Читать книгу The Young lion Hunter - Zane Grey - Страница 6

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Strong men, when suddenly confronted with the spectacle of the Grand Cañon, have been known to cry out in joy or fear, to weep, to fall upon their knees, or to be petrified into silence. Serious-minded men have been known to laugh immoderately. Sight of the Cañon affects no two persons alike, but there are none whom it does not affect powerfully. I paid my own moment's tribute of solemn awe, and then I glanced at the boys.

Ken looked stunned and white, his throat swelling with emotion. Hal's face shone with a radiant glow of wild joy, and for a moment he stuttered, then as Ken burst into an exclamation, he lapsed into stony silence.

"Wonderful! Beautiful! It's--it's--" That was all Ken could say.

"It shore is," replied Jim.

Then I told the boys that the Grand Cañon of Arizona was over two hundred miles long, twelve to twenty wide, and a mile and a half deep. It was a Titanic gorge in which mountains, table-lands, chasms and cliffs lay buried in purple haze, a thing of wonder and mystery, beyond any other a place to grip the heart of a man. It had the strange power to make him at once meek and then to unleash his daring spirit.

"The world's split!" exclaimed Hal. "What made this--this awful hole?"

"We'll talk of that and study it after you have seen something of its heights and depths," I replied.

At our feet yawned a blue gulf with faint tracings of cedared slope and shining cliff visible through the noonday haze. Farther out a dark-purple cañon wended its irregular ragged way to vanish in space. Still farther out rose bare peaks and domes and mesas all asleep in the sunshine. Beyond these towered a gigantic plateau, rugged and bold in outline, its granite walls gold in the sun, its forest covering a strip of fringed black. It stood aloof from the towers and escarpments, detached from the world of rock, haunting in its isolation and wild promise.

"Boys, there's the plateau, where the cougars are," I said. "You see way down to the left under the wall where a dip of ground connects the plateau to the mainland? That's the Saddle. Hiram Bent is there with his hounds waiting for us."

"How on earth will we ever get there?" queried Ken.

"There are two trails. One leads down over the rim here, the other round through the forest. We'll take the forest trail, for the lower one is not safe for you boys till you get broken in. Come now, we can make the Saddle before dark if we plug along."

With that I led off into the forest, and, what with finding the seldom-used trail, and keeping the pack-horses in it, I had no time to see how the boys fared or what they did. I knew that both were finding riding most painful, and yet were enjoying themselves hugely. It was a long roundabout way to get to the Saddle. For the most part the trail led up and down the heads of many hollows. So steep were the slopes that we had to zigzag down and up. Then the thickets of prickly-thorn and scrub-oak and black-sage were obstacles to swift traveling. One thing I discovered, and it was that the stallion Marc was the best horse I had ever seen on a trail. He would not carry the Indian, but he led the way for us and made a path through the thickets. The sun was yet an hour above the southwest rim when I reached the head of the hollow where the trail turned down to the Saddle. From a shallow ravine with grassy and thicketed slopes it deepened and widened till it was a cañon itself with looming yellow walls. It became deeper and deeper and then turning to the left it opened out into a wide space under the magnificent wall of the plateau. Here I smelled fire and presently saw the gleam of a white tent and then a column of blue smoke. The short, sharp bark of a hound rang out. I stopped and waited for Ken to catch up with me. He came along on foot, limping and leading his mustang.

"Cheer up, Ken," I said, "we're almost there."

"I'm cheerful, Dick. I'm supremely happy, but I'm all in. And as for Hal, why, Jim and I had to lift him in his saddle more times than I can remember. Dick, what're you doing to us, anyway?"

"You'll be fine in a couple of days. I wanted to get on the ground. There's Hal. Come along, Hal, you're doing well. We're almost there."

"Dick, I hear a hound," said Ken, eagerly. "Hurry up! There's smoke, too...Ah! I see Hiram!"

The first sight of the old bear hunter feeding his hounds under a tree was a joy to Ken Ward. I saw it in his sparkling eyes and heard it in his exultant voice. Soon we rode through the last thicket of brush into camp. The hounds barked furiously until quieted by Hiram.

Ken, despite his crippled condition, got to the hunter in quick time, and there was a warm greeting between them.

"Youngster, the Lord is good. I hevn't been so glad about anythin' in years as I am about seein' you...Wal, you have improved a heap."

Hal came forward with the same searching, luminous gaze which he had turned upon the Navajo. This time, however, the boy did not meet with disappointment. Any lad would have been fascinated with the splendid presence of the old hunter. And Hal was more than fascinated. Plain it was that Hiram's great stature, the flashing gray eyes, and the stern, weather-beaten face, his buckskin shirt, and all about him, realized the idea Hal had formed in his boyish thoughts.

