Part 25 (1/2)
”Yes,” responded Kelley, ”it's certainly up to you to cherish the old lady.”
In the morning Wetherell dressed hastily and crept into the little tent where Pogosa lay. ”How are you, granny?” he asked. She only shook her head and groaned.
”She say her back broke,” Eugene interpreted.
A brisk rubbing with a liniment which he had brought from his kit limbered the poor, abused loins, and at last Pogosa sat up. She suddenly caught Wetherell's hand and drew it to her withered breast.
”Good white man,” she cried out.
”Tell her I'll make her eyes well, too,” he commanded Eugene. ”The medicine will hurt a little, but it will make her eyes stronger to see the trail.”
Kelley could not suppress his amus.e.m.e.nt as he watched Wetherell's operations. ”You'll spoil gran'ma,” he remarked. ”She'll be discontented with the agency doctor. I'm not discouragin' your ma.s.sage operations, mind you, but I can't help thinking that she'll want clean towels, and an osteopath to stroke her back every morning, when she goes back to her tepee.”
”If she only holds out long enough to help us to find the mine she can have a trained nurse, and waiting-maid to friz her hair--if she wants it frizzed.”
”You don't mean to let her in as a partner?”
”I certainly do! Isn't she enduring the agonies for us? I'm going to see that she is properly paid for it.”
”A hunk of beef and plenty of blankets and flannel is all she can use; but first let's find the mine. We can quarrel over its division afterward.”
”I doubt if we get her ahorse to-day. She's pretty thoroughly battered up.”
”We must move, Andy. Somebody may trail us up. I want to climb into the next basin before night. Let me talk to her.”
She flatly refused to move for Kelley, and Eugene said: ”She too sick.
Legs sick, back sick, eyes sick. Go no further.”
Kelley turned to Wetherell. ”It's your edge, Andy. She's balked on me.”
Wetherell took another tack. He told her to rest. ”By and by I'll come and rub your back again and fix your eyes. To-morrow you will feel strong and well.” To this she made no reply.
All the day Kelley kept his eyes on the back trail, expecting each moment to see some dusky trailer break from the cover. As night began to fall it was Wetherell who brought a brand and built a little fire near the door to Pogosa's tent so that the flame might cheer her, and she uttered a sigh of comfort as its yellow glare lighted her dark tepee walls. He brought her bacon, also, and hot bread and steaming coffee, not merely because she was useful as a guide, but also because she was old and helpless and had been lured out of her own home into this gray and icy world of cloud.
”Eddie,” he said, as he returned to his partner, ”we're on a wild-goose chase. The thing is preposterous. There isn't any mine--there can't be such a mine!”
”Why not? What's struck you now?”
”This country has been traversed for a century. It is 'sheeped' and cattle-grazed and hunted and forest-ranged--”
Kelley waved his hand out toward the bleak crags which loomed dimly from amid the slas.h.i.+ng shrouds of rain. ”Traversed! Man, n.o.body ever does anything more than ride from one park to another. The mine is not in a park. It's on some of these rocky-timbered ridges. A thousand sheep-herders might ride these trails for a hundred years and never see a piece of pay quartz. It's a big country! Look at it now! What chance have we without Pogosa? Now here we are on our way, with a sour old wench who thinks more of a piece of bread than she does of a hunk of ore. It's up to you, Andy--you and your 'mash.'”
”Well, I've caught the mind-reading delusion. I begin to believe that I understand Pogosa's reasoning. She is now beginning to be eaten by remorse. She came into this expedition for the food and drink. She now repents and is about to confess that she knows nothing about the mine.
She and Eugene have conspired against us and are 'doing' us--good.”
”Nitsky! You're away off your base. The fact is, Pogosa is a Sioux. She cares nothing for the Shoshoni, and she wants to realize on this mine.
She wants to go back to her people before she dies. She means business--don't you think she don't; and if her running-gear don't unmesh to-night or to-morrow she's going to make good--that's my hunch.”
”I hope you're right, but I can't believe it.”
”You don't need to. You keep her thinking you're the Sun-G.o.d--that's your job.”