Читать книгу Pleasant Jim - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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He waited only to see the two Mexicans, get their report of the happenings on the farm during his absence, and call for two horses. They brought him what he asked for, a ten-year-old mare, a seasoned traveler and like the wind for a short burst, together with a white-stockinged gelding that went a bit lame in the morning but could gallop the rest of the day. His pack was quickly made, and then with the meridional sun at his back, he went north towards Black Mountain.

He camped that night at the foot of the range, a tired man, but well ahead of his schedule. He was glad of that, for it gave him time to sleep himself out that night, and all of the next day he had before him to let the horses rest and graze while he wandered slowly up the grades, pausing at every prominent place to scan the surrounding country with his glass before he went on.

So he slept that night, seeing the broad, bright face of the Nile star in the heavens as he closed his eyes. In the gray of the morning he was up again. He made a small fire with care, taking only the dryest of twigs so that there might be a flame with no smoke. On that fire he made coffee; hardtack and dried figs were his food; and when he had finished eating he took pains to destroy every vestige of the blackened site of the fire.

The horses had done well. They had grazed on good bunch grass, than which no fodder is more nutritious except grain itself; and they were keen for whatever work lay before them.

There was little labor for them that day. What he wanted was a pair of fresh animals for the possible danger of the night; therefore he went on foot, leading the horses slowly on from ridge to ridge as he approached Black Mountain. There was good reason for its name; it stood like a dusky shadow among the sunlit peaks, bare-headed, gloomy, and seeming alone in spite of much noble company. Pleasant stalked it like an enemy, keeping careful ward on every hand, but in spite of himself he could not mark a sign of man or horse. There were only a few old cattle trails, made during the August heats when enterprising cowmen pushed their stock up into the heights where they would find not much grass, to be sure, but coolness of night, shade by day, and plenty of the best of pure water.

Those old trails he searched with careful eyes but could not read any new sign upon them. For his own part, he avoided going along them, but picked his way instead over the roughest rock-faces where the shod hoofs of his pair would leave no marks, however slight.

Before evening, he had run a loop around the mountain and fairly assured himself that Long Tom’s expectations of danger must be wrong. Then, when the dusk began, he wound slowly up towards the height.

He had measured every inch of the landscape. He knew, to the north and south and east and west, what made the best terrain for swift flight in case of an emergency; his guns were cleaned and loaded; and he was prepared even against the danger he did not expect.

He reached the top and found that he had climbed into the last of the afterglow. All the valleys below him were pooled with thick darkness, but the final glow covered the tall peaks that went up on all sides of him like spear-points raised above a shadowy army. It was a grave sight, which might have suggested strange thoughts to a more philosophical mind; but Pleasant Jim took more notice of his immediate surroundings, picking out a stretch of good grass just below the summit where the horses could graze during the night, and then taking note of a circle of old stones upon the very crest. Perhaps it was the remains of an impromptu fort built here by Indians in ancient times. He was more sure of that when he found the half-buried shard of an olla within the circle.

The discovery pleased him; it gave him a weird sense of companionship upon the bleak height, and he set about cheerfully gathering the materials for a bonfire among the brush which grew on every hand—brush large enough, he noted grimly, to mask the cautious approach of twenty men if they cared to steal up the height.

When he had seen these things, and stacked up his pile to a considerable size, he waited a little longer. Night thickened gradually, stirred up from below, and the keen stars pressed lower in the heavens. It was complete dark, at last, and when that time had come, he lighted the fire and stood back among the brush to watch the conflagration.

He had put on much green foliage; the result was at first a heavy smudge rolling straight upward through the windless sky, but presently the heat grew greater, a yellow point appeared in the center of the brush pile, and finally a strong head of flame leaped up, died and rose again, and then with a roar raised a twenty-foot arm of crimson, high above Black Mountain.

