THE pack mule wrenched loose and went off at a -gallop. Herring’s mule snapped its taut rope and followed. The yelling redskins closed in. Arrows twinkled and hissed: lead slugs whined. Carson fired from the saddle. Herring fired; Laforay nursed his aim while they reloaded at speed.
Again the enemy’s charge split, this time with two saddle pads empty.
“Fort!” The word broke from Carson. The others obeyed it, confident in his judgment. It was fort or nothing now.
Carson sprang off. knife to throat of his crippled horse, severed the jugular and with a powerful shove, threw the dying beast. Herring’s animal was down likewise, so that the three dead and dying bodies formed a triangle. All was done with swift precision, lives hanging on instants. Now from the parapets of ribby flesh the three rifles commanded the approaches. “Fort”— this meant sacrifice of horses, of all else, in the last desperate stand from which was no escape .…
The hours passed.
Once, twice, three times the young warriors tried, but they stood not for punishment.
Now. in another interval, they paused in widened circle, resting their mounts while they gibed, taunted, promising the end with word and gesture.
There was a new outburst of savage yells. The surrounding Indians were facing to the south. Carson squinted.
“More of the devils,” he said.
“Two-a-coming.” said Herring. “More behind, likely.”
Laforay’s Indian eyes were the sharpest, however.
“Non! One is woman. Slim like that Go Everywhere Woman. Man is Blackfoot.”
“Plenty Eagle!” Carson ejaculated in recognition. The two figures were riding fast and hard. Plenty Eagle, yes. And with him Marie, no other — Shunan’s daughter. Carson blinked amazedly.
The pair came racing in. They met the young warriors, were surrounded by them; the talk was furious gesticulant, heated. The three whites watched. wondering what it all meant. Then the girl rode forward toward them, bareheaded and glowing, flung up a hand in the peace sign, and hailed. Her voice came clearly.
“The young men did wrong. You have your lives; I give them to you Take Little Chief and go into the mountains. We leave you three horses and your mules. It shall be rendezvous in Oregon. Let your hearts be good, and good hunting!”
She turned and was gone, with the breaking group. They all went, taking their dead, leaving three horses and the captured mules and packs.
Utter amazement sat upon all three watchers.
“That girl, she big medicine,” clacked Laforay.
Carson leaped the barricade, rifle in hand, anger still hot in him — anger at Plenty Eagle, at everyone. Unreasoning, glowing anger. The others followed him. caught the horses and mules, then stood indecisive.
“Where were you fellers heading with your packs?” Carson demanded.
“Well, it’s early season yet,” Herring said. “We calculated to mosey through until we could cross and set traps.”
“Huh? West of the mountains?”
“Well, that’s most likely ground.” Herring said sheepishly. Carson realized the truth. The girl dancer in Santa Fe had beguiled these two.
“I know Hudson’s Bay people.” Laforay prated. “They be glad to see us.”
Carson mounted, settled himself on the saddle pad.
“I'm for Bent’s, or for Taos by way of the Ute country,” he said. “I’ll hunt meat this spring for the post.”
“Non. non!” protested Laforay urgently. “My medicine show us together on the trap-line. It tell me to bring traps for you. Kit. We bring plenty.”
Carson deliberated, gaze first to the southward, then to the snowy peaks in the northwest. “Rendezvous in Oregon,” she had just said. What rendezvous? One with her? Or the regular fur-trade rendezvous next summer, across the mountains in the valley of the Green?
She would be there, and Shunan. Singing Bird, the Arapaho girl, would be there. He had warned Shunan to let that girl alone. She was marked out for him; not a matter of mawkish sentiment, either. But this Marie, this Go Everywhere Woman, she stirred queer depths in a man.
“Kit. don't fight medicine and lose your hair.” warned Herring. “That back trail is danger trail. You’d be jumped sure.”
Something in that; the argument shook him. Besides. Herring and Laforay had packs, had extra traps for him. Here was an outfit all ready for him, and sure companions.
“To blazes with the Hudson’s Bay!” he blurted out. “But I tell you, I’ll trap through till the summer rendezvous, and get pelts enough to pay McKay what I owe him.”
“You talk straight.” approved Herring. He cocked an eye at the sun, and at the mountains. “Fur’s the word, then! If the woman spiles by waiting, we’ll ketch another. Snow’ll be melting, streams running, beaver be out buildin’ up their dams. We’ll float our sticks by easy stages till rendezvous time, and join the big palaver on the Green. Git off your hoss. Kit. Smoke on it. Don't jump off like a scairt rabbit.”
“Bon! Smoke, Kit.” Laforay squatted, brought out pipe and kinnikinnick bag. Carson looked down at the two. dismounted, and joined them. Here was crisis and decision.
Carson looked from one to the other.
“I say yes,” he agreed. “And after rendezvous, throw in with Jim Bridger for the fall hunt.”
Laforay nodded assent. They had decided. Half an hour later they were riding away toward the mountains.
***
Carson, turning in his saddle to look back at camp, ere making his morning round of the traps, was well satisfied.
This was the “high country.” Two weeks they had camped here. The aspens were in full leaf. The squaw-berries weighting the bushes were beginning to turn red; spring was soon and swiftly merging with the mountain summer Beaver packs were getting heavy.
The rendezvous market lay at end of trail, at the foot of the western slopes, in the Green River valley. Thomas McKay of the Hudson’s Bay would be there. Shunan and his daughter, too. And more, Singing Bird would be there with the northern Arapahoes. If a man took an Indian girl for his lodge, he could find none better than Singing Bird. And there must be a keeper: a lodge was no home without one. It was a matter of custom, of comfort, of necessity.
