"Squat lower, Le-loo; arrows has been the death of many a man afore you," whispered Big Pete in my ear, but even as he spoke another arrow sang over our crouching bodies, shaving the protecting rock so closely that their plumed tips brushed the dust on our backs.

"Waugh! Good shootin', by gum! I never seed it beat; if he onct sots them black eyes on our hulking carca.s.ses he'll get us yit," muttered my guide, enthusiastically. "He's mighty slender, quick and purty-but so also be a rattlesnake!" he exclaimed, as another arrow slit the sleeve of his wamus as cleanly as if it were cut with a knife.

"For G.o.d's sake, stop!" I shouted, in real alarm. The boy paused, but with an arrow still drawn to its head. His eyes flashing, head erect, one moccasined foot on the ram's body, the other braced against the cliff; his short fawn-colored skin shirt clung to his lithe body, and the fringed edges hung over the dreadful black chasm in front of him. It was a picture to take away one's breath. "Put down your weapon, and we will stand with our hands up," I cried. Slowly the bow was lowered and as slowly Big Pete and I arose, holding our empty hands aloft. "Now, young fellow, tell us your pleasure."

There are a few gray hairs showing at my temples which first made their appearance while I was crouching behind that stone on the edge of the chasm.

To my polite inquiry asking his pleasure, the wild boy made no reply but glanced at us with the utmost contempt when Big Pete went through some gestures in Indian sign language. The lad mutely pointed to the dead sheep, the sight of which seemed to enrage him again, for insensibly his fingers tightened on the bow and the wood began to curve after a manner which sent me ducking behind the sheltering stone again; but Big Pete only folded his arms across his broad chest and looked the boy straight in the eyes.

Never will I forget that picture, the cold, bleak, snow-covered mountains towering above them, the black abyss of Sheol between them; neither would hesitate to take life, neither possessed a fear of death; but with every muscle alert and every nerve alive these two wild things stood facing each other, mutually observing a truce because of-what?

Because, in spite of the fighting instinct or, maybe, because of it they both secretly admired each other.

CHAPTER XII

The black chasm which separated us from the trail of the wild hunter was not as formidable a barrier as the unfathomable abyss which separates the reader from what he thinks he would have done had he been in my place, and what really would have been his plan of action.

There were a lot of burning questions which I had privately made up in my mind to propound to the Wild Hunter, or the even wilder medicine bear, upon the occasion of our next meeting. But when the lad was standing before me, with bended bow and flashing eyes, the burning importance of those questions did not appeal to me as forcibly as did the urgent necessity of sheltering my body behind the friendly stone. To be truthful, it must be admitted that the proposed inquiries were, for the time, entirely forgotten, and I even breathed a sigh of relief when the boy suddenly clambered up the face of the cliff, turned, gave us a fierce look of defiance, made some quick energetic gestures with his hand and disappeared.

He scaled that precipitous rock with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by fingers or moccasin-covered toes.

Not until the Indian had disappeared down a dry coulee did I venture from the shelter of the protecting rock, or realize that my carefully planned interview must be indefinitely postponed.

With his arms folded across his chest, his blond hair sweeping his shoulders, his blue eyes fixed upon a rocky rib of the mountain behind which the boy had disappeared, Big Pete still stood like a statue. But gradually the statuesque pose resolved itself into a more commonplace posture, and the muscles of the face relaxed until the familiar twinkle hovered around the corners of his eyes. "What did he say when he made those motions, Pete?"

"Waugh! he said he was not afraid of any whitefaced coyote like us." And bringing forth his pipe, Pete filled it from the beaded tobacco pouch which hung on his breast, and by means of a horn of punk, a flint and steel, he soon had the pipe aglow and was puffing away as calmly as if nothing unusual had occurred. Presently he exclaimed, "Gol durn his daguerrotype, what good did it do him to throw that sheep down the gulch? Reckon Le-loo and me could find a better grave for mutton chops than that canyon bottom. The mountains didn't need the sheep an' we did.

But, I reckon it was his own sheep you killed, 'cause it had a porcupine collar same pattern as the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of his shirt."

Turning his great blue eyes full upon me, he suddenly shot this inquiry, "Be he bar, ecutock or werwolf?"

"He is the finest adjusted, easiest running, most exquisitely balanced, highest geared bit of human machinery I ever saw," I answered enthusiastically.

"Wall, maybe ye are right, Le-loo, an' maybe ye hain't; which is catamount to saying, maybe it is a man and maybe it tain't."

"Steady, Pete, old fellow, let us go slow; now tell me at what you're driving?" I pleaded.

"It looks to me this hea'-a-way," he explained. "I've seed his trail onct or twice, an' I've seed him onct, but I never yet seed his trail and the Wild Hunter's trail at the same time and place. 'Pears to me that a man who, when it's convenient, kin make a wolf of hisself, might likewise make a boy of hisself whenever he felt that way. Never heared tell on enny real laid who cud climb like a squtton and shoot a bow better nor a Robin Hood or Injun, and that's howsomever!"

