The Talking Leaves: An Indian Story, William O. Stoddard [best novels for beginners TXT] 📗

hair and all. The white came to my hair the day I spent in hunting among the ruins the Apaches left behind them for my wife and my little girl."

"Only forty-five! Why, Murray, you're young yet. And you know all about mines."

"And all about Indians too. Come on, Steve; we must look a little farther before we set out for the camp."

Steve would willingly have stayed to look at all that useless ledge of gold ore; but his friend was on his feet again, now resolutely turning his wrinkled face away from it all, and there was nothing to be gained be mere gazing. A gold-mine cannot be worked by a person's eyes, even if they are as good and bright a pair as were those of Steve Harrison.

Before them lay the broken level of the table-land, and it was clearer and clearer, as they walked on, that it was not at all a desert.

It was greater in extent, too, than appeared at first sight, and it was not long before their march brought them to quite a grove of trees.

"Oak and maple, I declare," said Murray. "I'd hardly have thought of finding them here. There's good grass too, beyond, and running water."

"Halloo, Murray, what's that? Look! Are they houses?"

"Steve! Steve!"

It was no wonder at all that they both broke into a clean run, and that they did not halt again until they stood in the edge of a second grove not far from the margin of the full-banked stream of water which wound down from the mountains and ran across that plateau.

Trees, groves, grass, in all directions, and a herd of deer were feeding at no great distance, but it was not at any of these that the two "pale-faced Lipans" were gazing.

"Houses, Murray!—houses!"

"They were houses once, Steve. Good ones, too. I've heard of such before. These are not like what I've seen in Mexico."

"They're all in ruins. Some one has started a settlement here and had to give it up. Maybe they came to work my mine."

It was less than half an hour since he had stumbled over it, and yet Steve was already thinking of that ledge as "my mine."

It does not take us a great while to acquire a feeling of ownership for anything we take a great liking to.

"Settlement! Work your mine!" exclaimed Murray. "Why, Steve, the people that built those houses were all dead and gone before even the Apaches came here. Nobody knows who they were. Not even the wisest men in the world."

That was a great relief to Steve, for if they had been forgotten so completely as that they were sure not to interfere with him and his mine.

The two friends walked forward again until they stood in the shadow of the nearest ruin.

It must have been a pretty large building before its walls began to topple over with age and decay. Some parts that were yet standing were three stories high, and all was built of rudely shaped and roughly fitted stone. There was no mortar to be seen anywhere. If there had ever been any it was all washed away.

"There must have been quite a town here once," said Murray, "up and down both banks of the run of water. It was a good place for one. It looks as if there was plenty of good land beyond, and there's a great bend in the line of the mountains."

"I wish I knew where it led to. I'd follow it."

"What for?"

"It might give me a chance to get away."

"It might. And then again it might not. There's a gap that seems to open off there to the west, but then it won't do."

"Why won't it do? Couldn't I try it?"

"Try it? Yes, but you won't. I must look out for you, Steve. You're more of a boy than I thought for."

"I'm man enough, Murray. I dare try anything."

"That's boy, Steve. Stop a minute. Have you any horse to carry you across country?"

Steve looked down at the nearest pile of ruined masonry with a saddening face.

"You have no horse, no blanket, no provisions, no supply of ammunition except what you brought along for to-day's hunt. Why, Steve, I'm ashamed of you. There isn't a young Lipan brave in the whole band that would set off in such a fashion as that—sure to make a failure. You ought to have learned something from the Indians, it seems to me."

Steve blushed scarlet as he listened, for he had been ready the moment before to have shouldered his rifle and set off at once toward that vague and unknown western "gap." It must be that the glimpse he had taken of that golden ledge had stirred up all the "boy" in him.

"I guess I wouldn't have gone far," he said, "before I'd have run clean out of cartridges. I've less than two dozen with me."

"When you do start, my boy, I'll see to it that you get a good ready. Now let's try for one of those deer. It's a long shot. See if you can make it."

A fine buck with branching antlers, followed by two does, had been feeding in the open space beyond the ruins. The wind was brisk just then from that direction, and they had not scented the two hunters. They had slowly drawn nearer and nearer until they were now about three hundred yards away. That is a greater distance than is at all safe shooting for any but the best marksmen, and sometimes even they will lose their game at it.

The stories so often told of "long shots" at deer and tigers and geese and other terrible wild beasts are, for the greater part, of the kind that are known as "fish stories," and Steve would have been glad if that buck had been a few rods nearer.

He knew his rifle was a good one, however, for it was a seven-shooting repeater of the latest and best pattern, and had been selected for him by Murray himself out of a lot the Lipans had brought in, nobody knew from where.

"Steady, Steve! Think of the deer, not of the gold-mine."

"I'll aim at him as if he were a gold-mine," replied Steve, as he raised his rifle.

