CHAPTER VII.
Shelton lit his candle, shielding its blaze from the breeze with fingers creditably steady—when you think how terribly he had been scared. He stood looking down over the sunlit hollow beneath him; his candid blue eyes clouded with distaste for what he was going to do. His enthusiasm for caves had left him completely, yet his doggedness of purpose impelled him to go back. There was something. He had seen the tracks, and he had heard it scream and afterward go leaping down the black tunnel. And there were Burney's tracks, which seemed mysterious; and there were those sheep about which Vida had told him, dead with their necks twisted in the most unaccountable manner. He did not see any connection between this cave and the dead sheep, save the one fact of some great beast that could have done the twisting—perhaps. At any rate, he had to see what sort of tracks, save his own, had been left in the sand with their toes pointed toward the opening. He needn't go in very far to discover that much.
He went in again to where the sand was moist and smooth save where feet had pressed into it the imprint of their passing. He saw his own tracks, the toes deep printed to prove how fast he had run, bowed down to avoid the low roof of the tunnel. He shivered a little when he remembered poignantly the stark terror that had driven him forward at the last. Then there were the tracks of those two—the beast and the man—going back into the dark. But save his own there were no tracks coming out. And yet
Shelton forced himself to make sure; forced himself to examine the sand floor closely, from wall to wall. Twice he went across the tunnel, holding the candle close to earth, so interested in the search that he forgot to fear what the dark might hold even then. It was a fact. There were tracks going in; his own, and the tracks of Burney and of the beast; and there were his own tracks coming out, with the toes pressed deep. That was all.
And yet—something must have come out, since Dutch was gone; for Dutch would have stood there dozing in the sun all day with his reins dropped, had not something very much out of the ordinary brought his horse instincts to the front of his long years of range training. Shelton did not know that, though he did have great faith in Dutch's standing where he was left until one went and got him. To be sure, some one might have ridden Dutch off—but there were no tracks!
Shelton came out again and stood irresolute in the sunshine. Of course, the first thing to do was to find Dutch. He realized that, and set off down the cañon—considerably relieved to be out again in the familiar world of bright blue sky and drifting white clouds, and the grays and browns and blacks of the surrounding hills. When he had gone a little distance, he turned and studied the ledges of that hillside; but he could not see where the cave had any other possible opening, and so he went on, puzzling over the mystery of it. What the deuce was it that had screamed like that? What kind of an animal could run over wet sand and leave not a trace of passing? What would Burney be doing in that cave? And then, who had killed those sheep Vida had told him about, and the dog that had been "squashed"?
He was so engrossed in trying to fit answers to his own questions that he wandered into a branch of the cañon that he knew nothing about. Going up, there had seemed to be no way except the one he traveled; going down, other gorges appeared like the knotted fingers of an open hand. Into one of these he blundered, and thought it strange because he found no trace of Dutch, nor the opening into the larger cañon, nor any rock or turn that looked familiar.
He went a long way before it even occurred to him that this might be a different gorge, and even when he suspected that he was not alarmed. He had his compass, you see. The Sunbeam Ranch lay to the west of Spook Hills, therefore the mere matter of getting home was perfectly simple—to an optimistic young fellow who knew nothing much about traveling in such a junk heap of nature's left-overs from mountain building.
He must have traveled for an hour and more without getting anywhere. He was beginning to wonder where he would be apt to strike that first cañon and overtake Dutch, when he saw something on a rock before him. A heap of old clothes, it looked like to him, and he was struck by the oddity of it. He went on more cautiously, but very curiously. Where were clothes, there should be people also.
He was quite close when the heap moved and a head, muffled in many grimy folds of some red stuff, swung round to him. Shelton was astonished to find the thing alive. He was more astonished when he discovered the heap to be not only alive, but a woman. A squaw, he knew from the samples he had seen at the railroad stations during the last few hours of his journey West, old and seamed and shrunken to match the hills.
Shelton went up to her and stood still. She appeared to be blind, for her lids were red and gummed almost shut, so that only the tiniest slits of bleary eyes could be seen. Still she stared at him almost as if she saw him. He did not quite know how to act with a creature like this, but his natural instincts impelled him to speech.
