Читать книгу The Mynns' Mystery - Fenn George Manville - Страница 4

“It will make assurance doubly sure,” Dan Portway thought, and, quick as lightning, he recalled the discovery of a murdered family of settlers he had seen on the plains, where, after death had been dealt with arrow and tomahawk, each poor creature had been scalped.

Dan Portway had exchanged friendly grips of the hand with his victim scores of times, had shared luxuries with him in hours of plenty, and the last scrap in those of famine. More than that, upon one occasion, during their hunting-trip, when he had slipped, fallen, and hung in deadly peril over a terrible chasm, George Harrington had risked his own life to save that of his companion by descending and grasping his wrists just as his strength was failing and he was about to drop. But there was wealth in the way – a chance of gaining possession of position in another land, and at that time the sphere of the scoundrel’s actions was growing limited, for in several districts a vigilance committee had hunted him with dire intentions connected with a lariat and the nearest tree.

And now his opportunity had come, and he seized it with the coolness of the hardened villain, free from all remorse.

“Dead or not quite dead, he can’t feel,” he muttered, as the point of his knife pierced George Harrington’s scalp, and then the poor fellow’s head dropped with a heavy thud upon the rocks, while, bending down, the ruffian seemed as if turned to stone, and gazed before him at the animal which had silently approached to within half-a-dozen yards, and then uttered a low sound like a heavy sigh.

They had seen sign of bear up above: here was the bear himself – a huge brute of the variety known to hunters as the cinnamon, at home here in his native wilds, glaring red-eyed and savage at the intruder upon his domains, and ready to make him pay dearly for his audacity.

Portway held his keen knife in his hand, but he could not stir; his rifle, ready charged, was almost within reach of his hand, but he did not try to seize it, and for fully a minute the huge beast and the hunter remained perfectly motionless.

Then the paralysis of mind and muscle passed away, and Portway stretched out his hand slowly towards where he had placed his rifle but without moving his eyes from the bear. On his right was the steep rocky wall that he had descended, on his left the terrible precipice, behind him a narrow shelf, and, in front the bear, with George Harrington between.

“If I can get the rifle?” thought Portway; and his hand searched for it, but in his heart he felt that it would be better to try and retreat slowly, while the bear would stop and wreak his anger upon the fallen man. Dan Portway knew better as regards the nature of the beast, but he could not think coolly and clearly then – he could not recall in the least that the grizzly and his relatives preferred to attack an active enemy when brought face to face with him, and that, at such a time, the recumbent body was no more to it than the rocks around – till he saw it rear up on its hind legs, a monster fully seven feet in height, its little eyes red with rage, its fangs bared, and its huge paws raised with the great claws spread.

There was a tremendous roar, full-throated, from the creature’s jaws, a rush as it leaped over George Harrington; the rifle was falling down the gulch, crashing from stone to stone; and, knife in hand, and uttering a hoarse shriek of horror, Dan Portway was bounding from rock to rock, striving to mount the steep side of the rugged place, and with the bear in full pursuit.

They were moments of agony, such as add years to a man’s life, and, listening to the panting breath of his pursuer, and his low snuffling snarl, Portway climbed on, expecting, moment by moment, to feel the monster’s huge claws upon his shoulder, and his half-inanimate body snatched back into the creature’s grasp. There was no chance of escape, for there, in its natural haunts, the bear could shuffle along at double the rate of a man, but still, for what seemed like an eternity of horror – really, but a fraction of a minute – Portway climbed on, till in struggling round a projecting rock, he slipped, and fell some twenty feet, to be caught up by a gnarled and distorted pine-trunk, which, with its roots in a crevice of the mountain side, projected almost at right angles over the gulch.

Half maddened by fear, the wretched man instinctively clung to the boughs, and saved himself from falling farther, and then, with his eyes fixed and staring up at his enemy steadily descending in pursuit, he crept along the bending stem, seating himself astride the tree, and getting farther and farther from the side of the gulch, till a warning crack told him of danger, while the swaying motion of the little trunk showed that he had reached the farthest point which the tree would bear.

“Grizzlies can’t climb trees,” he thought, and he watched his enemy as it came on, deliberately and cautiously, until it reached the spot from whence the fir-tree sprang. Here it paused, snuffed the ground, and stretched out its neck toward the trembling man, who shifted his position a little, so as to be ready to use his knife with effect.

The bear’s movements were as cautious and deliberate as it is possible to conceive; it placed one paw on the trunk, and then, reaching out the other with its terrible array of hooked talons, made as if to claw Portway from where he sat, and to draw him to the rocks.

As the bear strained to reach him, Portway backed slowly towards the branches, shuddering as he glanced downward into the gulf, and realised that the thin elastic trunk was all that he had to depend upon to save him from the two terrible forms of death so close at hand. At any moment he felt that the weight upon the tree might act as a lever of sufficient power to tear the roots out of the crevice in which they grew, and this kept him from moving another inch, though the bear was cautiously trying the tree, and while keeping its hind-quarters well upon the substantial rocks, stretching out farther and farther with its huge length of reach, till the terrible claws came within a foot or two of his breast.

And now a curious feeling, akin to nightmare, came over the man, and he sat astride that frail trunk, gazing wildly at the red glaring eyes of the animal, but closing his own each time the huge paw swept toward him, and he saw himself, in imagination, swept from his hold.

But the bear uttered a strange gasping growl, full of disappointment, and with an action that seemed eminently human, it altered its position, creeping more over the precipice, and clasping the tree with its hind paws, so that the next time it stretched itself out, Portway saw that he would be within its reach.

