The Last of the Plainsmen
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Zane Grey >> The Last of the Plainsmen
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"In trying to capture wild animals a man must never be too sure.
Now what I thought my strong point was my weak point--the wash. I
made sure no horse could ever jump that hole."
CHAPTER 8. SNAKE GULCH
Not far from the scene of our adventure with the White Streak as
we facetious and appreciatively named the mustang, deep, flat
cave indented the canyon wall. By reason of its sandy floor and
close proximity to Frank's trickling spring, we decided to camp
in it. About dawn Lawson and Stewart straggled in on spent horse
and found awaiting them a bright fire, a hot supper and cheery
comrades.
"Did yu fellars git to see him?" was the ranger's first question.
"Did we get to see him?" echoed five lusty voice as one. "We
did!"
It was after Frank, in his plain, blunt speech had told of our
experience, that the long Arizonian gazed fixedly at Jones.
"Did yu acktully tech the hair of thet mustang with a rope?"
In all his days Jones never had a greater complement. By way of
reply, he moved his big hand to button of his coat, and, fumbling
over it, unwound a string of long, white hairs, then said: "I
pulled these out of his tail with my lasso; it missed his left
hind hoof about six inches."
There were six of the hairs, pure, glistening white, and over
three feet long. Stewart examined then in expressive silence,
then passed them along; and when they reached me, they stayed.
The cave, lighted up by a blazing fire, appeared to me a
forbidding, uncanny place. Small, peculiar round holes, and dark
cracks, suggestive of hidden vermin, gave me a creepy feeling;
and although not over-sensitive on the subject of crawling,
creeping things, I voiced my disgust.
"Say, I don't like the idea of sleeping in this hole. I'll bet
it's full of spiders, snakes and centipedes and other poisonous
things."
Whatever there was in my inoffensive declaration to rouse the
usually slumbering humor of the Arizonians, and the thinly veiled
ridicule of Colonel Jones, and a mixture of both in my once loyal
California friend, I am not prepared to state. Maybe it was the
dry, sweet, cool air of Nail Canyon; maybe my suggestion awoke
ticklish associations that worked themselves off thus; maybe it
was the first instance of my committing myself to a breach of
camp etiquette. Be that as it may, my innocently expressed
sentiment gave rise to bewildering dissertations on entomology,
and most remarkable and startling tales from first-hand
experience.
"Like as not," began Frank in matter-of-fact tone. "Them's
tarantuler holes all right. An' scorpions, centipedes an'
rattlers always rustle with tarantulers. But we never mind
them--not us fellers! We're used to sleepin' with them. Why, I
often wake up in the night to see a big tarantuler on my chest,
an' see him wink. Ain't thet so, Jim?"
"Shore as hell," drawled faithful, slow Jim.
"Reminds me how fatal the bite of a centipede is," took up
Colonel Jones, complacently. "Once I was sitting in camp with a
hunter, who suddenly hissed out: 'Jones, for God's sake don't
budge! There's a centipede on your arm!' He pulled his Colt, and
shot the blamed centipede off as clean as a whistle. But the
bullet hit a steer in the leg; and would you believe it, the
bullet carried so much poison that in less than two hours the
steer died of blood poisoning. Centipedes are so poisonous they
leave a blue trail on flesh just by crawling over it. Look
there!"
He bared his arm, and there on the brown-corded flesh was a blue
trail of something, that was certain. It might have been made by
a centipede.
"This is a likely place for them," put in Wallace, emitting a
volume of smoke and gazing round the cave walls with the eye of a
connoisseur. "My archaeological pursuits have given me great
experience with centipedes, as you may imagine, considering how
many old tombs, caves and cliff-dwellings I have explored. This
Algonkian rock is about the right stratum for centipedes to dig
in. They dig somewhat after the manner of the fluviatile long-
tailed decapod crustaceans, of the genera Thoracostraca, the
common crawfish, you know. From that, of course, you can imagine,
if a centipede can bite rock, what a biter he is."
I began to grow weak, and did not wonder to see Jim's long pipe
fall from his lips. Frank looked queer around the gills, so to
speak, but the gaunt Stewart never batted an eye.
"I camped here two years ago," he said, "An' the cave was alive
with rock-rats, mice, snakes, horned-toads, lizards an' a big
Gila monster, besides bugs, scorpions' rattlers, an' as fer
tarantulers an' centipedes--say! I couldn't sleep fer the noise
they made fightin'."
"I seen the same," concluded Lawson, as nonchalant as a
wild-horse wrangler well could be. "An' as fer me, now I allus
lays perfickly still when the centipedes an' tarantulers begin to
drop from their holes in the roof, same as them holes up there.
