Читать книгу Yellowstone Nights - Quick Herbert - Страница 3

"I shall never, never be able to feel anything like astonishment again!"

So said the Bride as the party took the road again after two days at Mammoth Hot Springs. Bunsen Mountain had been circumnavigated. Cupid's Cave had charmed. The Devil's Kitchen had stimulated a flagging faith in a Personal Adversary, dealing with material utensils of vengeance. The Stygian Cave, whose deadly vapors had strewed its floor with dead birds, had been pronounced another of his devices and satanically "horrid." The iridescent springs, each of which has built up its own basin, like hanging fountains, were compared to the hanging gardens of Babylon, and pronounced far more worthy of place among the wonders of the world. The lovely Undine Falls had comforted them with prettiness after wildness; and the ogreous Hoodoo Rocks had turned them back to the realm of shivers. The Professor's note-books were overflowing with memoranda; and Colonel Baggs alone went unastounded.

"If the place only had a history," said the Minor Poet, "like the Venusberg, or almost any spot in Europe – "

"Well," said the Colonel, "it's got some history, anyhow. When I was here before – "

"When was that?" asked the Artist, adding a line or two to a surreptitious sketch of the Colonel.

"It was thirty-three years ago the latter part of this month," said the Colonel. "I carried a knapsack in the chase after Chief Joseph and the Nez Percès. There were pretty average lively times right in this vicinity with the first tourists, so far as I know, that ever came into the Park. Some fellows had been up in the Mount Everts country, and to the lower falls. The Nez Percès rushed them. A fellow named Stewart found himself looking into the muzzle of the rifle of a Nez Percè, and made the sign of the cross. The red with the gun, being a pretty fair Christian as Christians go – the tribe had been converted for thirty years – as conversions go – refrained from shooting when he saw the sign. Stewart had a horse that was wild and hard to catch – was wounded and had no idea he could get within reach of the steed; but when he called, the horse came to him and stood for him to climb on, for the first and last time in the history of their relations. Stewart got off with his life."

"Very remarkable," said the Professor, jotting down a note. "Now, how do you account for that on any known scientific law?"

"It simply wasn't Stewart's time," said the Colonel. "Or there's an intelligence that operates on other intelligences – even those of beasts – for our protection. Or we have guardian spirits that can tame horses. Take your choice, Professor. And right here – maybe where we are camped – another bit of history was enacted that in the childhood of the race might ripen into one of those legends the artists deplore the lack of. The campers here had a nigger cook named Stone – Ben Stone – I arrested and confined for giving thanks to the Lord after we picked him up. He was here at Mammoth Hot Springs when a fellow – I forget his name – was shot. The Nez Percès went by one day and saw him here. Next day they came back more peeved than before and shot the man. Ben, the cook, ran, and they after him. He shinned up into one of these trees – maybe that one there. The Indians lost sight of him, and stopped under the tree for a conference. Stone nearly died of fright for fear they would hear his heart beating. He said it sounded like a horse galloping over rocks. They gave him up and went away. The coast being clear, a bear – probably an ancestor of these half-tamed beasts that the Bride photographed last evening – came along and began snuffing about the trees. Ben's heart began galloping again. The bear reared up and stretched as if he meant to climb the tree. Ben's heart stopped. After a while the bear went away. After a day or so the cook came into our camp and went about giving thanks to the Lord continually, and howling hallelujahs until nobody could sleep. So we put him under guard, and I watched him under orders to bust his head if he bothered the throne of grace any more."

"The army is an irreverent organization," said the Professor.

"It isn't what you'd call devout," assented the Colonel.

"Confound this modern world, anyway!" complained the Poet. "Five hundred years ago, we'd have evolved a cycle of legends out of those occurrences!"

"The tales are just as astonishing without legends," insisted the Bride, "as anything in the world, no matter how deep in fable."

