CHAPTER IX.
A MOUNTAIN MYSTERY.
Ralph said nothing of his adventure of the night till the nextmorning. As he had expected, his young chums put it down to a feverishimagination. Even the professor suggested a dose of quinine; butMountain Jim walked over after the morning meal to where the boy hadseen the apparition, which, Ralph was beginning to believe, the figuremust have been.
The lad accompanied the mountaineer, who had expected to find sometracks or traces by which Ralph’s adventure might be verified. But theground was rocky, and the soft bed of the forest beyond held no tracks,so that they were disappointed in their anticipation of finding someclew to the strange appearance of the night.
“You’re certain sure, dead certain sure that you did see something.Didn’t just dream it?” questioned Mountain Jim as they made theirway back to camp where the others were busy packing the ponies, evenPersimmons being by this time able to cast a “diamond hitch.”
“I’m positive,” declared Ralph firmly; “if I hadn’t been so certainthat what I saw was a man, I would have fired. But who could it havebeen?” he added in a perplexed voice. Jim shook his blond head.
“Great Blue Bells of Scotland, I dunno, boy,” he said, thoughtfullypuffing at his pipe. “You ain’t the sort of lad to dream things, I cansee that. But it’s got me. If we’d been in the gold country now itmight have been a prospector, but nobody goes through here, not evenhunters, for right where we are now is a bad place for game.”
So, for the time being, the mystery of the midnight visitor wasunsolved and almost forgotten. It was destined to be recalled later ina startling manner, but for the present even Ralph began to believethat he might have been the victim of some sort of an hallucination,caused, possibly, by the fact that he was only half awake when he hadbeheld the figure on the rock.
As Mountain Jim had said, the country through which they were nowtraveling was indeed a bad section for hunters. Although the boys madeseveral detours after game, not so much as a rabbit did they see.The day following the night on which Ralph had seen, or thought hehad seen, the figure of the watching man, they encountered, for thefirst time, a tract of country common enough in the Canadian wildsbut particularly unpleasant to travel through, namely, a _brulee_ orvast tract of woods through which a forest fire has swept, leavingdesolation in its path.
Nothing more depressing can be imagined than these burned forests.Naked, blackened trees, with rags of scorched bark peeling from theirbare trunks, tower out of a desert expanse of gray-black ash. Horsesor foot travelers passing through, churn up clouds of this ashen dustwhich chokes the nostrils, burns the eyes and blackens everything withwhich it comes in contact.
Our travelers found themselves on the outskirts of such a place sometime before noon on the day mentioned. Mountain Jim had at firstthought of making a detour up a mountain side, but after a consultationit was decided to press on through the desolate waste, where charredtrunks stuck up like the blackened stumps of teeth in an old man’s jaws.
As they plunged into the _brulee_ they found their ponies sinkingover the fetlocks in the ashes. In places, huge piles of trunks,burned through at the base, lay like barriers across their path,and it was necessary to go around them to find a passable way. Longbefore they were out of the wretched place the water in their canteenswas gone, and their throats were clogged and lips cracked from thedry, acrid dust that rose in clouds. From time to time the boys werecompelled to rub their eyes to relieve the tingling smart in them, andspeedily their faces were blackened like those of coal heavers. A moresorry-looking party it would be hard to imagine than that which, hourafter hour, painfully wended its way through the burned forest. Not asprig of green, not a rill of water refreshed their sight. No birds oranimals could be seen or heard. On every side was nothing but blackdesolation.
Ralph and young Ware rode ahead, side by side, while behind straggledthe rest of the party. Mountain Jim brought up the rear behind the packanimals, which needed urging with whip and voice through the desolationof the _brulee_. Now and then, far off, they could hear the crash ofsome forest giant as its burned-through trunk gave way and it camesmashing to the ground with a roar like thunder, not infrequentlybringing two or three of its mates with it.
Jim had warned the boys and the professor to be on the lookout for suchthings, and as Ralph and Harry Ware rode along they kept a bright andvigilant watch for any tree that looked as if its fall was imminent.
“Gee whiz! I feel like an ant that has lost its way in the ashes of acamper’s fire,” was the graphic way in which Hardware expressed hisfeelings, as for the twentieth time that morning he tried to clear histhroat of ashes.
They ate a hasty lunch, of which, the boys declared, ashes formed thechief ingredient, for the dry, implacable gray dust appeared to siftinto every mouthful they tasted. A long stop was out of the question.There was no knowing how far the _brulee_ extended and they must pushon and get to water, for already the ponies were beginning to showsigns of distress. The poor animals’ sweaty sides were caked with graydust till they all appeared of one uniform drab color. For the matterof that, the travelers themselves were no better off. Like a dullmonochrome, they were cloaked in ashen gray from head to foot.
Hardly speaking, for their spirits were at the lowest ebb in thisghastly ruin of a majestic forest, they pushed on. The only life in the_brulee_ appeared to be the black flies and mosquitoes which bit tillthey drew blood, further annoying them.
“I thought I’d rough it in the West,” muttered Ralph once as his ponytumbled over a blackened trunk that lay across the trail, “but thisbeats anything I’ve ever experienced,--pah!” and he spat out a mouthfulof ashy dust.
The afternoon wore on, and still they stumbled along through the_brulee_ without any signs of its coming to an end. As far as theycould see the forest of blackened trunks extended, the same carpet ofashen dust was everywhere. The sun, growing lower, hung like a glowingball of copper in a red sky, seen through the dust that they kicked upas they moved painfully along.
The horses were driven half mad by the biting flies, and their fetlockswere cruelly bruised and cut by the charred logs and rocks. It washeartbreaking traveling, but of a kind that must befall sooner or latereveryone who ventures into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies.