An' when they light on me, I never move, nor even breathe fer
about five minutes. Then they take a notion I'm dead an' crawl
off. But sure, if I'd breathed I'd been a goner!"
All of this was playfully intended for the extinction of an
unoffending and impressionable tenderfoot.
With an admiring glance at my tormentors, I rolled out my
sleeping-bag and crawled into it, vowing I would remain there
even if devil-fish, armed with pikes, invaded our cave.
Late in the night I awoke. The bottom of the canyon and the outer
floor of our cave lay bathed in white, clear moonlight. A dense,
gloomy black shadow veiled the opposite canyon wall. High up the
pinnacles and turrets pointed toward a resplendent moon. It was a
weird, wonderful scene of beauty entrancing, of breathless,
dreaming silence that seemed not of life. Then a hoot-owl
lamented dismally, his call fitting the scene and the dead
stillness; the echoes resounded from cliff to cliff, strangely
mocking and hollow, at last reverberating low and mournful in the
distance.
How long I lay there enraptured with the beauty of light and
mystery of shade, thrilling at the lonesome lament of the owl, I
have no means to tell; but I was awakened from my trance by the
touch of something crawling over me. Promptly I raised my head.
The cave was as light as day. There, sitting sociably on my
sleeping-bag was a great black tarantula, as large as my hand.
For one still moment, notwithstanding my contempt for Lawson's
advice, I certainly acted upon it to the letter. If ever I was
quiet, and if ever I was cold, the time was then. My companions
snored in blissful ignorance of my plight. Slight rustling sounds
attracted my wary gaze from the old black sentinel on my knee. I
saw other black spiders running to and fro on the silver, sandy
floor. A giant, as large as a soft-shell crab, seemed to be
meditating an assault upon Jones's ear. Another, grizzled and
shiny with age or moonbeams I could not tell which--pushed long,
tentative feelers into Wallace's cap. I saw black spots darting
over the roof. It was not a dream; the cave was alive with
tarantulas!
Not improbably my strong impression that the spider on my knee
deliberately winked at me was the result of memory, enlivening
imagination. But it sufficed to bring to mind, in one rapid,
consoling flash, the irrevocable law of destiny--that the deeds
of the wicked return unto them again.
I slipped back into my sleeping-bag, with a keen consciousness of
its nature, and carefully pulled the flap in place, which almost
hermetically sealed me up
"Hey! Jones! Wallace! Frank! Jim!" I yelled, from the depths of
my safe refuge.
Wondering cries gave me glad assurance that they had awakened
from their dreams.
"The cave's alive with tarantulas!" I cried, trying to hide my
unholy glee.
"I'll be durned if it ain't!" ejaculated Frank.
"Shore it beats hell!" added Jim, with a shake of his blanket.
"Look out, Jones, there's one on your pillow!" shouted Wallace.
Whack! A sharp blow proclaimed the opening of hostilities.
Memory stamped indelibly every word of that incident; but innate
delicatly prevents the repetition of all save the old warrior's
concluding remarks: "! ! ! place I was ever in! Tarantulas by the
million--centipedes, scorpions, bats! Rattlesnakes, too, I'll
swear. Look out, Wallace! there, under your blanket!"
From the shuffling sounds which wafted sweetly into my bed, I
gathered that my long friend from California must have gone
through motions creditable to a contortionist. An ensuing
explosion from Jones proclaimed to the listening world that
Wallace had thrown a tarantula upon him. Further fearful language
suggested the thought that Colonel Jones had passed on the
inquisitive spider to Frank. The reception accorded the
unfortunate tarantula, no doubt scared out of its wits, began
with a wild yell from Frank and ended in pandemonium.
While the confusion kept up, with whacks and blows and threshing
about, with language such as never before had disgraced a group
of old campers, I choked with rapture, and reveled in the
sweetness of revenge.
When quiet reigned once more in the black and white canyon, only
one sleeper lay on the moon-silvered sand of the cave.
At dawn, when I opened sleepy eyes, Frank, Slim, Stewart and
Lawson had departed, as pre-arranged, with the outfit, leaving
the horses belonging to us and rations for the day. Wallace and I
wanted to climb the divide at the break, and go home by way of
Snake Gulch, and the Colonel acquiesced with the remark that his
sixty-three years had taught him there was much to see in the
world. Coming to undertake it, we found the climb--except for a
slide of weathered rock--no great task, and we accomplished it in
half an hour, with breath to spare and no mishap to horses.
