The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West

On this evening, as we know, Captain Kidd received the sentries and ferreted about, but he came across none breaking his orders. Doña Rosario's habitation, along with the rest, appeared to be plunged in utter darkness.

As no doubt his captive reposed, the leader rubbed his hands gladly, and went to shut himself in his tent, so that Old Nick could not get at him, as the men playfully said.

We know by the foregoing chapter how the Carcajieu had made a mock of his contrivances.

After quitting the lieutenant, Drudge, with the passive obedience he showed, and the cunning he well concealed under seeming stupidity, began carrying out the order received.

It was then about half after ten.

It was a black night, the fine rain never ceased to fall, and, whisked under the natural vault by a rising wind, appeared to come from all quarters at once. There was no evading it; but Leon seemed quite heedless, though it must have pierced his insufficient garments. He stole away like an eel along the rocky edge, crossing the whole camp longwise till he attained the spot where the platform ended, and the cliff formed an unfathomable gulf where darkness deepened. He stopped short, and looked well about him to make sure he was alone.

Whether alone or not, neither he nor another could see any object though at touching distance. Reasoning that any watcher would, therefore, be perplexed to perceive him, the youth swiftly unwound a leather rope from about his middle. A giant pine leaned out from the precipice. To this he fastened one end of the lasso; coiling the slack up clear for running out in one hand, he attached the loop around a good-sized stone muffled with grass, which even frost had not killed, in a cranny.

He leaned over the gulf, and imitated with rare perfection the inquiring and rather mockingly intoned hiss of the whip snake calling for a mate. Any listener would have imagined that the reptile Don Juan, drowned out of his hole by the icy rain, was seeking with equal relish to taunt a rival or a ladylove to leave its burrow and respond to his challenge or advances. After having repeated this call several times, but without impatience, a similar answer came from below – short, sharp, shrill, angry, as if the rival snake was aroused and climbed up for a fight.

Most of the sentries were asleep, we know; and the others, whether experienced woodmen or not, would pay no attention to what seemed an ordinary incident of the night.

On receiving his reply, though, the youth flung the stone and coils out from him. Softened by the grassy matting, the stone could not be heard to land; but the snake hissed afresh, and the lariat was drawn taut.

The Drudge exhaled a long breath, as one delivered from mortal anguish.

In fact, it had not been an easy task in the perfect gloom, and guided by sound alone in a damp atmosphere, to swing a weighted cord to the very hand of a man expecting it. If, instead of his catching it, it had struck him in the face, he must have been full of fortitude not to have cried out. But chance had favoured the plotters.

Very soon, indeed, a figure loomed up, pulling the cord as well as clambering daringly up the cliff face, and with joyfulness leaped over the edge on solid ground.

"Thanks, my boy!" he muttered.

"Thank our Father above, Mr. Dearborn – it is He who did it all!" responded the youth.

"I beg your pardon, you have said the proper thing. It makes a fellow religiously inclined to be in such straits and miraculously pulled through them. Lead on, Leon, it is late – but first, let us undo the lasso, and efface the marks of my coming up and over."

"Are you not going back this way?"

"Dear, no; much obliged. In that little climb I nearly broke my neck a hundred times, short measure! Besides, it is not the getting out of the camp that will worry me. Make haste – the young ladies must be just dying from uneasiness."

Drudge unloosed the lasso and coiled it round him in a few minutes.

"Ready, sir?" he said.

"Show me the way. I am not able to get about – I cannot see at all."

"You need not fear, I know the road very well by this time."

"Where is Joe?"

"Don't know – want to see him?"

"Well, I should like to speak with him."

"¿Quién sabe?– who knows but we may run up against him?"

"Rather against him than a stranger. I feel like a housebreaker somehow; I suppose it is the night time, for our motive is good – even holy!"

"Come along. Take the bend of the lasso, and not a sound!"

"I am as mute as a statue."

Leon led the Englishman by the loop in the same direction he had taken to come. Dearborn stared and listened, but seemed to be the blind man in the game for all he perceived. On the other hand, the Drudge knew his path instinctively. In daylight he could hardly have gone more straight. After the still blundering march had continued some ten minutes, the leader halted.

"Here we are!" he whispered.

