Altsheler, Joseph - [Great West 01] Read online

the wickiup with another layer of poles, and Boyd spread over the leaves on the floor the skin of a huge grizzly bear that he killed on one of the slopes. They felt now that it was secure against any blizzard that might sweep through the mountains, and that within its shelter they could keep warm and dry in the very worst of times. But they did not sleep in it again for a full week, no rain falling at night during that period. Instead they spread their blankets under the trees.

  "It's odd, and I don't pretend to account for it," said Boyd, "but it's only progressive white men who understand the value of fresh air. As I told you, the Sioux never sleep outside, when they can help it. Neither do the other Indians. In the day they live outdoors, but at night they like to seal themselves up in a box, so to speak."

  "Rushing from extreme to extreme."

  "Maybe, but as for me, I want no better bed than the soft boughs of balsam, with blankets and the un- limited blue sky, provided, of course, that it isn't rain- ing or hailing or sleeting or snowing. It's powerful healthy. Since we've come into Clarke Valley I can see, Will, that you've grown about two inches in height and that you're at least six inches bigger around the chest."

  "You're a pretty big exaggerator !" laughed Will, "but I certainly do feel bigger and stronger than I was when I arrived here. If the Sioux will only let us bide in peace awhile I think I may keep on growing. Tell me more about the Sioux, Jim. They're a tre- mendous league, and I suppose you know as much

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  about 'em as any white man in this part of the world." "I've been in their country long enough to learn a a lot, and there's a lot to learn. The Sioux are to the West what the Iroquois were to the East, that is, so far as their power is concerned, though their range of territory is far larger than that of the Iroquois ever was. They roam over an extent of mountain and plain, hundreds and hundreds of miles either way. I've heard that they can put thirty thousand warriors in the field, though I don't know whether it's true or not, but I do know that they are more numerous and warlike than any other Indian nation in the West, and that they have leaders who are really big men, men who think as well as fight. There's Mahpeyalute, whom you saw and whom we call Red Cloud, and Tatanka Yotanka, whom we call Sitting Bull, and Gray Wolf and War Eagle and lots of others.

  "Besides, the Sioux, or, in their own language, the Dakotas, are a great nation made up of smaller na- tions, all of the same warlike stock. There is the tribe of the Mendewakaton, which means Spirit Lake Vil- lage, then you have the Wahpekute or Leaf Shooters ; the Wahpeton, the Leaf Village; the Sisseton, the Swamp Village; the Yankton, the End Village, the Yanktonnais, the Upper End Village, and the Teton, the Prairie Village. The Teton tribe, which is very formidable, is subdivided into the Ogalala, the Brule, and the Hunkpapa. Red Cloud, as I've told you be- fore, is an Ogalala. And that's a long enough lesson for you for one day. Now, like a good boy, go catch some fish."

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  Will had discovered very early that Lake Boyd, which was quite deep, contained fine lake trout and also other fish almost as good to the taste. As their packs included strong fishing tackle it was not difficult to obtain all the fish they wanted, and the task generally fell to the lad. Now, at Boyd's suggestion, he fulfilled it once more with the usual success.

  Game of all kinds, large and small, was abundant, the valley being fairly overrun with it. Boyd said that it had come in through the narrow passes, and its numbers indicated that no hunters had been there in a long time. Will even found a small herd of about a dozen buffaloes grazing at the south end of the valley, but the next day they disappeared, evidently alarmed by the invasion of human beings. But the deer continued numerous and there were both bears and mountain lions along the slopes.

  Will, who had a certain turn for solitude, being of a thoughtful, serious nature, ceased to find the wait- ing in the valley irksome. He began to think less of the treasure for which he had come so far and through such dangers. They had found a happy valley, and he did not care how long they stayed in it, all nature being so propitious. He had never before breathed an air so fine, and always it was redolent with the odor of pine and balsam. He began to feel that Boyd had not exaggerated much when he talked about his in- crease in height and chest expansion.