But descending into Snake Gulch, which was only a mile across the
sparsely cedared ridge, proved to be tedious labor. By virtue of
Satan's patience and skill, I forged ahead; which advantage,
however, meant more risk for me because of the stones set in
motion above. They rolled and bumped and cut into me, and I
sustained many a bruise trying to protect the sinewy slender legs
of my horse. The descent ended without serious mishap.
Snake Gulch had a character and sublimity which cast Nail Canyon
into the obscurity of forgetfulness. The great contrast lay in
the diversity of structure. The rock was bright red, with parapet
of yellow, that leaned, heaved, bulged outward. These emblazoned
cliff walls, two thousand feet high, were cracked from turret to
base; they bowled out at such an angle that we were afraid to
ride under them. Mountains of yellow rock hung balanced, ready to
tumble down at the first angry breath of the gods. We rode among
carved stones, pillars, obelisks and sculptured ruined walls of a
fallen Babylon. Slides reaching all the way across and far up the
canyon wall obstructed our passage. On every stone silent green
lizards sunned themselves, gliding swiftly as we came near to
their marble homes.
We came into a region of wind-worn caves, of all sizes and
shapes, high and low on the cliffs; but strange to say, only on
the north side of the canyon they appeared with dark mouths open
and uninviting. One, vast and deep, though far off, menaced us as
might the cave of a tawny-maned king of beasts; yet it impelled,
fascinated and drew us on.
"It's a long, hard climb," said Wallace to the Colonel, as we
dismounted.
"Boys, I'm with you," came the reply. And he was with us all the
way, as we clambered over the immense blocks and threaded a
passage between them and pulled weary legs up, one after the
other. So steep lay the jumble of cliff fragments that we lost
sight of the cave long before we got near it. Suddenly we rounded
a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing looming before us.
The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there. A
gloomy hole, large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in
the cliff by ages of nature's chiseling.
"Vast sepulcher of Time's past, give up thy dead!" cried Wallace,
solemnly.
"Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!" quoted I, as feelingly as my
friend.
Jones hauled us down from the clouds.
"Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here?"
said he.
Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity
of this place, he did not show it.
The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold. Stony
ridges circled from wall to wall. We climbed till we were two
hundred feet from the opening, yet we were not half-way to the
dome.
Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked like ants. So
steep did the ascent become that we desisted; for if one of us
had slipped on the smooth incline, the result would have been
terrible. Our voices rang clear and hollow from the walls. We
were so high that the sky was blotted out by the overhanging
square, cornice-like top of the door; and the light was weird,
dim, shadowy, opaque. It was a gray tomb.
"Waa-hoo!" yelled Jones with all the power of his wide, leather
lungs.
Thousands of devilish voices rushed at us, seemingly on puffs of
wind. Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the
back of the cave, and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on
again in fiendish concatenation.
We did not again break the silence of that tomb, where the
spirits of ages lay in dusty shrouds; and we crawled down as if
we had invaded a sanctuary and invoked the wrath of the gods.
We all proposed names: Montezuma's Amphitheater being the only
rival of Jones's selection, Echo cave, which we finally chose.
Mounting our horses again, we made twenty miles of Snake Gulch by
noon, when we rested for lunch. All the way up we had played the
boy's game of spying for sights, with the honors about even. It
was a question if Snake Gulch ever before had such a raking over.
Despite its name, however, we discovered no snakes.
From the sandy niche of a cliff where we lunched Wallace espied a
tomb, and heralded his discovery with a victorious whoop. Digging
in old ruins roused in him much the same spirit that digging in
old books roused in me. Before we reached him, he had a big
bowie-knife buried deep in the red, sandy floor of the tomb.
This one-time sealed house of the dead had been constructed of
small stones, held together by a cement, the nature of which,
Wallace explained, had never become clear to civilization. It was
red in color and hard as flint, harder than the rocks it glued
together. The tomb was half-round in shape, and its floor was a
projecting shelf of cliff rock. Wallace unearthed bits of
pottery, bone and finely braided rope, all of which, to our great
disappointment, crumbled to dust in our fingers. In the case of
the rope, Wallace assured us, this was a sign of remarkable
antiquity.
In the next mile we traversed, we found dozens of these old
cells, all demolished except a few feet of the walls, all
despoiled of their one-time possessions. Wallace thought these
depredations were due to Indians of our own time. Suddenly we
came upon Jones, standing under a cliff, with his neck craned to
a desperate angle.
"Now, what's that?" demanded he, pointing upward.
High on the cliff wall appeared a small, round protuberance. It
was of the unmistakably red color of the other tombs; and
Wallace, more excited than he had been in the cougar chase, said
it was a sepulcher, and he believed it had never been opened.