"Near the ladies' tent?" inquired the other.

"Within a step or two of Doña Rosario's tent; yes. Now, the rest is your affair."

"I suppose it is. But what can I do? I have never been further in than the dining room, so to flatter it. If I stumble over anything and make a noise, there will be an alarm, and all will be spoilt."

"That's true. I am sorry not to have thought of your having other eyes than mine. Follow me still, therefore."

"Good again. But, half a minute, my boy – where am I to find you in case I should require you?"

"Right here, sir, where we are standing. Must I not keep a lookout for your retreat?"

"So you must. You are right every time. I hardly know what I am about in saying or doing. The mere thought of speaking with the young lady freely unhinges me so that I – I fluctuate like a door in the wind."

"Be a man, sir; remember that on what you arrange in this interview is risked, not only your life, of which I do not know the value, but those of the two young ladies, one of which is as precious to me, sir, as the other, I daresay, to you."

"You touch my very heart, boy! – The idea terrifies me! But still it gives me the pluck which was oozing out at my fingers' ends. I feel up to the mark again. Come what may, I shall behave like a man, I believe. On again."

"Come on, but, more than before, silently! Hush, hush!"

They penetrated the marquee, the thick curtain, made heavier by the rain, falling behind them with a dull sound so sinister as to make them shudder. So does a pall flap on the bier in a sepulchral vault.

For over half an hour the two girls had not exchanged a syllable. The whizz and strokes of the timepiece bestirred them at last.

"Eleven," muttered Doña Rosario, impatiently and mournfully. "Oh, your friend will never come."

"Stop, stop; he is here!" ejaculated Ulla, rising, and restraining her deep joy from loud expression.

The pretended guide stood in the doorway, holding up the screen, and contemplating the two lovely creatures, whose fate might be determined by his mission, with as much love for one as pity for the other. After his great excitement and the strain on his nerves, he was pale. His right hand came round upon his heart to compress its throbbings; but his eyes flashed brightly with bravery, and his manly face was covered with gladness. His gaze centred on Miss Maclan, and approaching the cushion which she quitted, he seemed about to fall on his knees, thankful that they were met again. Rosario drew herself away into the corner, smiling and thoughtful at this knightly reverence.

"I am afraid this captivity is chafing upon you," he said, clear-sighted as a lover is to the least trace of sorrow on beloved features.

"It is true," she answered softly, "but my misfortunes have but begun. Think rather of what this poor young lady must have endured for a year, all alone in misery with not one to share her burden; friendless, in a strange, desolate region, far from all that makes living sweet. She has to believe that she is absolutely ignored."

"No more than you has she been forgotten," returned Dearborn, though without looking away from the person he addressed.

"Alas, sir, this being true," observed the Spanish girl gently, "at least, grant that it is so much misfortune that makes me unjust. It makes anyone hard, though with the best of tempers. I daresay I am wilful, petulant. Oh, I am! And all that – but look at my having to keep up the struggle all the time with misfortune. And I am only a girl too – a child, they say in the North, whose early years were passed in joyous, happy peace, surrounded by dear schoolmates, very kind to me. When the storm unexpectedly burst upon me, I felt as if I should never outlive it."

"Don't talk so, dear," cried Miss Maclan, with that proneness of distressed females to forget the tangible danger in order to condole over a sentimental grievance, which, in this case, simply maddened the male bystander. "Your sorrows are well nigh at an end, I feel assured. You are going to save her, are you not, Mr. Dearborn; and I love you, Rosie, I love you very much."

"I am easier," said the Mexican girl, "ever since this gentleman came into the camp; but still, you must not be too confident! The men you are matched with are very wicked ones, and there are ever so many of them too."

"Well, my friends count up to a good number. I have not started on this errand without knowing what may be my support. Our friends are brave and strong, and having their promise to help, I could be confident. To say nothing of the remains of your father's company, Miss Maclan, there is one man, the leader of the trappers – "

"You mean Mr. Ridge," exclaimed Rosario, sharply.

"Yes; they call him the Yager of the Yellowstone. He's an American – "

"That's the one! If he is on your side, you need not much fear."

"So you know him?"