Still he could not move; only sit there, watching every deliberate act of the determined creature till it had finished its preparations, and was about to make its final stroke; the paw was even in motion, when, with a yell of horror, Portway threw himself back among the boughs.

The effect was immediate. The weight placed upon the trunk was the full extent of that which it would bear; the extra leverage produced by Portway’s action did the rest. There was a sharp, snapping, cracking noise, the tree was torn out by the roots, and in company with an avalanche of stones and earth, man, tree, and bear plunged crashing down into the great chasm yawning beneath.

The effect was varied.

The bear, whose hind paws clung to the root and rock, went down head first, and its fore paws touched the bushes beneath, clung to them, and held on, while, following the tree, its hind-quarters went right over, making the animal turn an involuntary somersault. Then its fore paws were snatched from their hold by its weight, and it fell some twenty feet, from tree to tree, where they bristled from the side before it could check its downward course, after which the huge beast coolly began to climb diagonally upward, till it reached the shelf from which it had fallen, and, after shaking itself, began slowly to retrace its steps upward, when it came upon the rifle Portway had dropped, stopped to snuffle round it for a few moments, and then proceeded toward where the encounter had first taken place, and where lay ready for him a feast such as did not often come in his generally vegetarian way.

Meanwhile, with a terrible rush, the tree, with its occupant, had gone down into the gulf, plunging from rock to bush and clump of pine, Portway clinging to it desperately, till it fell athwart a couple more trunks, and there lodged, but with such a jerk that the man was thrown from where he clung, to continue his descent alone crashing through tree and bush, till he was brought up suddenly and lay stunned and insensible to what had been going on.

At the end of a few minutes Portway unclosed his eyes and lay staring up at the sky, through the thick, ragged growth which sprang everywhere from the sides of the chasm. Then by degrees he realised that he had escaped, so far, from a terrible death, but it was some time longer before he dared to move.

When he did venture he uttered a cry of agony, and lay perfectly still again, for an acute pain had shot through his side, telling him plainly that he had not escaped free. At last though the cold sweat seemed to dry upon his brow, and he began to look round and upward so as thoroughly to grasp his position.

The side of the gulch projected where he lay, and quite a clump of pines had found sustenance, sufficient to grow into a bushy patch, among whose boughs Portway had fallen, the tops proving sufficiently elastic and dense to break his descent, though he had torn off enough to form quite a bed, upon which he rested.

He listened and looked about him, but he could neither see nor hear anything of his enemy, and at last, with his confidence returning, he drew himself into a sitting posture in spite of the pain, took a flask from his breast, drank a dram of whiskey, and began once more to look around.

His first shuddering gaze was upward, and something like a feeling of satisfaction gave him encouragement to proceed, as he grasped the fact that to climb back was impossible, for if the bear had escaped falling with him, the beast was probably waiting his return.

“No, it must be downward,” he muttered; and in spite of his agony, he set about the task of descent, at once finding it less difficult than he had anticipated; for the tough roots and bushes, which projected everywhere, gave him foot and hand hold, as he let himself down, lower and lower.

But there was a fresh difficulty awaiting him, for the lower he went the darker it seemed to grow. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, and in half an hour it would be perfectly black where he hung, and any attempt to continue the descent so much madness.

It was, then, with a sense of relief that he reached a sharp slope where, among the bushes and creepers that tangled the side of the gulch, he was able to find a resting-place where there was no danger of falling, and as he lay down here, hot, exhausted, and in pain, he saw the twilight fade into darkness, and thought of the body of his companion lying somewhere above.

A shudder ran through him at the thought – a shudder of dread – but it was only compounded of fear lest he should not have effectually completed his deadly work, and with the full determination of revisiting the spot, so as to secure Harrington’s rifle and make perfectly sure of his death, providing he could avoid the bear, he dropped off into a heavy sleep which lasted till the soft grey light was beginning to fill the valley once again.

He was so stiff, and suffered such agony from the injury to his side, that for some time he did not care to stir; but at last, bringing all his energies to bear, he rose carefully, looked round, and began to descend, reaching the bottom with no very great difficulty, and then pausing to consider as to what course he should pursue.

His desire was to make for the camp at once, but he felt that he must see the spot where he had left George Harrington; and to do this he doggedly set forth, making his way to the mouth of the gulch, and then spending half the day in getting round and back to the ledge, along which he and his companion had passed the day before.

It was nearly midday when he passed the spot where they had lain down and slept, and he would have given anything to have rested, but he contented himself with slaking his thirst at a trickling spring and doggedly went on.

“I must see him, and get his rifle,” he muttered, as he trudged on, till at last, peering cautiously about the while, he reached the place where Harrington had stood gazing down, and he had delivered that cowardly blow.

For a moment or two he hesitated and stood panting, with his hand to his side. Then, taking a step forward, he peered down to gaze upon his ghastly work, and stood there, as if fascinated, before he made a terrible effort, and turned and fled.

For there below him, and interposed between him and that he wished to see, was his huge enemy of the previous day, bending down, and evidently licking the rock; till, divining danger, it looked up suddenly, uttered a low fierce growl, and began to climb.

But by the time it reached the rocky path, Dan Portway was out of sight, and he did not pause till he reached the little camp, from which he took the few things he sought, refreshed himself, made ready a pack of necessaries, set fire to the rest, and mounting the horse left hobbled in a grassy hollow, rode slowly away.

“To seek my fortune,” he said with a curious laugh; and then, with bent head and thoughtful brow, he let the reins drop on the horse’s neck, took a pin from out of his knife, and began to make experiments by pricking the skin of his wrist till it bled, and rubbing in gunpowder.

“Easy enough,” he said, with a laugh. “Now we shall see what change of scene will do. Nothing like a removal when a place grows too hot.”