Part 26 (1/2)
Wetherell, in much doubt of his ability to scale that cliff, started forth. The old trail could be seen dimly, and also the recent tracks of three horses. They were not precisely fresh, but they gave some uneasiness.
”Who made 'em, Eugene, and when?” he asked.
”One man riding--white man,” announced Eugene. ”Two pack-horse--very light pack--made--mebbe so--three days ago.”
”The forest-ranger from the other side, possibly.”
Wetherell, by watching the hoof-marks, by studying the conformation of the cliff before him, and by glancing back now and again at Pogosa, contrived to find the way. Slowly and for several hours they climbed this vast dike. It was nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea here, and Kelley himself breathed with effort as he climbed.
”I begin to see why people don't use this trail much,” he said, as they stopped to rest on one of the broad shelves. ”I'm beginning to wonder how we're going to pack our ore to market over this road.”
”It will take mighty rich ore to pay its own freight,” responded Wetherell.
Pogosa seemed strangely excited. Her eyes were gleaming, her face working with emotion.
”See the old girl!” said Kelley. ”We must be hot on the trail of the mine. It don't look like mineral formation, but gold is where you find it.”
”Go on,” signed Pogosa.
The way seemed interminable, and at times Wetherell despaired of getting his withered commander into the park which he was sure lay above this dike. At noon they halted long enough to make coffee. Kelley flavored it as before, and Pogosa was ready to go on an hour later.
As they rose above the dike and Bonneville's Peak came into view a low humming sound startled the hunters. It came from Pogosa. With eyes lit by the reviving fires of memory, she was chanting a hoa.r.s.e song. She seemed to have thrown off half the burden of her years. Her voice gradually rose till her weird improvisation put a s.h.i.+ver into Wetherell's heart. She had forgotten the present; and with hands resting on the pommel of her saddle, with dim eyes fixed upon the valley, was reliving the past.
”She singing old hunting song,” Eugene explained. ”Many years ago she sing it. This heap fine hunting-ground then. Elk, big-horn, bear. All fine things in summer. Winter nothing but big-horn. Sheep-eaters live here many summers. Pogos' young and happy then. Now she is old and lonesome. People all gone. Purty soon she die. So she say.”
Even the unimaginative mind of Tall Ed Kelley thrilled to the tragic significance of this survivor of a dying race chanting her solitary song. Her memory was quickening under the touch of these cliffs and the sound of these streams. She was retracing the steps of her youth.
Kelley interpreted it differently. ”She's close to it,” he called. ”It's here in this valley, in some of these ridges.”
Resolutely, unhesitatingly, Pogosa rode down the first stream which ran to the north, making directly for a low hill on which could be discerned a low comb of deflected rocks of a dark color. At last, riding up the ledge, she slipped from her horse and, tottering forward, fell face downward on the gra.s.s beside an upturned giant slab of gray stone.
The men stared in wonder, searching the ground for evidence of mineral.
None could be seen. Suddenly lifting her head, the crone began to sing again, uttering a heart-shaking wail which poured from her quivering lips like the cry of the forsaken. The sight of her withered hands strained together and the tears in her sunken cheeks went to the soul.
The desolate rocks, the falling rain, the wild and monstrous cliffs, the encircling mountains, all lent irresistible power to her grief. She seemed the minstrel of her race mourning for a vanished world.
”Come away,” Eugene urged with a delicacy which sprang from awe. ”_Her husband buried there._”
Deeply touched to know that her grief was personal, and filled, too, with a kind of helpless amazement at this emotional outbreak, the gold-seekers withdrew down the slope, followed by the riderless pony, leaving the old woman crouched close against the sepulcher of her dead, pouring forth the sobbing wail of her song.
”This looks like the end of our mine,” said Kelley, gloomily. ”I begin to think that the old witch led us up here just for the sake of visiting that grave.”
”It looks that way,” responded Wetherell, ”but what can we do? You can't beat her, and we've done all we could to bribe her.”
Eugene advised: ”You wait. Bimeby she got done cryin'. To-morrow she got cold--want meat, coffee--plenty bad. Then we go get her.”
They went into camp not far away in the edge of a thicket of scraggly wind-dwarfed pines, and put up their tents for the night.
”Wouldn't it put a cramp into you,” began Kelley, as they stood beside their fire, ”to think that this old relict has actually led us all the way up here in order to water the grave of a sweetheart who died forty years ago?”