"I'll try for one of the does at the same time," said Murray.

Crack! crack! Both rifles were discharged almost at the same instant; but while the antlered buck gave a great bound and then fell motionless upon the grass, his two pretty companions sprung away unhurt.

"I aimed too high," said Murray; "I must lower my sights a little."

"I've got him," exclaimed Steve—"gold-mine and all; but he'll be a big load to carry to camp."

They found him so. They were compelled to take more than one breathing-spell before they reached the head of the ravine, and there they took a long one—right on the gold-bearing ledge.

"Splendid pair of horns he has—" began Murray, but Steve interrupted him with,

"That's it! That's the name of this mine when I come for it!"

"What's that, Steve?"

"It's the Buckhorn Mine. They always give them a name."

"That'll do as well as any. The ledge'll stay here till you come for it. Nobody around here is likely to steal it away from you. But there's more ledge than mine just now."

So there was, and Steve's countenance fell a little as he and Murray again took up their burden and began to toil under it from "stair to stair" down the rocky terraces of the grand chasm.

"We won't go any farther than we can help without a horse," said Murray at last. "And there's the big-horn to carry in."

"Murray, that big-horn! Just look yonder!"

It was not far to look, and the buck they were carrying seemed to come to the ground of his own accord.

"Cougar!" exclaimed Murray.

"The biggest painter I ever saw," said Steve, "and he is getting ready to spring."

The American panther, or, as Murray called him, cougar, is not so common among the mountains as he is in some parts of the forest-covered lowlands, but the vicinity of the table-land above, with its herds of deer, might account for this one. There he was now, at all events, preparing to take possession of the game on the top of that bowlder without asking leave of anybody.

"Quick, Steve! Forward, while he's got his eyes on the antelope. We may get a shot at him."

Almost recklessly they darted down the ca�on, slipping swiftly along from bowlder to bowlder, but before they had covered half the distance the panther made his spring.

He made it magnificently. He had scented the blood of that antelope from far away, and he may have suspected that it was not a living one, but his instincts had forbidden him to approach it otherwise than with caution. He would not have been a cougar if he had not made a spring in seizing upon his prey.

They are nothing in the world but giant cats, after all, and they catch their game precisely as our house-cats catch their mice. If anybody wants to know how even a lion or a tiger does his hunting, "puss in the corner" can teach him all about it.

"He will tear it all to pieces!"

"No, he won't, Steve. We can get a bead on him from behind that rock yonder. He'll be too busy to be looking out for us for a minute or so."

That was true, and it was a bad thing for the great "cat of the mountains" that it was so, for the two hunters got within a hundred yards of him before he had done smelling of the big-horn, in which he had buried his sharp, terrible claws.

"Now, Steve, I won't miss my shot this time. See that you don't."

Steve took even too much care with his aim, and Murray fired first.

He did not miss; but a cougar is not like a deer, and it takes a good deal more to kill him. Murray's bullet struck a vital part, and the fierce beast sprung from the bowlder with a ferocious growl of sudden pain and anger.

"I hit him! Quick, Steve!"

The panther was crouching on the gravel at the bottom of the ravine, and searching with furious eyes for the enemies who had wounded him.

The report of Steve's rifle rung through the chasm.

"I aimed at his head—"

"And you only cut off one of his ears. Here he comes. I'm ready. What a good thing a repeating-rifle is!"

It was well for them, indeed, that they did not have to stop and load just then. It did not seem any time at all before the dangerous beast was crouching for another spring within twenty feet of them.

It would not do to miss this time, but neither Steve nor Murray made any remarks about it. They were too much absorbed in looking along their rifle-barrels to do any talking. Both reports came together, almost like one.

They were not followed by any spring from the cougar. Only by a growl and an angry tearing at the gravel, and then there was no danger that any more big-horns, living or dead, would ever be stolen by that panther.

"Well, Steve, if this isn't the biggest kind of sport! Never saw anything better in all my life."

"A buck, a big-horn, and a painter before sundown!"

"It'll be sundown before we get them all in. We'd better start for some ponies and some help. Tell you what, Steve, I don't care much for it myself, but the Lipans would rather eat that cougar than the best venison ever was killed."

"I suppose they would; but I ain't quite Indian enough for that, war-paint or no war-paint."

So, indeed, it proved; and To-la-go-to-de indulged in more than one sarcastic gibe at his less successful hunters over the manner in which they had been beaten by "No Tongue and the Yellow Head—an old pale-face and a boy." He even went so far as to say to Steve Harrison, "Good shot. The Yellow Head will be a chief some day. He must kill many Apaches. Ugh!"

CHAPTER VII

When Steve Harrison and his friend left the ruins of the ancient town behind them, they had good reason to suppose that they were going away from a complete solitude—a place where even wild Indians did not very often come.

It looked