From an elevated point of rock, as high up as I could well climb,
I decided both questions with my glass. The tomb resembled
nothing so much as a mud-wasp's nest, high on a barn wall. The
fact that it had never been broken open quite carried Wallace
away with enthusiasm.
"This is no mean discovery, let me tell you that," he declared.
"I am familiar with the Aztec, Toltec and Pueblo ruins, and here
I find no similarity. Besides, we are out of their latitude. An
ancient race of people--very ancient indeed lived in this canyon.
How long ago, it is impossible to tell."
"They must have been birds," said the practical Jones. "Now,
how'd that tomb ever get there? Look at it, will you?"
As near as we could ascertain, it was three hundred feet from the
ground below, five hundred from the rim wall above, and could not
possibly have been approached from the top. Moreover, the cliff
wall was as smooth as a wall of human make.
"There's another one," called out Jones.
"Yes, and I see another; no doubt there are many of them,"
replied Wallace. "In my mind, only one thing possible accounts
for their position. You observe they appear to be about level
with each other. Well, once the Canyon floor ran along that line,
and in the ages gone by it has lowered, washed away by the
rains."
This conception staggered us, but it was the only one
conceivable. No doubt we all thought at the same time of the
little rainfall in that arid section of Arizona.
"How many years?" queried Jones.
"Years! What are years?" said Wallace. "Thousands of years, ages
have passed since the race who built these tombs lived."
Some persuasion was necessary to drag our scientific friend from
the spot, where obviously helpless to do anything else, he stood
and gazed longingly at the isolated tombs. The canyon widened as
we proceeded; and hundreds of points that invited inspection,
such as overhanging shelves of rock, dark fissures, caverns and
ruins had to be passed by, for lack of time.
Still, a more interesting and important discovery was to come,
and the pleasure and honor of it fell to me. My eyes were sharp
and peculiarly farsighted--the Indian sight, Jones assured me;
and I kept them searching the walls in such places as my
companions overlooked. Presently, under a large, bulging bluff, I
saw a dark spot, which took the shape of a figure. This figure, I
recollected, had been presented to my sight more than once, and
now it stopped me. The hard climb up the slippery stones was
fatiguing, but I did not hesitate, for I was determined to know.
Once upon the ledge, I let out a yell that quickly set my
companions in my direction. The figure I had seen was a dark, red
devil, a painted image, rude, unspeakably wild, crudely executed,
but painted by the hand of man. The whole surface of the cliff
wall bore figures of all shapes--men, mammals, birds and strange
devices, some in red paint, mostly in yellow. Some showed the
wear of time; others were clear and sharp.
Wallace puffed up to me, but he had wind enough left for another
whoop. Jones puffed up also, and seeing the first thing a rude
sketch of what might have been a deer or a buffalo, he commented
thus: "Darn me if I ever saw an animal like that? Boys, this is a
find, sure as you're born. Because not even the Piutes ever spoke
of these figures. I doubt if they know they're here. And the
cowboys and wranglers, what few ever get by here in a hundred
years, never saw these things. Beats anything I ever saw on the
Mackenzie, or anywhere else."
The meaning of some devices was as mystical as that of others was
clear. Two blood-red figures of men, the larger dragging the
smaller by the hair, while he waved aloft a blood-red hatchet or
club, left little to conjecture. Here was the old battle of men,
as old as life. Another group, two figures of which resembled the
foregoing in form and action, battling over a prostrate form
rudely feminine in outline, attested to an age when men were as
susceptible as they are in modern times, but more forceful and
original. An odd yellow Indian waved aloft a red hand, which
striking picture suggested the idea that he was an ancient
Macbeth, listening to the knocking at the gate. There was a
character representing a great chief, before whom many figures
lay prostrate, evidently slain or subjugated. Large red
paintings, in the shape of bats, occupied prominent positions,
and must have represented gods or devils. Armies of marching men
told of that blight of nations old or young--war. These, and
birds unnamable, and beasts unclassable, with dots and marks and
hieroglyphics, recorded the history of a bygone people. Symbols
they were of an era that had gone into the dim past, leaving only
these marks, {Symbols recording the history of a bygone people.}
forever unintelligible; yet while they stood, century after
century, ineffaceable, reminders of the glory, the mystery, the
sadness of life.
"How could paint of any kind last so long? asked Jones, shaking
his head doubtfully.
"That is the unsolvable mystery," returned Wallace. "But the
records are there. I am absolutely sure the paintings are at
least a thousand years old. I have never seen any tombs or
paintings similar to them. Snake Gulch is a find, and I shall
some day study its wonders."
