Tales of lonely trails by Zane Grey (best affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

into the basin. Along here the rim appeared to wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly rock-strewn, with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw deer tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us farewell and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all the country ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there seemed to be no urgent need of him.

We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our saddle horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it, and each of us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front of his saddle, and took it up the hill. Then the teams managed the wagon. This incident happened four times in less than as many miles. The team horses, having had a rest from hard labor, had softened, and this sudden return to strenuous pulling had made their shoulders sore. They either could not or would not pull. We covered less than ten miles that day, a very discouraging circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to the rim, a splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have been enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that it brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him! He was alive! He stood up—like this—wagging his head. Oh! I saw him!"

Our next day's progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling along, unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up and down the interminable length of three almost impassable miles. When night overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No grass, no water! A cold gale blew out of the west. It roared through the forest. It blew everything loose away in the darkness. It almost blew us away in our beds. The stars appeared radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue windy vault of the sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows crossed the weird moon-blanched forest glades.

At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen, mostly silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice. Suddenly some one discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact filled me with consternation and alarm. He might have walked in his sleep and fallen over the rim. What had become of him? All his outfit lay scattered round in his bed. In my bewilderment I imagined many things, even to the extreme that he might have left us in the lurch. But when I got to that sad pass of mind I suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream. My worry, my hurry had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to meet this situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I went out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities, and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand. That instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and reproached myself.

Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand over the camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.

"Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain," I said.

"Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn't sleep. I got to thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out what was ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright moonlight. I walked all the rest of the night. And that's all, sir."

I liked Nielsen's looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to achievement. Such men could not be defeated.

"Well, what did you find out?" I inquired.

"Change of conditions, sir," he replied, as a mate to his captain. "Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we'll have to cut through thickets and logs. From here on the road is all grown over. About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a ridge."

That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I thanked Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The packing and carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated himself into my affections. He found out that he could coax meat and biscuit from me. We had three axes and a hatchet; and these we did not pack in the wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams started Lee and Nielsen and R.C. and I went ahead to clear the road. Soon we were halted by thickets of pines, some of which were six inches in diameter at the base. The road had ceased to be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that day nor the next would we have ever gotten far along that stretch of thicketed and obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.

At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly ascending hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together to pull the wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep curve, horses and men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside Romer. Nielsen and R.C. were next, and Lee had fallen in behind the wagon. As I turned the sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below me a huge log obstructing the road.

"Look out! Stop!" I yelled, looking back.

But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle's face turn white—heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the side. Romer was slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off the road. My heart sank sick within me! Surely he would be run down. As his pony Rye jumped out of the way the shoulder of the black horse, on the off side, struck him a glancing blow. Then the big team hurdled the log, the tongue struck with a crash, the wagon stopped with a lurch, and Doyle was thrown from his seat.

Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The bay horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away. Nielsen cut and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came tearing down to grasp and hold the black.

Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not know what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact convinced me of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled the log made any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When finally it was extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut in the breast made by a snag on the log. We could find no damage done to the wagon. The harness Nielsen had cut could be mended quickly. What a fortunate outcome to what had seemed a very grave accident! I was thankful indeed. But not soon would I forget sight of Romer in front of that plunging wagon.

With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of the road, and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I dropped back and asked Doyle if he was all right. "Fine as a fiddle," he shouted. "This's play to what we teamsters had in the early days." And verily somehow I could see the truth of that. A mile farther on we made camp; and all of us were hungry, weary, and quiet.

Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next morning he crawled out before any one else, and his call was cheery. I was scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was ashamed to lie there an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my eyesight was dulled by exhaustion when it caused me to see myself as a worn, unshaven, wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out with his usual alacrity. R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get up on all fours.

We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to work and waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail it seemed, we chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that old Crook road. Not since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in Mexico had I labored so strenuously.

At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed road Doyle had some vague knowledge of. "It must lead to Jones' ranch," Doyle kept saying. "Anyway, we've got to take it." North was our direction. And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness, the road down this ridge proved to be a highway compared to what we had passed. In the open forest we had to follow it altogether by the blazes on the trees. But with all our eyes alert that was easy. The grade was down hill, so that we traveled fast, covering four miles an hour. Occasionally a log or thicket halted rapid progress. Toward the end of the afternoon sheep and cattle trails joined the now well-defined road, and we knew we were approaching a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile, for the very good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of my horse. The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep barren-looking canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old ruined log-cabins. Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold milk. For hours they had haunted me. When Doyle saw the broken-down cabins and corrals he yelled: "Boys, it's Jones' Ranch. I've been here. We're only three miles from Long Valley and the main road!"

Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to look for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses had not slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up and down the canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water. Thereupon with immense relief and joy we pitched camp near the cabins, forgetting our aches