A debate followed in which Paul showed himself a shrewd bargainer. He and c.o.ke totted up their available a.s.sets, and eventually about a quarter of a pint of whisky, a penknife, a steel watch-chain, and four or five shillings' worth of small silver were offered as the Crow's ransom, and accepted, much to the astonishment of c.o.ke, who, in his innocence, had been about to add a valuable ring and a pair of pocket-pistols to the purchase-money. He stooped and cut the prisoner's bonds, and that worthy, in obedience to a threatening hint from Dumont, fled into the darkness.

The Indians were amicably inclined, and not only shared their supper of broiled deer's meat with the travellers, but agreed to call for them at the camp in the morning and lead them to a point where the waggons could easily be drawn up to the higher platform; and on this good understanding the young men rode away. The new guides were as good as their word, and appeared on their little mustangs before c.o.ke's party had finished breakfast. They appeared to be one of several small scouting parties sent out from a main camp farther on to gather intelligence as to a reported advance of the Crow Indians against them; and were now returning to their head-quarters beyond the Platte River. Instructed by them, the sportsmen moved along the bluff to a place about three miles farther than c.o.ke had ridden on the previous afternoon; and there found a tolerably easy incline, up which the waggons were soon dragged.

By the side of the first of the hills seen the day before, the noonday halt was made. The p.a.w.nees still continued very friendly, the more so on discovering that nothing but the desire to do battle with bisons and grisly bears had brought the pale-faces so far.

"To-morrow we will show you many bisons," they said; and they certainly kept their promise.

All that afternoon the sportsmen could trace the steady pa.s.sage north-westwards of herd after herd of the animals; at that distance merely a brown, moving blur; and c.o.ke wondered how the Indians ever proposed to come up with them.

"They will go no farther than the river," said the p.a.w.nees, when questioned.

On the afternoon of the next day, as the little procession came near to another of the mound-like hills, the guides called a halt.

"We are too few to attack a herd," they said. "We must watch for the stragglers which may be grazing on the slopes. Go very quietly and do not raise your voices. Follow us and leave the waggons here." They moved on their horses again at a quick walk, and the white men did the same, till they had gone nearly half round the base of the hill, when the p.a.w.nees pulled up with a jerk, and one of them spoke hurriedly to George Dumont, who rode immediately behind the guides.

On the hillside about twenty bisons were grazing; and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to cut them off from the rest of the herd, which, to the number of three or four hundred, were moving slowly towards the river, now plainly to be seen flashing in the far distance.

"Look here," said George, turning to the Englishmen, and speaking with evident embarra.s.sment. "They mean to make us prove our pretensions to being mighty hunters. Two of them are going round the farther side to keep the bulls from wandering, and this chap is going to captain us.

We've got to guard the valley and this side of the hill; but as you fellows are new to it--if you'd rather not be in it----"

"Oh, bosh!" said c.o.ke; "we're going to stand by you and get our share of the fun."

"Oh--of course; if you feel sure of yourselves. Well; keep an eye open for the game beyond. They have a nasty trick of coming to each other's a.s.sistance." He made a sign to the two foremost Indians, who galloped away without a word, and were soon invisible behind the loitering bisons. Then the Englishmen saw what sort of sport they were letting themselves in for. They were to stop the probable downward and sideward rush of twenty bulls, killing as many of them as they could, and be prepared at the same time for an attack by the remaining hundreds that, at the first gunshot, might turn on them in a body.

Daily, for the past fortnight, both of them had zealously practised shooting with a rifle while at the gallop; but what sort of experience was that to bring to a task which the Canadians, used from boyhood to bison-hunting, admitted was a dangerous one?

Low as the voices had been, the stragglers had heard them and were beginning to look nervously from side to side. Suddenly a white streak darted through the air, and with an awful bellow one of the bisons fell, pierced through the eye by an arrow, and began to roll helplessly down the gra.s.sy slope. The remaining p.a.w.nee had drawn first blood. But a second after, the four Canadians brought their guns to the shoulder and fired one after the other; two beasts fell dead and two more showed by their groaning that they were badly wounded.