  Both he and the hunter bathed every morning in Lake Boyd. At first Will could not endure its cold water more than five minutes, but at the end of ten

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  days he was able to splash and swim in it as long as he liked.

  Their days were not all passed in idleness, as they replenished their stores by jerking the meat of both bear and deer. At the end of two weeks the hunter began to talk of departure, and he and Will walked toward the western end of the valley, where the creek issued in a narrow pass, the only road by which they could leave.

  "It's likely to be a mighty rough path/' said Boyd, "but our horses are still mountain climbers and we'll be sure to make it."

  They went a little nearer and listened to the music of the singing waters, as the creek rushed through the cleft. It was a fine, soothing note, but presently an- other rose above it, clear and melodious.

  It was a whistle, and it had such a penetrating qual- ity that Will, at first, thought it was a bird. Then he knew it sprang from the throat of a man, hidden by the bushes and coming up the pass. Nearer and nearer it came and mellower and mellower it grew. He had never before heard anyone whistle so beautifully. It was like a song, but it was evident that someone was entering their happy valley, and in that wilderness who could come but an enemy? Nearer and nearer the whistler drew and the musical note of the whistling and its echoes filled all the pass.

  "Wouldn't it be better for us to draw back a little where we can remain hidden among the brakes ?" said Will.

  "Yes, do it," replied the hunter, "just for precaution

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  against any possible mistake, but I don't think we really need to do so. In all the world there's net another such whistler ! It's bound to be Giant Tom, Giant Tom his very self, and none other!"

  "Giant Tom ! Giant Tom ! Whom do you mean ?" exclaimed Will.

  "Just wait a minute and you'll see."

  The whistler was now very near, though hidden from sight by the bushes, and he was trilling forth old airs of home that made the pulses in the lad's throat beat hard.

  "It's Giant Tom. There's no other such in the world," repeated Boyd more to himself than to Will. "In another minute you'll see him. You can hear him now brushing past the bushes. Ah, there he is ! God bless him!"

  The figure of an extraordinary man now came into view. He was not more than five feet tall, nor was he particularly broad for his height. He was just the opposite of a giant in size, but there was something about him that suggested the power of a giant. He had a wonderfully quick and light step, and it was Will's first impression that he was made of steel, in- stead of flesh and blood. His face, shaven smoothly, told little of his age. He was dressed in weather- beaten brown, rifle on shoulder, and two mules, loaded with the usual packs and miner's tools, followed him in single file and with sure step.

  Will's heart warmed at once to the little man who continued to whistle forth a volume of clear song, and whose face was perhaps the happiest he had ever seen.

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  Boyd stepped suddenly from the shielding brushwood and extended his hand.

  "Tom Bent," he said, "put 'er there!"

  "Thar she is," said Giant Tom, placing his palm squarely in Boyd's.

  "My young friend, Mr. William Clarke," said the hunter, nodding at the lad, "and this is Mr. Thomas Bent, better known to me and others as Giant Tom."

  "Glad to meet you, William," said the little man, and ever afterward he called the boy William. "Any- body that I find with Jim, here, has got on 'im the stamp an' seal o' high approval. I don't ask your name, whar you come from or why you're here,
or whar you're goin', but I take you fur a frien' o' Jim's, an' so just 'bout all right. Now put 'er thar."

  He grinned a wide grin and extended a wide palm, into which Will put his to have it enclosed at once in a grasp so mighty that he was convinced his first impression about the man being made of steel was cor- rect. He uttered an exclamation and Giant Tom dropped his hand at once.

  "I never do that to a feller more than once," he said, "an' it's always the first time I meet him. Even then I don't do it 'less I'm sure he's all right, an' I'm goin' to like 'im. It's jest my way o' puttin' a stamp on 'im to show that he's passed Tom Bent's ordeal, an' is good fur the best the world has to offer. Now, Wil- liam, you're one o' us."

  He smiled so engagingly that Will was compelled to laugh, and he felt, too, that he had a new and pow- erful friend.