"Well, it does look 'howsomever,' and no mistake," I admitted, "and what makes it worse, our dinner is at the bottom of this infernal gulch.

Come, let us be moving; the breeze from the snowfields chills me. Let us. .h.i.t his trail now while it is fresh."

This was a simple proposition to make, but a difficult one to carry into execution; for to all appearances that trail began upon the other side of the chasm, and there was no bridge in sight by which we could cross.

Big Pete carefully put a cork-stopper in his pipe, extinguishing the fire without wasting the unconsumed contents; he then carefully put his briarwood away and began to uncoil a lariat from around his middle. As he loosened the braided rawhide from his waist his gaze was roaming over the opposite rocks. Presently he fixed his attention upon a pinnacle which reared its cube-like form above the top of the opposite side of the chasm; the latter was of itself much higher than the brink upon which we stood. Swinging the loop around his head he sent it whistling across the chasm, where it settled and encircled the projecting stone, the honda striking the face of the cliff with a sullen thud. The rope tightened, but when we both threw our weight on our end of the lariat to try it, the cube-like pinnacle moved on its base.

"I oughter knowed better than to try to la.s.so a piece of slide rock,"

said Pete in disgusted tones, as he cast the end of the braided rawhide loose and watched it for a moment dangling down the opposite side of the canyon.

"Now, Le-loo, we must get over this hole or lose the best lariat in the Rocky Mountains. We kin look for that boy's trail on this side, for even if he be an Ecutock, I'll bet my crooker bone 'gainst a lock of his hair that he can't jump th' hole, an' I'll wager my left ear that he's got a trail an' a bridge somewhar-'nless he turns bird and flops over things like this," he added, with a troubled look.

"Pete," said I, "never mind the bird business. I'll admit that there is a lot of explanation due us before we can rightly judge on the events of the past few weeks; still I think it may all be explained in a rational manner; but what if it cannot? We have but one trip to make through this world, and the more we see the more we will know at the end of the journey. I am as curious as a p.r.o.ng-horned antelope when there is a mystery, so put your nose to the ground, my good friend, and find the spot where this Mr. Werwolf, witch, or bear flies the canyon, and maybe, like the husband of 'The Witch of Fife,' we may find the 'black crook sh.e.l.l,' and with its aid fly out of this 'lum."

"I believe your judication is sound, Le-loo; stay where you be an' if he hain't a witch I'll bet my front tooth agin the string of his moccasin that I'll find the bridge, and I'll swear by my grandmother's hind leg that that little imp will pay for our sheep yit."

As Pete finished these remarks there was a sudden and astonishing change in his appearance. His head fell forward, his shoulders drooped, his back bowed and his knee bent. It was no longer the upright statuesque Pete the Mountaineer, but Peter the Trailer, all of whose faculties were concentrated upon the ground. With a swinging gait the human bloodhound traveled swiftly and silently along the edge of the creva.s.se, noting every bunch of moss, fragment of stone, drift of snow or bit of moist earth, reading the shorthand notes of Nature with facility which far excelled the ability of my own stenographer to read her own notes when the latter are a few hours old. But a short time had elapsed before I heard a shout, and, hurrying to the place where my big friend was seated, I inquired, "Any luck?"

"Tha's as you may call it. Here is wha' tha' boy jumped," he replied, pointing to some marks on the stone which were imperceptible to me, "an'

tha's wha' he landed," he continued, pointing to a slight ledge upon the face of the opposite cliff at least twenty feet distant. "He's a jumper, an' no mistake-guess I might as well have my front tooth pulled, fur I've lost my bet," soliloquized the trailer, as he sat on the edge of the cliff, with his legs hanging over the frightful chasm.

The ledge indicated by Big Pete as the landing place of the phenomenal jumper might possibly have offered a foothold for a bighorn or goat, but I could not believe that any human being could jump twenty feet to a crumbling trifle of a ledge on the face of a precipice, and not only retain a foothold there, but run up the face of the rock like a fly on a window-pane. Yet I could see that something had worn the ledge at the point indicated and when I stood a little distance away from the trail I could plainly note a difference in color marking the course of the trail where it led over the flinty rocks to the jumping place.

"Wull, Le-loo! What's your opinion of the Ecutock now? Do he use wings or ride a barleycorn broom?" asked Pete, with a triumphant smile.

CHAPTER XIII

Apparently there was no possible way by which we might hope to cross the canyon, and I threw myself p.r.o.ne upon the top of the stony brink of the chasm and peered down the awful abyss at the silver thread, shining in the gloom of the shadows, which marked the course of a stream, and wondered what the Boy Scouts of Troop 6 of Marlborough would do under the circ.u.mstances.