Tired, choked and irritable, Harry Ware was lagging behind Ralph, whowas now riding in advance alone. Behind him he could hear the voiceof Mountain Jim unceasingly urging on the pack animals. Mountain Jimnever swore, but his range of words which were forceful and expressivewithout being profane, was amazing. Evidently, too, his adjurations hadtheir effect on the jaded ponies, for they stumbled bravely on leapinglogs and dodging stones with renewed agility every time the guide’svoice boomed through that blackened, fire-swept wilderness.
Ralph had fallen into a semi-doze. The deadly monotony of thehalf-calcined columns on every hand, the close heat of the _brulee_made him drowsy. The voice of Mountain Jim fell more and more faintlyon his ears. Harry Ware, kicking his pony viciously, passed him.
“I’m going to be the first out of this beastly place,” he remarked withemphasis as he rode by.
“Well, don’t kick any more dust in my face than you can help,” rejoinedRalph, only a shade less irritably.
“Oh, shut up!” snapped Harry, ordinarily the best and mosteven-tempered of boys.
Ralph flushed angrily for an instant and his hand clenched as a cloudof choking dust was spurned in his face by the heels of Harry Ware’smount. But the next instant he gained control of himself.
“Pshaw! I guess we’re all losing our tempers,” he murmured to himself,“and it’s a fact that this place would make a saint cross--Hold upthere, pony! Not much longer now.”
Content with his spurt ahead, Hardware slowed his pony down to a walka few paces in front of Ralph. He did not apologize for his unthinkingact of smothering Ralph with dust. Instead, he gazed sullenly straightahead of him.
He was hot, thirsty, and bitten mercilessly by black
flies. The lad wasin no mood to go around obstacles. Rather was he in that savage humorthat rushes recklessly on, although he had been warned of the dangersof the _brulee_. In fact, the frequent crashing of half burned-throughtrees, as a vagrant wind caught them and snapped them off, would havebeen sufficient indication that a sharp lookout was necessary to anyonein a less irritable mood. But Harry didn’t think of this. Instead, heurged his tired pony viciously over blackened logs with quirt and heel.
Suddenly Ralph, whose vigilance had not relaxed although he wasfearfully drowsy, thought he saw a great blackened trunk directly aheadof them lean over a trifle. He was sure of it in another moment.
“Pull out!” he yelled to Harry, who was driving his pony straight in apath which would bring him under the swaying trunk.
“Oh, mind your own business!” flung back Hardware crossly, and drovehis little mount right on.
Ralph did not hesitate a minute. He wore spurs, the same blunt-rowelledpair he had used on the border. He drove these into his pony’s side andbrought down his quirt with a crack that made the little animal snortangrily and plunge forward.
In front of him he saw the mighty column sway and oscillate as thoughin a vain attempt to recover its equipoise. Directly under it was HarryWare, sullenly riding on with his eyes on the ground. Once more Ralphyelled and his pony gave a wild leap forward.
Suddenly the mighty trunk rushed earthward. Simultaneously Ralph’shand fell on Hardware’s bridle. He gave a tug that brought the latter’spony up on its haunches. It reared wildly, almost toppling backward.
At the same instant a cold wind fanned both boys as the trunk sweptdown. There was a deafening crash almost under the feet of the plungingponies, and both lads were shrouded in a cloud of black dust that roseup like a dark veil.
“Good heavens! They’re killed!” shouted the professor dashing forward.
About the two boys the dust whirled and eddied. The ponies plungedwildly, almost unseating them, but Ralph held on till he had draggedHardware’s mount out of the black dust cloud.
As he did so, from ahead of them, came crash after crash with astartling suddenness. The _brulee_ was filled with shocks of sound thatrang in thunderous reverberations along the steep rocks. The echoesflung back and forth till the uproar was deafening. In the meantimethe party, including the two lads who had been saved from what appearedcertain death, stood fast.
They hardly breathed till the crashes grew less and less frequent and abrooding silence settled down over the _brulee_ once more.
Then Hardware, shaking all over, gazed at the great trunk lyingrecumbent not two yards from them. His eyes filled with tears. He heldout a blackened hand to Ralph, who smiled at him through his mask ofgray ash.
“I--I--I don’t know how to thank you, Ralph, old man,” he choked out.“If it hadn’t been for you, in my silly temper I’d have gone right onwithout minding you, and--and----”
He could not go further, but Ralph’s fingers closed on hisout-stretched hand.
“That’s all right, old man,” was all he said; but between both boysa thrill ran as their fingers clasped. Hardware had learned a lessonthere in the _brulee_ that all the schools in Christendom couldn’thave taught him, and he knew it.
“A mighty near thing,” said Mountain Jim, as the others rode up, “Iguess I’ll have a smoke.”
His voice was steady enough, but his hands shook as he filled his oldbrier. Death had swept by too closely for any of them to recover theirnerve for half an hour or more. By that time, as they rode on, thecharred trunks were fewer and fewer, and an hour before sundown theycame out of that “Valley of Desolation” into a wide canon, carpetedwith lush, green grass and watered by a crystal clear stream. On eachside towered rocky scraps of cliff clothed with dark pines and balsams.
Boys and men broke into a cheer, and even the dispirited ponies fellinto a brisk gait without urging. The travelers forgot their trials asthey laved in the fresh, cold water of the mountain stream and watchedJim getting supper, assisted by Jimmie, while the ponies ravenouslycropped the fresh, juicy grass. But it was days before the last traceof ashes was removed from their belongings, and one at least of theparty was destined never to forget that _brulee_ in the Rockies as longas he might live.