"How-de-do?" he began politely. "Do you live around here?"
She looked at him, and she shook her head. "No see," she muttered, and laid a bony finger to her eyes. "Long time headache—no see." Shelton had read of old crones who muttered and pointed and spoke prophecies in halting sentences like that. It tickled him to have stumbled upon one quite up to his ideas of what they should be like. For this crone certainly looked the part, and she muttered worse than he would have believed possible to the human voice, and she spoke with a perceptible pause between all the words. As to her uttering prophecies, that he still had to determine.
"Blind?" he asked sympathetically, sitting down upon a near-by rock and fanning himself with his hat. He was pretty tired, and it was hot. He looked, as he sat there, like a young man holidaying in the wild, who has stopped to rest and wait for the fellows to come up and join him. "Blind?"
"See—walk—lilly bit. Long time headache," she said, with her wizened palm pressed to her forehead. "What yo' name?"
Shelton told her, and he told her also that he was from the Sunbeam. "You know the Sunbeam? You know Mr. Burney's ranch?" he asked her, while he stuffed tobacco into his pipe. His lunch was tied to the saddle on Dutch—wherever that was.
"Burney—Aleck" she muttered, and stopped, her jaws gumming words soundlessly. "Aleck"
"Yes, his name's Aleck, too—though I didn't know any one ever called him that. You know him? Big man!"
"Big, big man—fadder—big man. Die long time. I know. I see Aleck—fadder die. Bear" she waved her skinny hand that was like a mummy's. "Bear kill. I see. Long time. I his woman. I see."
Shelton held his pipe sagging between his knees while he stared at her. Of course, he could only guess at what the old thing really meant, and she might be crazy, at that. But still "You mean you're Aleck Burney's mother?" he asked her, his incredulity showing plainly in his voice.
She shook her head at that, and muttered some Indian words. "No, no—Aleck—mudder—no," she denied. "His woman—Aleck—fadder."
Whatever she meant by that, it was about all that Shelton could get out of her. Her mind, it seemed to him, was as clouded as her vision; though it might be her Indian stolidity or her Indian taciturnity, or shyness, or any of those qualities which we tack upon the Indian nature.
He talked with her for a few minutes longer and got vague answers that meant to him nothing. For instance, when he asked her about any great bears in that country, she muttered Indian words under her breath until he asked her again and again, and then she told him, "Long time big bear kill" and that was as much as she spoke intelligibly. Shelton wanted to know if Burney's father was killed in these hills, and she shook her head and pointed an arm to the northward.
"Montana," she said, quite plainly. "Long time Aleck—lilly—boy." Which seemed definite enough surely, as far as it went. If she had seen anything of a bear in this neighborhood, she kept the fact to herself. Also she seemed not to know much about caves. "No see," she would mutter, and point to her eyes. Neither could Shelton discover where she lived, or whether she had any family to take care of her.
So presently he left her sitting there like a bundle of old clothes thrown in a heap upon a rock, and went on down the cañon.
Shelton used his compass freely, and by climbing laboriously over the ridge to his right, he got at last into the cañon he knew. After that he began looking for Dutch without any very cheering prospect of finding him, and he turned his toes toward the Sunbeam and plodded up the bluff to the upland thinking more of his own physical discomfort than of the bear whose hide he claimed for a rug. He had things in plenty to write home to the folks, but he was not caring much about it just then. He had wasted the day to no purpose, and it was growing dusky again, and he was ravenously hungry, with that hunger which the newcomer to the mountain States finds it so hard to appease.
And then he began to feel that he was being watched and followed. He stopped once behind a rock and waited, his jaw set to the point of stubbornness, and his gun leveled upon the way he had come. He waited for several minutes, and went on disgustedly, feeling that he had no time to fool away if he meant to get home before midnight. And when he went on he knew that something else went on cautiously, watchfully, upon his trail.