Faring on southward, they passed toward Norris Basin in unastonished quietude. A flock of pelicans on Swan Lake created no sensation. A trio of elk in Willow Park crossed the road ahead of the surrey with no further effect than to arouse the Artist to some remarks on their anatomical perfection, and to bring to the surface the buried note-book of Professor Boggs. They stopped at Apollinaris Spring for refreshment, where the Groom held forth on the commercial possibilities of the waters, if the government would get off the lid, and let the country be developed.

"Nix on this conservation game," said he; and nobody argued with him.

At Obsidian Cliff, Mr. Driscoll whoaed up his cayuses to call the attention of his fares to the fact that here is the only glass road in the world.

"Glass?" queried the Professor, alighting, microscope in hand. "Really?"

"Shore," assured Aconite. "They cracked the road out of the cliff by building fires to heat the glass and splashin' cold water to make the chunks pop out – jelluk breakin' a tumbler washin' up the dishes."

"Oh, I see," said Professor Boggs. "Merely obsidian."

"Merely!" repeated Aconite. "Some folks always reminds me of the folks that branded old Jim Bridger as a liar becuz o' what he told of this here region eighty or ninety years ago. He built Fort Bridger, and Bridger's Peak was named after him, and he discovered Great Salt Lake, and I guess he wouldn't lie. He found this glass cliff and told about it then – and everybody said he was a liar. An' he found lots o' things that ain't on the map. We see a little thread o' country along this road, but the reel wonders of this Park hain't been seen sence Jim Bridger's time – an' not then. W'y, once back in this glass belt, he saw an elk feedin' in plain sight. Blazed away an' missed him. Elk kep' on feedin'. Blazed away ag'in. Elk unmoved. Bridger made a rush at the elk with his knife, and run smack into a mountain of this glass so clear that he couldn't see it, and shaped like a telescope glass that brought things close. That elk was twenty-five miles off."

"Giddap!" said Colonel Baggs to the horses. "Time to be on our way."

"After all," said the Poet, "we may not have lost the power to create a mythology."

"Bridger for my money," said the Artist, with conviction.

"Jim Bridger said that," asserted Aconite, "an' I believe him. They found Great Salt Lake where he said it was, all right, an' Bridger's Peak, an' the few things we've run across here. You wouldn't believe a mountain would whistle like a steam engine, would yeh? Well, I'll show you one – Roarin' Mountain – in less'n four miles ahead – in the actual act of tootin'."

"I believe all you said, Mr. Driscoll," said the Bride as they sat about the fire that night. "The glass mountain, the elk and all. After those indescribable Twin Lakes, the Roaring Mountain, and the Devil's Frying Pan, stewing, stewing, century after century – that's what makes it so inconceivable – the thought of time and eternity. The mountains are here for ever – that's plain; but these things in action – to think that they were sizzling and spouting just the same when Mr. Bridger was here ninety years ago, and a million years before that, maybe – it flabbergasts me!"

"Yes'm," said Aconite. "It shore do."

"You're it, Bride!" said the Hired Man, handing her a slip with "Bride" written upon it.

"I'm what?" asked the Bride.

"They've sawed the story off on you," returned the Hired Man. "I hope you'll give a better one than that there Poet told. I couldn't make head nor tail to that."

"It was rotten," said the Poet, looking at the Bride, "wasn't it?"

"I'm still living in a glass house," said the Bride. "Don't you know there's only one story a bride can tell?"

"Tell it, tell it!" was the cry – from all but the Poet and the Groom.

"I think I'll retire," said the Groom.

"Off with you into the shadows," said the Poet. "I'll contribute my last cigar – and we'll smoke the calumet on the other side of the tree where we can hear unseen."

About them the earth boiled and quivered and spouted. Little wisps of steam floated through the treetops. There were rushings and spoutings in the air – for they were in the Norris Geyser Basin. And here the Bride, sitting in the circle of men, her feet curled under her on a cushion of the surrey laid on the geyser-heated ground, fixed her eyes on the climbing moon and told her story.