I studied the face of the opposite cliff in a vain search for some hint to the solution of the problem before us, looking up and down from side to side as far as allowed by the range of my vision. At length my attention wandered to the perpendicular face of the cliff, on the top of which my body was sprawled; there was an upright crack in the face of the stone wall, and as I examined the fracture I saw that a piece of wood had lodged in the crack; a piece of wood in a crevice in a rock is not so unusual an occurrence as to excite remark; but when it occurred to me that we were then far above the timber line, my interest and curiosity were at once aroused.

The end of the stick was within a short distance from my hand, and reaching down I grasped the wood and brought forth, not a short club or stick, as I thought to be concealed there, but a very long pole. The result of my investigations was so unexpected that I came dangerously near allowing the thing to slide through my fingers and fall to the bottom of the canyon. It was a neatly-smoothed, slender piece of lodge-pole pine which was brought to view, and it had a crooked root nicely spliced to one end and bound tightly in place with rawhide thongs. Big Pete was wholly absorbed in the trail, the study of which he had resumed, and when I looked up he was down on all fours, minutely studying the ground. Presently he cried, "Le-loo, tha' pesky lad ha'

been over wha' you be after sompen and he took it back tha' again afore he made his jump! If you're any good you'll find what the lad was after."

"He was after his barleycorn broomstick," I replied, proudly, "and here it is, although I must confess it is a pretty long one for a fellow of his size, and it looks more like a giant Bo-Peep's crook than a witch's broom."

Big Pete eagerly s.n.a.t.c.hed the pole from my hands and examined it carefully. At length he said, "This hyer is the end used for the handle; one can see by the finger marks, an' this crook is used to sc.r.a.pe stone with, one kin see, with half an eye, by the way the end is sandpapered off. Over tha' air some marks on the stone which look almighty like as if they'd been made by the end of this yer hook slipping down the face of the rock.

"Now, I wonder wha' cud be up tha' on the top of the rock that the boy wanted," mused Big Pete, and for a moment or so he stood in silent thought; at length he exclaimed, "Why, bless my corn-shucking soul, if I don't believe he's got a lariat staked out tha' an' crosses this ditch same as we-uns aimed to do!" With that he began raking and sc.r.a.ping the top of the opposite rock with the shepherd's crook, and presently there came tumbling and twisting like a snake down the face of the cliff, a long braided rawhide rope with a loop at the bottom end.

"Waugh, Le-loo! tha's no witchcraft 'bout this 'cep the magic of common-sense; but we hain't through with him yit!" By this time Pete had the end of the rawhide rope in his hands and was testing the strength of its anchorage upon the opposite cliff. The point where it was fastened projected some distance over the ledge, where the supposed landing-place was located, thus making it possible for one to swing at the end of the rope from our side without danger of coming into too violent contact with the opposite cliff.

As soon as my big friend was satisfied that the rope was safe he grasped it with his two hands, and with one foot in the loop and the other free to use as a fender, he sailed across the abyss and landed safely upon the crumbling ledge opposite.

Holding fast to the rawhide rope with his hands and bracing his feet against the rock, Pete could walk up the face of the cliff by going hand-over-hand up the cable at the same time. He had almost reached the top when I was horror-stricken to see a small hand and brown arm reach over the precipice; but it was neither the grace nor the beauty of this shapely bit of anatomy which sent the blood surging to my heart, but the fact that the cold gray glint of a long-bladed knife caught my eyes and fascinated me with the fabled "charm" of a serpent. The power of speech forsook me, but with great effort I succeeded in giving utterance to the inarticulate noise people gurgle when confronted in their sleep by a shapeless horror. Big Pete heard the noise, but he was not unnerved when he saw the knife, neither did he show any nightmare symptoms, although he was dangling over the terrible abyss with a full knowledge that it needed but a touch of the keen blade of that knife to sever the straining lariat and dash him, a mangled ma.s.s, on the rocks below. The danger was too real to give Pete the nightmare; there was nothing spooky to him in the glittering knife blade, and only ghosts and the supernatural could give Big Pete the nightmare. Calmly he looked at the hand grasping the power of death with its strong tapering fingers.

Suddenly and in a firm, commanding voice he gave the order, "Drap tha'

knife!"

Ever since I had been in the company of this masterful forest companion I had obeyed his commands as a matter of course, and so was not surprised to see the fingers instantly relax their grasp and the knife go gyrating to the mysterious depths. In a few moments Big Pete was up and over the edge of the rock and hidden from my view.

Seizing the long-handled shepherd's crook, I caught the dangling end of the lariat, and was soon scrambling up the face of the cliff, leaving a trail which the veriest novice would not fail to notice and sending showers of the crumbling stones down the path taken by the knife; it was several minutes before I had clambered over the face of the projecting crag and was safe across the black chasm which lay athwart our trail.

If the Wild Hunter was indeed my father, he certainly was a woodcrafter and scout to bring pride to a fellow's heart, for I doubted not that the Indian boy was his retainer because the porcupine quill decorations on his buckskin shirt had the same peculiar pattern as that on the wamus of the Wild Hunter himself as well as on the collar of the pet sheep I had killed, and also on the buckskin bag of gold.