"Here goes," said Fred; and in another moment he had shot his first bison.

"Get more to your left, or they'll bolt yet," shouted Dominique Dumont; and c.o.ke, with an uncomfortable impression that the whole herd was charging upon him from the rear, nevertheless spurred his horse sidewards for several yards; then fired at a bull which was endeavouring to flee down the near side of the hill; and with a thrill of pride saw him fall on his knees and then roll over.

The excitement of the hunt was on him now and he thought no more of the herd behind him. Had he looked back he might have seen that alarms on that score were groundless; for, contrary to their usual custom, at the first shot they had fled in a body. But it was their desertion that made the loiterers so determined to escape and rejoin them. Three more of their number had fallen dead or disabled before the arrows of the p.a.w.nees on the farther side, who could now be seen pressing the game more closely; and, at a sign from the other Indian, the party in the valley now spurred up the hill, the six guns all crashing out together.

In despair the remaining bulls sought the only sure escape open to them, and charged up the hill. Fred, the best mounted of the white men, was soon ahead of the rest, and, deaf to a laughing shout of "Whoa! Don't be in a hurry," from Paul Dumont, was soon on the heels of the biggest of the bisons. He had but one barrel loaded; the bullet took the animal in the hindquarters, making him stop and turn. The next thing Fred knew was that he was lying bruised and giddy, on his back, within a very few yards of the maddened brute; for his horse, young and easily confused, had suddenly reared at sight of the monster's motion towards him and had thrown his rider.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALMOST A TRAGEDY

Fred had fired at the bison, but only hit it in the hind-quarters. It stopped and turned, frightening the horse, which threw its rider within a few yards of the maddened brute. His friends were powerless to help him, but a p.a.w.nee on his wiry little mustang galloped up between them and with a couple of arrows brought the monster down.]

c.o.ke had reloaded by this time, but at first his aim was baulked by the prancing horse.

"Shoot the confounded horse; he'll kick him to death," yelled George Dumont in his ear, at the same time frantically pushing a cartridge into the empty breech of his own gun; but just then the horse swerved and fled down the hill towards the waggons. The bull, meanwhile, seeing his enemy at his mercy, had paused just for a moment as though to take breath; and now, with his nose to the ground, was making a wild dash towards him.

c.o.ke pulled up, took good aim, and fired; but unluckily, the bullet which was meant for the bison's shoulder caught him on the frontlet, his most hopelessly invulnerable part. The three younger Dumonts, unaware of the accident, were now over the brow and out of sight.

George had almost pulled his trigger, when the p.a.w.nee who had been riding near him galloped between him and the bull. The little Indian horse, more used to climbing than the heavily-built hacks of the white men, shot up the slope like a chamois, and, joining his whinny to the rider's howl, flew between the prostrate man and the bull.

Fred, who had been too unnerved for the moment to do anything but try feebly to roll away out of danger, was conscious suddenly of a good deal of clattering close to him; then, looking up, he saw that the bull had turned to flee and that the shaft of an arrow was protruding from his ribs. The bull was struggling up the hill, too startled and confused to attempt to battle with his new a.s.sailant, who, in hot pursuit, was sending a second arrow after the first.

"No, no; hang it; let the redskin finish him," said Dumont as c.o.ke made ready to fire again.

The bull did not require much more "finishing." Already the Indian had wounded him in two places and was getting a third arrow ready for him; and the final rush up-hill, together with loss of blood, was weakening him at every step. The mustang, not to be outraced, was soon abreast of him; and one more arrow from the persevering Indian brought the luckless beast on to his knees.

Mr. c.o.ke and his friend saw and shot a good many bisons after that, but never again one that so nearly turned their trip into a tragedy.