Curiously enough, he was not afraid; he was filled with a baffled anger because he could neither shake off the feeling nor catch a glimpse of the thing that caused it. He felt, as the dark settled down upon the sageland and left him even more completely isolated than he had been with the near company of the hills, like a child who has been teased to a sulky petulance. I think that Shelton must have owned an unusual amount of native courage, for under it all was forming a grim determination to run the thing to earth in spite of everything. His panic in the cave he called a fluke, a mere trick of the nerves, and he may have been right in that. He intended to go back and make a thorough search, and he debated within himself the advisability of trying to enlist the help of the boys. He did not believe they were really afraid of the spook. He did not believe they were afraid of anything on earth, when yon came right down to cases—which goes to prove that Shelton C. Sherman was not, after all, a fool; he was merely a young cub of a man who was growing up faster than he or any one realized, thanks to the rugged life he was leading that threw him more or less upon his own resources.
He dragged his weary bones into the bunk house just when the boys were smoking their last, before-bedtime cigarettes and wondering what had went with Shep—I am using their vernacular, understand, and I realize that it is a long way from being correct English.
"Why, hello, Shep," Spooky greeted him with a very sincere relief in his tone whether he was conscious of it or not. "We was just talking about ketching you up and putting a bell on, yuh. You're gitting to be such a little stray lamb" Spooky saw then that something was wrong, and he neglected to finish his sentence while he eyed Shelton through a haze of smoke.
Shelton had slumped down upon a bench as if he did not care whether he ever moved again or not. His face was pale under the new coat of sunburn, and his eyes were sunken and had purple shadows beneath, and the muscles of his cheeks sagged with complete physical exhaustion. Spider looked, yawned, and stretched his arms with an ostentatious casualness, and got up from the bed which he had been occupying lavishly with sprawled limbs.
"Better come and lay down, Shep," he suggested carelessly. When Shelton made no move he went over and took him by the arm as though he was impressing obedience upon a child. "That bunk's a whole lot more able and willing to hold you up than that pore little bench," he explained, and led the boy to the bed and pushed him gently down upon it. He pulled a pillow under Shelton's inert head, stooped and lifted Shelton's dragging feet, and laid them comfortably, pulled his own hat down nearer his eyebrows, and went out as casually as he had spoke at first.
He was back before Spooky and Jim had fairly begun questioning Shelton as to the cause of his all-in condition, and he carried the coffeepot and a plate of beans and bread, while a tin cup hung by its handle from one finger.
"Here, Shep, put yourself outside-a some grub," he commanded gruffly. "Coffee's cold, but it'll do the biz just the same—seeing you ain't froze." He poured a cup of black, muddy fluid, and compelled Shelton to rise to an elbow and drink every drop. Then he pulled a box close to the bunk, set the plate upon it within easy reach of Shelton's apathetic hand, and sat down negligently upon the other bunk, flicked the ashes off his cigarette, saw that it was cold, and fumbled for a match. "Go on and eat," he urged lazily. "Then you can tell us how about it."
Shelton ate a little, and he told "how about it." And the three listened attentively and without banter, while Pike snored raucously from a farther corner of the room. He told of the cave and of the tracks, and Spider leaned with an elbow on either knee and his feet swinging over the side of the bunk, and smoked and stared at the floor while he listened. He told of his panic of fright and of the scream and the sound of running in the dark—and Spooky opened his mouth half an inch and let it stay so, and forgot to smoke while he stared at Shelton's haggard face and listened to the tale. Jim sat with his arms folded Indian fashion, and chewed tobacco mechanically, and glanced now and then sidelong at the other two while he listened.
And so Shelton's story came down to the old squaw sitting in a heap on the rock in the cañon and manifesting such acuteness of hearing while her vision seemed pitiably blurred—and he told about her also and what she had said about Burney's father.
"That's right," Jim testified stolidly around his cud. "Burney's father was a squaw man up in Montana. He got clawed up by a bear in the Bitter Root country when Burney was a kid. I thought the old woman was dead long ago. She had a deformed kid by old man Burney. A feller that prospected up in the Bitter Root Mountains told me about it a long time ago. The kid died; it was half-witted or some darn thing. I thought the old woman was dead, too."
"Well, she isn't, it seems; but she's pretty wabbly in her mind," said Shelton, and went on with the story.
"And say, fellows," he said earnestly when he had described his long tramp home and his belief that he had been followed, "there's something behind all this. I don't know what, but I'm going to make it my business to find out. I don't believe Burney killed those sheep"
"What sheep?" interjected Spider, lifting his head for the first time since Shelton began to talk.