"Wal, dog-gone my buttons!" said Hiram, offering an enormous hand to Hal. "Ken's brother! I've heard of you, now don't you forget thet. I'm mighty glad to meet you."

The shadow of the plateau crept out to us and shaded the camp. The sun was setting. We were down a thousand feet under the rim, so that we looked up at the plateau, and also at the peaks and towers and escarpments to the west. These were capped with pink and gold and red, and every moment the colors changed. While I was unpacking I heard Hiram ask Jim why on earth we had fetched that "tarnal redskin" with us, and Jim's reply was one that left no doubt about his idea of Indians. Both Hiram and Jim carried somewhere about in their anatomies leaden bullets which sometimes painfully reminded them that they had a grudge against Indians.

After sunset darkness settled quickly below the Cañon rim, and it was night long before we were through with supper. Then came the quiet, cheerful hour around the camp-fire, which I foresaw was to be a source of unalloyed bliss to Ken and Hal.

Hiram did not appear to be in any hurry to talk about cougars, but he was keenly interested in Ken's year at college, and especially in Ken's making the 'varsity baseball team. He asked innumerable questions, and he was delighted to learn of Ken's success and that he had been elected captain. Then he went off into reminiscences and talked of Ken's adventures in Penetier the summer before. Finally when he had satisfied his fancy he called up the hounds, one by one, and playfully, though seriously, he introduced them to the boys.

"Hyar's Prince, the best lion-hound I ever trained, bar none. He has a nose thet's perfect; he's fast an' savage, an' if ever a dog had brains it's Prince."

The great hound looked the truth of Hiram's claim. He was powerful in build, lean of loin, and long of limb, tawny-colored, and he had a noble head with great, somber eyes.

"Hyar's Curley, who's a slow trailer, an' he always bays, both fine qualities in a hound. Prince goes too swift an' saves his breath, but then it's not his fault if I don't keep close to him in a chase."

"An' hyar's Mux-Mux, who's no good."

The ugly black-and-white hound so designated wagged a stumpy tail and pawed his master, and appeared to want to make it plain that he was not so bad as all that.

"Wal, Mux, I'll take a leetle of thet back. You're good at eatin', an' then I never seen the cougar you was afraid of. An' thet's bad, fer you'll be killed some day."

"Hyar's Queen, the mother of the pups, an' she's reliable, though slow because of her lame leg. Hyar's Tan, a good hound, an' this big black feller, he's Ringer. He'll be as good as Prince some day, if I can only save him."

Hiram chained each hound to near-by saplings; then lighting his pipe at the camp-fire he found a comfortable seat.

"Wal, youngsters, it's dog-gone good to see you sittin' by my camp-fire. To-morrow we'll go up on the plateau an' make a permanent camp. Thar's grass an' snow in the hollers, an' deer, an' wild hosses an' mustangs."

"Any mountain-lions, cougars?" asked Ken, intensely.

"I was comin' to them. Wal, I never in my born days seen such a network of cougars' tracks as is on thet plateau. An' at thet I've only been on one end. I'm reckonin' we'll round up the biggest den of cougars in the West. You see, no one ever hunted thet plateau but Navajos, an' they wouldn't kill a cougar. Why, a cougar is one of their gods. Wal, as I was sayin', mebbe we'll strike a whole cat tribe up thar. An', youngsters, what do you say to ketchin' 'em alive?"

"Great!" exclaimed Ken.

Hiram switched his look of inquiry to Hal. The lad's large eyes, startlingly bright, dilated and burned.

"How?" he asked, and his voice rang like a bell.

"Lasso 'em, tie 'em up," replied Hiram. Deceit could not have lived in his kindly, clear glance.

"Then Ken didn't lie--after all?" blurted out Hal.

"My brother never believed I helped you lasso a bear and that we intended to do the same with cougars out here," exclaimed Ken.

"It's straight goods, youngster," added Hiram. "Now, whar do you stand? Most youngsters like to shoot things. Mebbe you'd find it fun to chase cougars up trees an' then shoot 'em, but thar's a leetle more chance fer excitement when you pull 'em out with a rope. It keeps a feller movin' around tolerable lively. Which would you like best, then--shootin' or ketchin'?"

"I'd like best--to catch them alive," replied Hal, his voice very low.

"Wal, now, I'm glad. You see it's not the excitement I'm lookin' fer, though I ain't sayin' I don't like to rope things, but the fact is I get ten dollars for cougar skins, an' three hundred dollars for live cougars. So, you youngsters will have the fun an' I'll be makin' money, an' at the same time we'll be riddin' Coconina Preserve of bad critters. Let's roll in now, fer you're tired, an' we must be stirrin' early."