The Prairie Chief, R. M. Ballantyne [read book .TXT] 📗

mountain sheep and fleet as the mustang. She will not hamper Big Tim. Enough! We will let them go, and take possession of their goods.”

Whatever the chief’s followers might have thought about the first part of his speech, there was evidently no difference of opinion as to the latter part. With a series of assenting “Ho’s,” “How’s,” “Hi’s,” and “Hee’s,” they returned with him into the hut, and began to appropriate the property, commencing with a cold haunch of venison which they discovered in the larder, and to which they did ample justice, sitting in a circle on the floor in the middle of the little room.

Leaving them there, we will return to Softswan and her new friend.

“The place is very dark,” remarked the preacher, groping cautiously about after the trap-door was closed as above described.

“Stan’ still; I vill strik light,” said Softswan.

In a few moments sparks were seen flying from flint and steel, and after one or two unsuccessful efforts a piece of tinder was kindled. Then the girl’s pretty little nose and lips were seen of a fiery red colour as she blew some dry grass and chips into a flame, and kindled a torch therewith.

The light revealed a small natural cavern of rock, not much more than six feet high and ten or twelve wide, but of irregular shape, and extending into obscurity in one direction. The only objects in the cave besides the ladder by which they entered it were a few barrels partially covered with deerskin, an unusually small table, rudely but strongly made, and an enormous mass of rock enclosed in a net of strong rope which hung from an iron hook in the roof.

The last object at once revealed the mystery of the trap-door. It formed a ponderous counterpoise attached to the smaller section of the stone slab, and so nearly equalised the weight on the hinge that, as we have seen, Softswan’s weak arm was sufficient to turn the scale.

The instant the torch flared up the girl stuck it into a crevice in the wall, and quickly grasping the little table, pushed it under the pendent rock. It reached to within half an inch of the mass. Picking up two broad wooden wedges that lay on the floor, she thrust them between the rock and the table, one on either side, so as to cause it to rest entirely on the table, and thus by removing its weight from the iron hook, the slab was rendered nearly immovable. She was anxiously active in these various operations, for already the Indians had entered the hut and their voices could be distinctly heard overhead.

“Now,” she whispered, with a sigh of relief, “six mans not abil to move the stone, even if he knowed the hole is b’low it.”

“It is an ingenious device,” said the preacher, throwing his exhausted form on a heap of pine branches which lay in a corner. “Who invented it—your husband?”

“No; it was Leetil Tim,” returned the girl, with a low musical laugh. “Big Tim says hims fadder be great at ’ventions. He ’vent many t’ings. Some’s good, some’s bad, an’ some’s funny.”

The preacher could not forbear smiling at this account of his old friend, in spite of his anxiety lest the Indians who were regaling themselves overhead should discover their retreat. He had begun to put some questions to Softswan in a low voice when he was rendered dumb and his blood seemed to curdle as he heard stumbling footsteps approaching from the dark end of the cavern. Then was heard the sound of some one panting vehemently. Next moment a man leaped into the circle of light, and seized the Indian girl in his arms.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed fervently; “not too late! I had thought the reptiles had been too much for thee, soft one. Ah me! I fear that some poor pale-face has—” He stopped abruptly, for at that moment Big Tim’s eye fell upon the wounded man. “What!” he exclaimed, hastening to the preacher’s side; “you have got here after all?”

“Ay, young man, through the goodness of God I have reached this haven of rest. Your words seem to imply that you had half expected to find me, though how you came to know of my case at all is to me a mystery.”

“My white father,” returned Big Tim, referring as much to the preacher’s age and pure white hair as to his connection with the white men, “finds mystery where the hunter and the red man see none. I went out a-purpose to see that it was not my daddy the Blackfoot reptiles had shot and soon came across your tracks, which showed me as plain as a book that you was badly wounded. I followed the tracks for a bit, expectin’ to find you lyin’ dead somewheres, when the whoops of the reptiles turned me back. But tell me, white father, are you not the preacher that my daddy and Whitewing used to know some twenty years agone?”

“I am, and fain would I meet with my former friends once more before I die.”

“You shall meet with them, I doubt not,” replied the young hunter, arranging the couch of the wounded man more comfortably. “I see that my soft one has bandaged you up, and she’s better than the best o’ sawbones at such work. I’ll be able to make you more comfortable when we drive the reptiles out o’—”

“Call them not reptiles,” interrupted the preacher gently. “They are the creatures of God, like ourselves.”

“It may be so, white father; nevertheless, they are uncommon low, mean, sneakin’, savage critters, an’ that’s all that I’ve got to do with.”

“You say truth, Big Tim,” returned the preacher, “and that is also all that I have got to do with; but you and I take different methods of correcting the evil.”

“Every man must walk in the ways to which he was nat’rally born,” rejoined the young hunter, with a dark frown, as the sound of revelry in the hut overhead became at the moment much louder; “my way wi’ them may not be the best in the world, but you shall see in a few minutes that it is a way which will cause the very marrow of the rep—of the dear critters—to frizzle in their bones.”