CHAPTER XV

HOW THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY WAS DISCOVERED

Till 1851, the peaks and valleys of the Californian Sierra Nevada were known only as a grim, mysterious region that white men, who valued their lives, would do well not to pry into. Parties of diggers travelling westwards had crossed the range in certain places, but even the strongest bands of them carried their lives in their hands in so doing, for the Snake Indians regarded the whole neighbourhood as their special property. All that was definitely known was that, between the hills, lay deep, uninviting valleys, walled and overhung with granite blocks. The deepest and most picturesque of these, the Yo-Semite, was the great stronghold of the Indian banditti; a cunningly hidden natural fortress whose approaches no stranger would suspect; and it was only by sheer accident that white men ever discovered it.

Only too often, "civilisation" has been another name for importing white men's most degrading vices into a country whose people could originally have taught the civilisers many a lesson in dignified humility and self-restraint. And in no instance is this more true than in that of the Snake or Shoshonean branch of the Indian race; for whereas, in 1805, the worst complaints that Captains Lewis and Clarke[3] had to make of them was that they were treacherous and given to pilfering, by 1851 they had already become drunken, lazy highway robbers and gamblers; and for this the white gold-seekers were largely to blame.

[3] See "Adventures in the Great Deserts," Chapter III. (Seeley and Co.)

On account of the rush of the "forty-niners," San Francisco and Sacramento had developed, all in five minutes, from mere Spanish market-villages into great, raw, ugly towns or camps, whose princ.i.p.al buildings were drinking and gaming dens and money-brokers' offices.

The Indians stood by and watched, and wondered; and then coveted; for a vulgar tawdriness, that soon became positively idiotic, was to them a world of magnificence--and the gold which paid for it all was derived from their own soil; a wealth which they ought to have been enjoying! They went back to their hill-camps and reported; the matter was pondered and discussed. They could not take San Francisco, but at least they could prevent the white man's territory from spreading beyond certain limits; and this they determined to do to the best of their ability.

The strangers most likely to be affected by such an att.i.tude were those restless spirits who, dissatisfied with the output of their "claims," were already wandering farther into the unknown country in search of better ones; and the store and tavern keepers who supplied travellers and the more outlying diggers. Two such stores were the property of a young American named John Savage, a good-hearted, respectable fellow, who, because he was wise enough to ignore little thefts on the part of his Indian neighbours, yet man enough to hit out uncompromisingly if necessary, was very popular among the redskins; and this popularity he increased by marrying an Indian girl. He, his wife, and his mother conducted the store at Mariposa Creek, while that on the Frezno River was left in charge of a manager and two a.s.sistants.

Every evening a crowd of Snake Indians would collect outside Savage's house, or in the store, and while he smoked a friendly pipe with them, he was sometimes able to gauge their feelings towards the fresh inhabitants of the tiny settlement, whose number was steadily increasing. The chief of the Snakes was one Jose Jerez, a comparatively young man, who certainly had not benefited by contact with white men. Bit by bit this brave had succeeded in supplying most of his tribe with muskets; but ammunition was not so easy to obtain. Savage had, from the beginning, firmly refused to supply the Indians with powder; and now that San Francisco was becoming a power in the land, few of them dared enter it to make purchases, lest some of their tribe's recent depredations should be visited on them.

Thus Jerez was dependent on what ammunition he could bully or steal or wheedle from pa.s.sing travellers or raw new-comers.

One evening Savage noticed that the group of idlers were less chatty and civil than usual; in fact, they pointedly conversed with one another in their own dialect, of which they knew him to be ignorant, instead of in the broken English which they generally employed. This so aroused his suspicions that he ordered his wife to play the part of eavesdropper, and to report anything of a dangerous nature.

The talk turned on the Indians' grievances, real or imaginary. Their fishing and hunting had been encroached upon, they said; the pale-faces were enriching themselves out of land that belonged to them, and giving them nothing in return; not so much as a bag of gunpowder; and the miners would never be satisfied till they had driven them up to the barren mountain-tops.