"So does Ulla there, from my talking to her about him as a devoted friend of my family. With that man on the lookout to save me, together with his companion, the Cherokee, Mr. Williams, I do look up again with the hope that I shall be rescued from this wretch, the Captain."

"Well, things stand thus. Before morning I expect to see Ridge, and to concert with him on hurrying on the time for the removal of all you ladies from this camp."

"Heaven hears you! I pray it will help you."

"It is possible we may find assistance among Kidd's men too."

"Have a care, sir! All I have seen are very hangdog fellows," and Ulla shuddered.

"I know that. Be sure that I shall make no friends without the greatest prudence. I only trust, too, so far the Captain's right-hand man."

"Oh, you mean Joe?" broke in Rosario, joyfully.

"He worked this round so that we are in communion. He suggested my seeing you too. I do not know how he managed it, but he has levelled off obstacles. Besides, he brought me into relations with a young fellow, almost a boy, who has been most useful to me, I assure you. Without his helping hand, I could not have gained this place."

"Ah! You allude to poor Drudge now," said the two girls, with the same affectionate pity.

"That's the boy. But allow me to ask you, Doña, if you have had a long knowledge of them?"

"Ever since I quitted the borders in charge of these ruffians."

"Well, what is your opinion of them; your cold drawn opinion of them, as they say? You will readily understand that I am too much of a stranger to this part of the world, and such queer uncommon persons as I meet, to judge quickly."

"They bewilder me too," added Miss Maclan.

"They both have done me great services. They say they are devoted to you, Doña Rosario, but as nothing proves to me yet that this devotion is not assumed, I fear to be cheated, and even that I am cheated in trusting them so far. Nothing more closely resembles a good servant than a hypocritical one, and between ourselves, I must own that Corky Joe has no winning countenance, better ones have hung a man."

The girls laughed, Rosario the heartier.

"Poor Joe!" she exclaimed, "His face is not a good passport, but he is not to blame for that."

"I do not blame him for that, certainly," returned the Englishman, "and I do not say that is sufficient grounds for mistrusting him."

"You would make a mistake in that case, Señor Dearborn," said the Mexican, becoming serious. "He's a fine fellow, and I place my confidence in him."

"What do you think, Miss Maclan?"

"I agree with my friend; she has the proof in her hands that the Carcajieu stays near her to help her in case of dire need."

"Yes, but how and why? Do you mean to say he is placed near you by someone?"

"By that Mr. Ridge, perhaps?" suggested Miss Maclan.

"That may be," answered Rosario, contemplatively.

"Ridge is an extraordinary man," said Ranald, thoughtful himself. "He has a wonderful influence over the white trappers and hunters, wild Indians, and these Red River Half-breeds, who hate the Canadians and Americans alike, and yet respect him. They tell me that important quarrels have been decided by his plain word, and never any murmuring from the party who lost."

"But to return to the lieutenant," said Ulla.

"Yes," took up her friend, "of his true faithfulness I have ample evidence. It is a secret which I have promised to keep. Please do not doubt him any more."

"Here's another mystery! They talk of the plain, straight men of the wild frontier life, and, on the contrary, every other man seems to be a hero of romance or of the Newgate Calendar. This Joe makes me uneasy, like the gentleman, spruce, trim, quiet, with a sharp eye, whom one sees as a boy about one's father's house, and whom one imagines fearfully to be a detective to arrest the butler for stealing spoons; or a sheriff's officer to arrest papa, and who turns out to be a picture dealer come to see if the smoky old picture, so long our target for puffballs, in the library is a genuine Snyders or not. It is clear for me that your lieutenant wears a mask, and no pretty one either!"

"Perhaps the better to suit the faces around us, sir," replied Ulla, forcing a laugh. "These are white men's, but, really, the red Indian's, painted for war, is not more intolerable!"

"¡Dios mío!" interjected Rosario, "What's the odds! Are we not all other than what we seem here? Is not every one of us wearing a mask from Captain Kidd down?"

"In his case, it has slipped aside a minute," broke in a deep voice.

The girls started back in alarm.

"Who's that?" cried Ranald, turning round, and putting his hand to his belt, none too swiftly if there had been danger.

It was the subject of their former conversation, the Carcajieu.