"Why, Williams' sheep. Vida told me. A lot of their sheep were killed last night, over the other side of that long ridge of Spook Hills, where her uncle is camped with a band. And say, fellows, their necks were wrung, she said. And she said that one of the dogs—she called him Laddie—ran out and was killed also. She said it had been 'squashed' so that its ribs were broken, and its neck twisted like the sheep. Can you beat that? She thinks Burney did it. She says he's the only one in the country strong enough—and, of course, that's true as far as it goes. But I think it was that bear I saw the tracks of."
"A bear," Spooky asserted, "wouldn't hardly kill sheep like that. He might come into a band and pack off one or two, and he might go through a band just cuffing 'em right an' left, like that." Spooky illustrated with thrashing arms the cuffing process, "He'd break their necks, I reckon, if he done that—or cave in their ribs or something. But it don't look natural—him grabbin' every sheep separate and wringin' its neck. That looks to me more—human." Spooky spoke with a certain reluctance and a certain inquiring look toward Spider.
"Didn't anybody see—it—or tracks or" Jim stopped to turn his tobacco cud.
"The sheep would tromp out any tracks," Spider told him shortly, shifting his position a little without looking up. There was a certain warped board in the floor which Spider appeared to find absorbingly interesting.
"Yeah—that's right," assented Jim.
"Why, Vida said her uncle ran out and got a glimpse of him going off over a little hill, where he—where it came right against the sky. And"—Shelton unconsciously lowered his voice and glanced toward the door—"she says her uncle would swear it was Burney. She said a person couldn't make any mistake in a man like him. But still"—his head dropped back wearily on the pillow—"I stick to the bear theory. A bear would go off on its hind legs, wouldn't it, if it were carrying a sheep?"
"It might. Probably it would," Spooky agreed relievedly. "Yes, come to think of it, I guess it would."
"Well, I say it was that bear, fellows. And I'm going to keep on hunting till I get him. They think Burney did it"
"Burney was home last night, wasn't he?" Spooky asked aggressively of no one in particular. "How could it be him?"
Spider cocked one eye in the direction of Spooky, lifted one eyebrow, and said never a word. How did they know whether Burney was at home? his look asked the other. As a matter of fact, it could be Burney, and each one of the four knew that it could. More than that, they knew that it probably was Burney. Even to Shelton, had he admitted it, the bear theory seemed a little far-fetched. Still—it did not seem quite like Aleck Burney to sneak into a man's band and kill sheep by stealth in that fashion. Burney would fight, as his men knew well; but always he had fought in the open, and had seemed to prefer that the odds should be against him—if there were odds. The very bigness of him and strength of him had always made him slow to take action. And the Williams sheep had not yet injured the Sunbeam range; nor had the Williams men done anything that might be construed as a beginning of hostilities. True, they were crowding close—too close to be welcome neighbors—and Burney had ridden over and told them so. That much was perfectly logical, understandable—right and just, according to range ethics. But to come that same night and kill sheep under the very nose of Jake Williams, and to sneak away afterward in the dark—that was something at which even the Sunbeam partisans balked.
Their talk dwindled after that. Shelton wondered once or twice what could have become of old Dutch, and Spooky told him that they would hunt him up to-morrow. Spider went out and stayed for a long time. When he returned he threw his hat down as if it had displeased him, and had no more than a grunt for Spooky, who showed a disposition to talk.
Shelton lifted his head and looked in Spider's direction for a minute. "Say, Spider, come over here and let me whisper in your ear," he said with his old, boyish tone. "I've got a sweet little message that nobody but you must hear. Come on—I promised her."
Spider paused in the act of pulling off a boot, and eyed Shelton crossly, caught a significant lowering of an eyelid, dropped the boot, and went and bent over Shelton, listening. And Shelton, instead of giving a message, asked one question. Spider's light-blue eyes looked steadily into Shelton's for a second before he answered, and the lurking little devil in them had changed to the gleam of steel.
"Gone!" he whispered, and went back and took off the other boot.
There were two in that cabin who slept little that night, and I think perhaps Spooky was inclined to lie awake and wonder over the mystery of Spook Hills.