In a few days more camp would be moved. The streams at hand had been well trapped. Herring had ridden in one direction, Laforay in another, to follow the waters to their forks and run traps there. Beaver were in plenty. Carson himself was to take the main stream.
He sent his horse on, leaving the camp to the two pack-mules, the graining blocks of smoothed, tilted stumps, the willow stretching-hoops, and the plunder of glossy peltries taken. Reaching the trap-line, Carson tethered his horse, and with his rifle in hand, trudged on to the first trap. Here it was. The chain from the planted pole was slack. No beaver at the end of it, then; the trap had not been sprung. Carson went on to the next, and here the chain was taut, out into deep water. He waded out, to haul the chain up and in. The anchoring carcass resisted him. Then it came, slowly surging to the surface. The first glimpse, as it rose through the amber current, braced him back with sheer astonishment. It glimmered there weird, pallid.
Now it broke into the daylight, swinging sodden and limp at his knees, touching him with the cold stiffness of death, as with its dragging trap it tugged at his arms. He stared, unbelieving, wholly incredulous, distrusting his eyes.
For it was a white beaver—the body of a large she-beaver. A dirty white as yet, stained as it was with muck, but of indubitable white nevertheless. White fur under his fingers, glossy as it parted, pure and lovely white.
Towing the thing, he made for the bank, and there sprung the trap jaws, plucked the hindleg free, then carried the beaver on among the bushes and stood over it. The stream rippled peacefully; the timber was silent; but his heart was thumping as he stared down. White beaver! White beaver woman—she-beaver—no, it was impossible. But here it was.
He squatted down, drew his knife, and with swift decision flung himself into the work. In short time he had the pelt off. He washed off the mud and dirt, and examined the fur again. White, yes—the whole fur was a perfect white. The tail and paws were dark like those of common beaver.
A thing unique, this, and all his own; the destiny of an empire in his grasp. Perhaps in other years some medicine man had glimpsed this very animal, and the tale had spread, had been turned to use. This was the medicine sign. There could scarcely be another. In all the yarns of campfire, rendezvous and trading-post, no white beaver had come to trap. Dark brown, light brown, yellowish, curiously blotched with white scars, yes, but never all white.
THIS vicinity was not Oregon by a good deal. It was east of the divide; that was of small importance. The skin itself, wherever produced, would be fact enough. Let this medicine skin once pass by swift messengers from tribe to tribe, and there went the empire of mountains and plains, tossed hither and thither upon the tides of swift fanatic war A sign given by the Great Spirit! Not any redskin, friend or foe, but would believe implicitly.
The buzzing thoughts, the whirling possibilities, quieted. This medicine pelt was not to be seen by any Indian eye. No, not even by Herring or Laforay; their tongues must wag, could not be trusted. Too much was at stake. Destroy it? That were wisdom, perhaps, but Carson could not. This pelt was worth a small fortune.
To work, then! Carson scraped the skin with minute care, bent a willow hoop, and presently had the skin stretched over the hoop. It was too green to pack now. He hung it to dry in the sun and breeze, high in an open spot, secure from all varmints.
He lingered in camp until, with late afternoon, Herring and Laforay went forth to bait and run their traps anew. Then, taking his own bale of furs with him, he rode away and came back to where he had left the pelt. The heart shook in him as he fingered it again, saw it glossy white, unchanged, beautiful. It was dry enough, well enough cured; a prime fur, first quality.
Carson folded it small so that no edges showed, and stowed it carefully in the middle of his bale. He compressed the bale, tied it again, hastily went Over his traps, and managed to beat the other two back into camp.
Next morning Carson was riding for a full hour and more, before he left his horse and footed on, upstream, to reach the first trap.
It was gone: only the dry aspen pole, scarred by the steel ring, remained. Trap-thieves!
He went on to the next trap. This was gone, like the first. Carson went on grimly. Every one of his six traps was gone.
Alarmed, now, Carson rode hard for home.
The camp was singularly silent. He stared in blank dismay. The two mules lay stiff-legged, shot with arrows. The camp equipage had been wantonly scattered about, and the baled pelts had disappeared.
He stood silent, rocked by the disaster. He was poor again; the thieves were richer than they knew. Everything was gone from his grasp. As he stood, the pad-pad of quick hoofbeats brought him around. Herring was riding in and Laforay also, with hot oaths.
“All my traps stole!” rasped Laforay. “Camp cleaned out, too!”
“Yep. Packs gone,” agreed Herring. “Same with your traps, Kit?”
“Every one lifted before sun-up. Warriors. The party watched the camp, saw us leave, came in and cleaned it. Moccasin sign.”
Carson walked over to one of the dead mules, and tore an arrow free. He turned it, examined it.
“It’s a Ute point. Looked to me as if the moccasin print I saw was Blackfoot, but a wet moccasin spreads. I’ll keep this for sure token.”
Quickly the three gathered a few discarded articles, and loosed rein along the trail. Laforay led, but there was nothing hidden about the trail. Eight horses, going full speed northward by easiest course.
In an hour by sun, the trail broadened and deepened, easily read by Iroquois eyes. Other squads had joined in; these would be the trap thieves. Now the horses numbered around a score.
On and on they rode, following the trail as the day wore and waned.
On a ridge Laforay drew to a halt.