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  "That's right, laugh," said Giant Tom. "You take it the way a feller orter, an* you an' me are goin' to be mighty good pards. An' that bein' settled I want to know from you, Jim Boyd, what are you doin' in my valley."

  "Your valley, Giant! Why, you never saw it be- fore," said the hunter.

  "What's that got to do with it? I wuz comin' here an' any place that I'm goin' to come to out here in the wilderness is mine, o' course."

  "Coming here, I suppose, to hunt for gold! And you've been hunting for it for fifteen years, you've trod along thousands and thousands of miles and never found a speck of it yet."

  The little man laughed joyously.

  "That's true," he said. "I've worked years an* years an' I never yet had a particle o' luck. But a dry spell, no matter how long, is always broke some time or other by a rain, an' when my luck does come, it's goin' to bust all over my face. Gold will just rain on me. I'll stand in it knee-deep an' then shoulder deep, an' then right u p to my mouth."

  "You haven't changed a bit," said Boyd, grinning also. "You're the same Giant Tom, a real giant in strength and courage, that I've met off and on through the years. It's been a long time since I first saw you."

  "It was in Calif orny in '49. I was only fourteen then, but I went out with my uncle in the first rush. Seventeen years I've hunted the yellow stuff, in the streams, in the mountains, all up an' down the coast, in the British territories, an' way back in the Rockies,

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  but I've yet to see its color. Uncle Pete found some, and when he died he left what money he had to me. 'Jest you take it an* keep on huntin', Tom, my boy/ he said. 'Now an* then I think I've seen traces o* im- patience in you. When you'd been lookin' only six or seven years, an 1 found nothin', I heard you speak in a tone of disappointment, once. Don't you do it ag'in. That ain't the way things are won. It takes sperrit an' patience to be victor'us. Hang on to the job you've set fur yourse'f, an' thirty or forty years from now you'll be shore to reap a full reward, though it might come sooner.' An' here I am, fresh, strong, only a little past thirty, and I kin afford to hunt an' wait for my pay 'bout thirty years more. I've never forgot what Uncle Pete told me just afore he died. A mighty smart man was Uncle Pete, an' he had my future in mind. Don't you think so, young William?"

  "Of course," replied Will, looking at him in won- der and admiration. "I don't think a man of your cheerful and patient temperament could possibly fail."

  "And maybe his reward will come much sooner than he thinks," said the hunter, glancing at the lad.

  Will understood what Boyd meant, and he was much taken with the idea. The Little Giant seemed to be sent by Providence, but he said nothing, waiting until such time as the hunter thought fit to broach the subject.

  "How long have you been here?" asked the Little Giant, looking at the valley with approving eyes.

  "Quite a little while," replied Boyd. "It belonged to us two until a few minutes ago, but now it belongs to us three. We've been needing a third man badly,

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  and while I didn't know it, you must have been in my mind all the time."

  "An 1 what do you happen to need me fur, Jim Boyd?"

  "We'll let that wait awhile, at least, until we intro- duce you to our home."

  "All right. Patience is my strong suit. Do you mean to say you've got a home here?"

  "Certainly."

  "Then I'll be your guest until you take me into the pardnership you're talkin' 'bout. Do you know that you two are the first faces o' human bein's that I've seen in two months, an' it gives me a kind o' pleasure to look at you, Jim Boyd, an' young William."

  "Come on then to our camp."

  He whistled to his two mules, strong, patient ani- mals, and then he whistled on his own account the gayest and most extraordinary variation that Will had ever heard, a medley of airs, clear, pure and birdlike, that would have made the feet of any young man dance to the music. It expressed cheerfulness, hope and the sheer joy of living.

  "You could go on the stage and earn fine pay with that whistling of yours," said Will, when he finished.

  "Others have told me so, too," said the Little Giant, "but I'll never do it. Do you think I'd forget what Uncle Pete said to me on his dyin' bed, an' get out o' patience ? What's a matter o' twenty or thirty years ? I'll keep on lookin' an' in the end I'll find plenty o' gold as a matter o' course. Then I won't have to whis- tle fur a livin'. I'll hire others to whistle fur me."