When Savage had learned the gist of the conversation, his mind was soon made up. He had to drive into San Francisco on the following day for fresh stores, and it occurred to him that if he offered Jerez a seat in his waggon, and a day's sight-seeing, he would not only be restoring the chief to good humour, but would have an opportunity of showing that gentleman the numerical strength of the white men, and the folly of interfering with people who might deal out some very unwelcome chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Jerez and another brave joyfully accepted the invitation, and at daybreak the waggon drove off. On the way Savage did his best, by means of quiet hints, to show his two guests that it is always wise to put up with what one cannot alter; and that Indian notions of wholesale bloodshed would not "pay" with white men. In San Francisco he hammered this lesson home by taking them to see the volunteers at target-practice, and pointing out one or two pieces of artillery that had been imported. The chiefs were decidedly impressed, and, seeing them in such a satisfactory frame of mind, Savage conducted them to the inn where he purposed staying the night and went about his purchases.

Left to themselves, each found the dollar which Savage had given him burning a hole in his pocket. Not daring to venture into the streets by themselves, they spent the money at the bar, and so effectually that, when their entertainer returned, both were very drunk and very quarrelsome. Savage remonstrated mildly, whereupon both grew abusive and threatening. In order to avoid an unpleasant scene, he went down the yard to the outbuilding where he was to sleep; but before he had lain down, both redskins sought him out for a renewal of the argument.

Savage pointed to the apartment reserved for them, and recommended them to go to it; and their answer was a further torrent of threats, which they emphasised by brandishing their knives. No one with the spirit of a man in him cares to see a knife brought into a discussion or fight; John Savage expressed his personal views on the matter by hammering both his antagonists with his fists till they were glad to retreat to their bedroom.

In the morning they were sullen and silent, but Savage took no notice of this; he finished his marketing, and then returned to the inn to put in his horses and take up the Indians. Still they would not speak, and, disliking their demeanour, the Yankee very ostentatiously loaded a pair of pistols with ball, and stuck them in his belt before joining the others on the front-board. At a house a mile or two out of the town he stopped to deliver a parcel; he was not away from the waggon five minutes, but when he returned, Jerez and his companion had vanished.

Savage was aghast, for there was but one construction to be placed upon their disappearance: they wanted to reach Mariposa Creek before him. For what purpose would scarcely bear thinking of. They were familiar with every inch of the country, while he only knew the cart-track--a road cut purposely zigzag that the worst of the hills might be avoided; the average rate of his horses could hardly exceed six miles an hour on such a road, while the Indians could easily run eight; he had thirty miles to drive, and ought to give the horses at least one rest; they had scarcely eighteen miles before them, if they went in a straight line, and would easily accomplish in three hours a journey that usually took him six.

He lashed the horses without mercy; already he was picturing his wife and mother killed, and his home in flames; for the Indians would probably reach Mariposa in the early afternoon, a time when no diggers would be likely to be within a mile of the store. He gave no further thought to food for himself, or bait or rest for the horses. Twice he saw, or fancied that he saw, two figures hurrying over the hills to the southeast; he only drove the harder, trying might and main to sit on his fears and laugh at himself for being frightened of a couple of redskins. Unhappily, he knew all too well that it was not just "a couple of redskins" who had to be taken into account. During the past six months, seven such stores as his had been plundered and burnt by a strong posse of Snakes; and Jerez could, without difficulty, collect the best part of a hundred men at an hour's notice.

Hours and miles slipped by; the horses behaved like bricks, never once stumbling and apparently never tiring. As always happens in such a case, the last mile seemed as long as all the rest together; the road here was a steady wind, so that the driver could never see more than a hundred yards ahead of him; for on either side of the track was dense forest. At last he came in sight of his home, and then, like a boy, he stood up on the footboard and vented his feelings in a delighted "Hurrah!" For everything was in its normal condition; the cattle and horses grazing in the pound; the poultry in the roadway, and his women-folk gossiping cheerily with a couple of diggers under the verandah.

So far nothing had been heard of the Indians, and, after a rest and a meal, Savage began to feel heartily ashamed of his terrors. But, that night, either a remarkable coincidence or a very ominous event took place. For the first time in two years, the store was entirely deserted by Indians; not a single Shoshonee looked in for an evening's chat. The next night it was the same, and the next after that. On the fourth night the proprietor arrived at a conclusion.

"It's a boycott," he said; "and I'm not sorry a little bit; we shall be better off without 'em."