"I mean to say," continued he, in a cold, stern voice, more authoritative than they had ever heard before, "that though your disguise and my own still preserve our identity, it is no longer so with our good Captain Kidd. I have succeeded in having an unimpeded look at his phiz."

"Can it be true?" ejaculated Rosario, clasping her hands.

"You have succeeded?" repeated Ranald.

"Yes; thanks to the clue you placed for me. Thank you very much."

"So you have fairly viewed him?"

"Yes; face to face – free from paint and feather – for upwards of half an hour, without his having the faintest warrant for imagining that I had him under the lens."

"Ah! That's why you announced yourself in that rather theatrical manner you use out here?"

"Theatrical, eh? Well, if you mean tragic, you are right, sir. By the way you were worried about who placed me on guard over this young lady? I heard that too. Nothing to apologise for. Well; it is not over the young lady that I am placed, and it is not Jim Ridge that orders me here and there. I am attached to Captain Kidd, ladies, and Mr. Guide," said Joe, with an ominous smile, "and it is Uncle Sam that set me on him. That is all I can say. As for listening to your talk, I did it because of a powerful interest. It is only then I do play the spy, I hope."

"It does not matter a bit, sir!" cried Rosario, in her impulsive way. "This time, as a listener, you have heard good of yourself – but I shall never have done praising you; but go on and tell us about that dreadful man!"

"I came for that, and I waste no time, for it is valuable. To be brief – the commander of these scoundrels, calling himself Kidd, is not Kidd at all, but a younger man – looking thirty, but may be more. He's dark enough to be taken for an Indian or Mexican. He's a handsome man for those that like the King of the Gambler's type. I know that under the name of 'Hank,' which is Harry, Brown, rather notorious down South, he has been outlawed by the Government. Folks laugh at the District Courts, but as their warrant commands the military to lend hand for an arrest, I guess Mr. Brown thought it judicious to leave civilization. But even that name may not be his original one, or really his. It may conceal something blacker in the past. For one, may not Hank Brown be Corvino, or Cornelio Bustamente, whose portrait you traced, señorita?"

"As you spoke the same idea struck me, I do not know why. The more I think it over, the more solid the impression becomes. Besides, this Cornelio Bustamente was the bounden friend of Don Miguel Tadeo de Castel Leon."

"His agent in the shameful scheme to which you fell a victim," added the lieutenant quickly; "but where is Don Miguel, then, the infernal fiend who wrought out the plot? How is it he has contrived to get away without leaving any traces? It is important to learn that. Well, well, this is not interesting to you," he continued, looking over to Ulla and Ranald, who were not engrossed in this turn of the conversation. "We shall discover him, too, Heaven helping us! I have a clue that satisfies me, and sooner or later the whole skein must be in my grip. Ladies, have faith in me and in Jim Ridge; both, on our sides, are going to see this game out, or our bones shall whiten the mountains."

"Mr. Joe, I have entire faith in you."

"And I!"

"I, too!"

In his hands the lieutenant pressed the three held out to him with the same sincerity, Rosario's warmest with gratitude.

"Thank you all. But time is up! Say good bye, Mr. Dearborn, and follow me close."

"Aren't we to know any more?"

"Nothing to tell," returned Joe, bluntly. "Mr. Dearborn, five minutes to take your leave of the ladies. In your place, I should want ten!" he added, gallantly.

Luckily, Ulla was not a weakling, and into whatever danger her friend was about to plunge, she would not indulge in any demonstration of emotion before the Mexican. After her kind, the Scotch girl was as calm as an Indian. But the young man had been brought up in similar society, and comprehended what was under the ice. He felt her hand quiver in his, and noticed a faintly jealous glance when, in what he thought obligatory courtesy in the Spanish mode, he kissed Rosario's little hand.

"Six minutes!" said Joe at the door flap, in a railing tone.

Guided with brotherly care through the camp, Dearborn was taken to an outlet where he went away unnoticed. Joe watched his figure melt into the darkness, and muttered:

"That young man is awfully in love with the Scotch girl. They make a good pair. We must save them as well as this fiery spark of a Mexican. She's more my style. This would be no kind of a world if such as they were tormented, and a vile creature like Brown had a good time of it in the big cities."

