX – THE MAN AT TINTACKER
Ruth waited for her companion to suggest their course of action. The man she had come to see – the mysterious individual whom she believed had taken her uncle’s money to buy up the property known as the Tintacker Claim – was in a raging fever in that old shack near the site of the mine. She had heard his delirious babblings while Jib was in the hut. It never entered her mind that Jib would contemplate leaving the unfortunate creature unattended.
“You can’t talk to him, Miss. He don’t know nothing,” declared the Indian. “And he’s pretty far gone.”
“What shall we do for him? What needs doing first?” Ruth demanded.
“Why, we can’t do much – as I can see,” grumbled Jib Pottoway.
“Isn’t there a doctor – ”
“At Bullhide,” broke in Jib. “That’s the nearest.”
“Then he must be got. We must save this man, Jib,” said the girl, eagerly.
“Save him?”
“Certainly. If only because he saved my life when I was attacked by the bear. And he must be saved for another reason, too.”
“Why, Miss Ruth, he’ll be dead long before a doctor could get here,” cried Jib. “That’s plumb ridiculous.”
“He will die of course if he has no attention,” said the girl, indignantly.
“Well?”
“Surely you won’t desert him!”
“About all we can do for the poor fellow is to bury him,” muttered Jib.
“If there was no other reason than that he is a helpless fellow-being, we could not go away and leave him here unattended,” declared the girl, gravely. “You know that well enough, Jib.”
“Oh, we’ll wait around. But he’s got to die. He’s so far gone that nothing can save him. And I oughtn’t to go into the shack, either. That fever is contagious, and he’s just full of it!”
“We must get help for him,” cried Ruth, suddenly.
“What sort of help?” demanded the Indian.
“Why, the ranch is not so awfully far away, and I know that Mr. Hicks keeps a big stock of medicines. He will have something for this case.”
“Then let’s hustle back,” said Jib, starting to climb into his saddle.
“But the coyote – and other savage beasts!” exclaimed Ruth.
“Gee! I forgot that,” muttered Jib.
“One of us must stay here.”
“Well – I can do that, I suppose. But how about you finding your way to the Rolling River outfit? I – don’t – know.”
“I’ll stay here and watch,” declared Ruth, firmly. “You ride for help – get medicine – tell Mr. Hicks to send for a doctor at Bullhide, too. I have some money with me and I know my Uncle Jasper will pay whatever it costs to get a doctor to this man. Besides – there are other people interested.”
“Why, Miss, I don’t know about this,” murmured Jib Pottoway. “It’s risky to leave you here. Old Bill will be wild at me.”
“I’m going to stay right here,” declared Ruth, getting out of the saddle. “You can leave me your gun if you will – ”
“Sure! I could do that. But I don’t know what the boss’ll say.”
“It won’t much matter what he says,” said Ruth, with a faint smile. “I shall be here and he will be at Silver Ranch.”
“Ugh!” muttered Jib. “But what’ll he say to me?”
“I believe Mr. Hicks is too good-hearted to wish to know that we left this unfortunate young man here without care. It would be too cruel.”
“You wait till I look about the camp,” muttered Jib, without paying much attention to Ruth’s last remark.
He left his pony and walked quickly up the overgrown trail that had once been the main street of Tintacker Camp. Ruth slipped out of the saddle and ran to the door of the sick man’s hut. She laid her hand on the latch, hesitated a moment, and then pushed the door open. There was plenty of light in the room. The form on the bed, under a tattered old blanket, was revealed. Likewise the flushed, thin face lying against the rolled-up coat for a pillow.
“The poor fellow!” gasped Ruth. “And suppose it should be her brother! Suppose it should be!”
Only for a few seconds did she stare in at the unfortunate fellow. His head began to roll from side to side on the hard pillow. He muttered some gibberish as an accompaniment to his fevered dreams. It was a young face Ruth saw, but so drawn and haggard that it made her tender heart ache.
“Water! water!” murmured the cracked lips of the fever patient.
“Oh! I can’t stand this!” gasped the girl. She wheeled about and sent a long shout after Jib: “Jib! I say, Jib!”
“What’s wantin’?” replied the Indian from around the bend in the trail.
“Bring some water! Get some fresh water somewhere.”
“I get you!” returned the cowboy, and then, without waiting another instant, Ruth stepped into the infected cabin and approached the sufferer’s couch.
The sick man’s head moved incessantly; so did his lips. Sometimes what he said was audible; oftener it was just a hoarse murmur. But when Ruth raised his head tenderly and took out the old coat to refold it for a pillow, he screamed aloud and seized the garment with both hands and with an awful strength! His look was maniacal. There were flecks of foam on his lips and his eyes rolled wildly. There was more than ordinary delirium in his appearance, and he fought for possession of the coat, shrieking in a cracked voice, the sound of which went straight to Ruth’s heart.
The sound brought Jib on the run.
“What in all tarnation are you doing in that shack?” he shouted. “You come out o’ there!”
“Oh, Jib,” said she, as the man fell back speechless and seemingly lifeless on the bed. “We can’t leave him alone like this.”
“That whole place is infected. You come out!” the puncher commanded.
“There’s no use scolding me now, Jib,” she said, softly. “The harm is done, if it is to be done. I’m in here, and I mean to stay with him till you get help and medicine.”
“You – you – ”
“Don’t call me names, but get the water. Find a pail somewhere. Bring plenty of cool water. He is burning up with fever and thirst.”
“Well, the hawse is stole, I reckon!” grunted the Indian. “But you’d ought to be shaken. What the boss says to me about this will be a-plenty.”
“Get the water, Jib!” commanded Ruth Fielding. “See! he breathes so hard. I believe he is dying of thirst more than anything else.”
Jib grabbed the canteen that swung at the back of his saddle, emptied the last of the stale water on the ground, and hurried away to where a thin stream tumbled down the hillside behind one of the old shaft openings. He brought the canteen back full – and it held two quarts.
“Just a little at first,” said the girl, pouring some of the cool water into her own folding cup that she carried in her pocket. “He mustn’t have too much. And you keep out of the house, Jib. No use in both of us running the risk of catching the fever. You’ll have to ride for help, too. And you don’t want to take the infection among the other boys.”
“You are a plucky one, Miss,” admitted the cowboy. “But there’s bound to be the piper to pay for this. They’ll say it was my fault.”
“I won’t let ’em,” declared Ruth. She raised the sick man’s head again and put the cup to his lips. “I wish I had some clean cloths. Oh! let somebody ride over from the camp with food and any stimulants that there may be there. See if you can find some larger receptacle for water before you go.”
“She’s a cleaner!” muttered the Indian, shaking his head, and walking away to do her bidding.