The big man watched this display with much satisfaction and smiled as the brush crackled. So furiously did it burn that little twigs and then skeleton fragments of the bushes soared upward and fell down slowly after the sparks which had accompanied them died in the black air above.

If a signal were waited for, such a column of terror as this could not fail to be seen from any of the neighboring summits. But though Pleasant swept all sides of the mountains near by with a ceaseless vigilance, he discovered not so much as one glimmer of answering light. So he took a quantity of rocks and sand which he had prepared beforehand and flung them on the core of the fire. For he had done enough to show friends that he was there. Why should he make a greater disturbance, which might attract any curious eyes besides those for whom it was intended?

The fire smoked and fumed for some time. He had to stamp over some of the embers and beat out others, but in a very few seconds the light was gone, and the density of darkness seemed now doubly great. Even the stars had nearly disappeared, and only by degrees they began to shine once more for his dazzled eyes.

After that, by turns he watched the mountains and harked and peered down the slopes of the Black Peak; but there was not the slightest token either of signal from beyond the valleys or of any approach towards him.

He was by no means without suspicions, and peering down into the hollows, he felt that danger lay covert there, as a trout lies in the shadows of the pool, waiting for a fly to fleck the surface of the water.

However, there was nothing further for him to do. And since it was foolish to waste sleeping hours, he prepared for bed, making down his blankets on the edge of the small pasture where he had left the horses. He did that for two reasons. One was that there was danger, otherwise, that wild animals might stampede his mounts; the second was that in case some human tried to stalk him the beasts were apt to alarm him in time to allow him to defend himself and them. It had turned bitterly cold, with a rising wind cutting across from the loftier snow summits, so he took a noggin of brandy to warm his blood, then rolled in his blankets and was instantly asleep.

The first sign of light wakened him, as usual, for he was trained in the observance of day and night like any bird of prey. He washed his face and methodically shaved in a little spring head which had been bubbling gently beside him all the night. After that, he scrubbed a pair of extra woolen socks with a bit of yellow laundry soap, washed out a bandanna and a suit of underwear, and so prepared himself for the day with what would have seemed to most frontiersmen a most finicky waste of time and labor.

After this, he made his breakfast fire with all due care and finished off a brief meal, covering the traces of the little fire with all of the precautions which he had used before. That done, it occurred to him that the two horses might not be concealed sufficiently by the shrubbery and the low trees among which he had tied them for the day. With his own strong glasses he could study many small traces and trees upon the faces of the neighboring slopes, and it appeared likely that the horses could be seen by a similar survey.

He conducted them deeper into the woods, therefore, and when he had done that, he went back to the summit, moving as cautiously as if rifles, and not merely field glasses, might be picking him off from one of the near-by heights. There on the top, he continued to scan all of the landscape around him.

All was crystal clear. The wind had fallen away again, as it had done in the early evening. There was not a trace of dust and there was not a breath of mist, not so much as would have stained the face of a mirror. So he could see ten thousand details with his naked eye, but he preferred to study the important points with the glass. It was a lesson in patience to watch him probing every suspicious patch of shadow which might be a cave mouth, and every oddly shaped bowlder. Once his heart leaped into his mouth, for he indubitably saw something stir on the shoulder far down a southern peak. Yet when he fixed the glass upon the spot, he could make out that it was no more than a deer, walking, and then trotting softly out of sight among the stones.

He waited to make sure that the creature had not been moving because danger was coming behind it, but nothing more came in sight for a full quarter of an hour, and he relaxed his vigilance in that direction.

Still he was by no means at rest, for a twitching of the nerves and a peculiar keenness in his senses and a vague shadow of fear continually disturbed him, like the pressure of another mind upon his own. He was no believer in metapsychosis, but he told himself that all was not well.

And at length, turning his attention from the distance to the summit on which he stood, he found first-hand evidence that danger actually was around him. For in a patch of soft earth at the very edge of a rock, he saw the distinct outline of a shoe—heel and sole—and such a shoe as he himself never had worn in all his days.