Sundown caught us within sight of Oak Spring, and we soon trotted
into camp to the welcoming chorus of the hounds. Frank and the
others had reached the cabin some hours before. Supper was
steaming on the hot coals with a delicious fragrance.
Then came the pleasantest time of the day, after a long chase or
jaunt--the silent moments, watching the glowing embers of the
fire; the speaking moments when a red-blooded story rang clear
and true; the twilight moments, when the wood-smoke smelled
sweet.
Jones seemed unusually thoughtful. I had learned that this
preoccupation in him meant the stirring of old associations, and
I waited silently. By and by Lawson snored mildly in a corner;
Jim and Frank crawled into their blankets, and all was still.
Walllace smoked his Indian pipe and hunted in firelit dreams.
"Boys," said our leader finally, "somehow the echoes dying away
in that cave reminded me of the mourn of the big white wolves in
the Barren Lands.
Wallace puffed huge clouds of white smoke, and I waited, knowing
that I was to hear at last the story of the Colonel's great
adventure in the Northland.
CHAPTER 8. NAZA! NAZA! NAZA!
It was a waiting day at Fort Chippewayan. The lonesome,
far-northern Hudson's Bay Trading Post seldom saw such life.
Tepees dotted the banks of the Slave River and lines of blanketed
Indians paraded its shores. Near the boat landing a group of
chiefs, grotesque in semi-barbaric, semicivilized splendor, but
black-browed, austere-eyed, stood in savage dignity with folded
arms and high-held heads. Lounging on the grassy bank were white
men, traders, trappers and officials of the post.
All eyes were on the distant curve of the river where, as it lost
itself in a fine-fringed bend of dark green, white-glinting waves
danced and fluttered. A June sky lay blue in the majestic stream;
ragged, spear-topped, dense green trees massed down to the water;
beyond rose bold, bald-knobbed hills, in remote purple relief.
A long Indian arm stretched south. The waiting eyes discerned a
black speck on the green, and watched it grow. A flatboat, with a
man standing to the oars, bore down swiftly.
Not a red hand, nor a white one, offered to help the voyager in
the difficult landing. The oblong, clumsy, heavily laden boat
surged with the current and passed the dock despite the boatman's
efforts. He swung his craft in below upon a bar and roped it fast
to a tree. The Indians crowded above him on the bank. The boatman
raised his powerful form erect, lifted a bronzed face which
seemed set in craggy hardness, and cast from narrow eyes a keen,
cool glance on those above. The silvery gleam in his fair hair
told of years.
Silence, impressive as it was ominous, broke only to the rattle
of camping paraphernalia, which the voyager threw to a level,
grassy bench on the bank. Evidently this unwelcome visitor had
journeyed from afar, and his boat, sunk deep into the water with
its load of barrels, boxes and bags, indicated that the journey
had only begun. Significant, too, were a couple of long
Winchester rifles shining on a tarpaulin.
The cold-faced crowd stirred and parted to permit the passage of
a tall, thin, gray personage of official bearing, in a faded
military coat.
"Are you the musk-ox hunter?" he asked, in tones that contained
no welcome.
The boatman greeted this peremptory interlocutor with a cool
laugh--a strange laugh, in which the muscles of his face appeared
not to play.
"Yes, I am the man," he said.
"The chiefs of the Chippewayan and Great Slave tribes have been
apprised of your coming. They have held council and are here to
speak with you."
At a motion from the commandant, the line of chieftains piled
down to the level bench and formed a half-circle before the
voyager. To a man who had stood before grim Sitting Bull and
noble Black Thunder of the Sioux, and faced the falcon-eyed
Geronimo, and glanced over the sights of a rifle at
gorgeous-feathered, wild, free Comanches, this semi-circle of
savages--lords of the north--was a sorry comparison. Bedaubed and
betrinketed, slouchy and slovenly, these low-statured chiefs
belied in appearance their scorn-bright eyes and lofty mien. They
made a sad group.
One who spoke in unintelligible language, rolled out a haughty,
sonorous voice over the listening multitude. When he had
finished, a half-breed interpreter, in the dress of a white man,
spoke at a signal from the commandant.
"He says listen to the great orator of the Chippewayan. He has
summoned all the chiefs of the tribes south of Great Slave Lake.
He has held council. The cunning of the pale-face, who comes to
take the musk-oxen, is well known. Let the pale-face hunter
return to his own hunting-grounds; let him turn his face from the
north. Never will the chiefs permit the white man to take
musk-oxen alive from their country. The Ageter, the Musk-ox, is
their god. He gives them food and fur. He will never come back if
he is taken away, and the reindeer will follow him. The chiefs
and their people would starve. They command the pale-face hunter
to go back. They cry Naza! Naza! Naza!"
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