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  "He's got another accomplishment, Will, one that he never brags about," said the hunter.

  "What is it?"

  "I told you once that I was as good a rifle shot as there was in the West, over a range of a million and a half square miles of mountain and plain, but I forgot, for a moment, about one exception. That exception is Giant Tom, here. He has one of the fine repeating rifles like ours, and whether with that or a muzzle loader he's quicker and surer than any other."

  The face of Giant Tom turned red through his tan.

  "See here, Jim Boyd, I'm a modest man, I'm no boaster, don't be telling wild tales about me to young William. I don't know him yet so well as I do you, an' I vally his good opinion."

  "What I say is true every word of it. If his bullet would only carry that far he'd pick off a deer at five miles every time, and you needn't deny it, Giant Tom."

  "Well, mebbe thar is some truth in what you say. When the Lord sawed me off a foot, so I'd hev to look up in the faces o' men whenever I talked to 'em, He looked at me an' He felt sorry fur the little feller He'd created. I'll have to make it up to him somehow, He said to Hisself, an' to he'p me along He give me mus- cles o' steel, not your cast steel, but your wrought steel that never breaks, then He put a mockin* bird in my throat, an* give me eyes like an eagle's an' nerves o' the steadiest. Last, He give me patience, the knowin' how to wait years an' years fur what I want, an' lookin' back to it now I think He more than made up fur the foot He sawed off. Leastways I ain't seen yet the man

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  I want to change with, not even with you, Jim Boyd, tall as you think you are, nor with you, young William, for all your red cheeks an* your youth an* your heart full o' hope, though it ain't any fuller than mine."

  "Long but mighty interesting," said Boyd. "Now, you can see our wickiup, over there in the open. We use it only when it rains. We'll help you take the packs off your mules and they can go grazing for them- selves with our horses. You are not saying much about it, but I imagine that you and the mules, too, are pretty nearly worn out."

  "Them's good mules, mighty good mules, but them an* me, I don't mind tellin' it to you, Jim Boyd, won't fight ag'inst restin* an' eatin' awhile."

  "I'll light the fire and warm food for you/' said Will. "It's a pleasure for me to do it. Sit down on the log and before you know it I'll have ready for you the finest lake trout into which you ever put your teeth."

  "Young William, I accept your invite."

  Will quickly had his fire going, and he served not only trout, bu
t bear steaks and hot coffee to the Little Giant, who ate with a tremendous appetite.

  "I've got provisions of my own in my packs," he said, "but sometimes the other feller's feed tastes a heap better than your own, an' this that you're of- ferin' me is, I take it, the cream o' the mountains, young William. A couple more o' them trout, if you don't mind, four or five more pounds o' that bear meat, an' a gallon o' coffee, if you've got it to spare. With them I think I kin make out. How are my mules gettin' on, Jim?"

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  "First rate. They've already introduced themselves to the horses, which have given their names, pedigrees and the stories of their lives. The mules also have furnished their histories, and, everybody being satis- fied with everybody else's social station and past, they're now grazing together in perfect friendship, all six of 'em, just beyond that belt of woodland. And that being the case, I'll now give you the history of Will and myself, and I'll tell you about the biggest thing that we expect from the future."

  "Go ahead," said the Little Giant, settling himself into a comfortable position.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE FLIGHT

  BOYD had no mean powers as a narrator. He did not speak at first of their own immediate search, but alluded to the great belief that gold was scattered all through the West, although it sel- dom had a trace or trail leading to it. Then he spoke of Clarke's father, and what he had discovered, re- turning soon afterward to the civil war, in which he had fallen.

  The Little Giant's eyes brightened with the flame of pursuit as the hunter talked. He who had sought gold for so many years without finding a particle of it was seeing it now, in pockets, and in almost solid ledges, beyond anything he had ever dreamed. But when Boyd told of the officer's death on the battlefield he sighed deeply and his face clouded.