Getting back to Rosario's tent, he relieved the Drudge for the last time, and, throwing himself down in the damp, slept or pondered, which none could say, till the peep of day.

CHAPTER XXIII

A FOREST LETTER

Leaving the amiable Captain Kidd for the time being, but promising not to be slow in returning to him, we hasten to Old Nick's Jump, where we left a character as important and far more agreeable.

After having carried out their project in favour of the white women and their captors, the hunters deemed it wise to remain sheltered in the cavern. It was not from any likelihood of the Crow Indians making reprisals; it was clear enough that they had not recognized them, and had not lately been trying to trace them. The reason of their "laying low," i. e., lying perdu, was more powerful; Jim Ridge had to wait for intelligence before he would strike out.

The only persons excepted from this embargo were Filditch and Cherokee Bill, thanks to which exception Lottery Paul received the drubbing that gave him "funny bones all over."

These two were outliers to the rest, beating the bushes beyond the Jump-off incessantly.

In their exploration, they found out that they had not helped honest emigrants but the Half-breeds, and that the women were more likely to be their captives than their wives and children. They had been carried almost too far in their love for humankind, and the border law that colour must defend its own colour.

It is only fair to the Yager to admit that, even on learning that he had defended mongrels he was not sorry. He did not trouble himself any farther about them, but still thought of their prisoners.

Such was the state of things four days after the Crows had been beaten off. Some forty trappers, hunters, and the Scotch Canadians were actively cleaning up their firearms, and packing several days' provisions, all in anticipation of an expedition.

It was about midday, and the remains of deer meat and broken biscuit denoted that dinner had not long been finished.

"How are you getting on, boys?" demanded Jim, who had been busied in the same way as the others.

"First-rate, all ready!" replied one for the troop.

"That's the prime article! Now then, put out your feet! We must camp down tonight, a goodish stretch from here."

"You mean business?" inquired a Scot.

"Decided busy business," was the reply; "come this nightfall, we shall know jest whar we are located."

"But Bill and the Californian left us, as usual, at sunrise; whar 'bouts do we gather 'em in?"

"Don't you flurry," said Jim, "they have run on ahead, not to frolic, but to clear the trail and select a camping ground."

"Nothing to keep us here, eh?"

"Not a thing."

"Then we're off!" cried the party, all afoot, and everything buckled on.

"Come on!"

The whole band quitted the retreat by the subterranean way already described.

It was a cold but fine morning, the air pure, the sky blue. The sun had pretty well thawed the snow, and as a grizzled old trapper said: "Just the weather for a feller to go ten miles a-sparking his gal." The party moved in Indian or single file at a good, regular pace, which took them briskly away from the starting point. As the horses were useless, they were left behind under guard.

The course brought the long string of men past the Red River company, and Ridge remarked with some surprise that they who had been so long quiet now showed signs of pulling up stakes and departing. It was to coalesce with Kidd. This set Ridge thinking, and even made him uneasy. Still, he let no evidence of this appear, but went on in meditation. He was not the man to neglect any precaution, or learning what this movement portended. Whilst walking on he was fingering several pebbles which he had merely mechanically picked up, as an observer would have thought.

On coming to a place where their route made an elbow, he stopped, without saying anything to his followers, whom he let pass in review. When the last had utterly gone from sight, and he was sure no one else had an eye on him, he picked out three trees, which naturally formed a very regular triangle. Into each of these three he climbed to the crotch, where he scratched a ledge in the mossy bark, very like what a bird would make hunting for grubs. He kept the moss and grated wood carefully, and laid the stone in the little shelf, where it rested almost invisible, unless to an experienced eye, and that, too, looking for it. After having executed this operation on all three trees, we say, the Yellowstone Yager made a heap of all the moss and débris at the foot of the one which was apex to the trio. Leading up to this cone, scattered over with leaves, he placed lines of stones, to say nothing of other arrangements of pebbles which, though to all seeming in disorder, undoubtedly conveyed a meaning, for he went over them, and, like a printer correcting his types, modified them scrupulously.

Having once more scrutinised the neighbourhood, to be certain he had no spy on him, he took up his rifle and strode off, merrily whistling to himself, to overtake his comrades, who had not slackened their gait for him.