第98章

It was no small achievement to turn some twenty shivering, balky, stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter and swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail again. But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his encouraging refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion dynamically bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without the straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing, shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce charge upon the laggards hustling the long straggling line onwards through the whirling drifts without pause or falter.

Occasionally he dropped back beside Cameron, who brought up the rear, bringing a word of encouragement or approval.

"How do they ever keep the trail?" asked Cameron on one of these occasions.

"Little Thunder does the trick. He is the greatest tracker in this country, unless it is his cayuse, which has a nose like a bloodhound and will keep the trail through three feet of snow. The rest of the bunch follow. They are afraid to do anything else in a blizzard like this."

So hour after hour, upward along mountainsides, for by this time they were far into the Rockies, and down again through thick standing forests in the valleys, across ravines and roaring torrents which the warm weather of the previous days had released from the glaciers, and over benches of open country, where the grass lay buried deep beneath the snow, they pounded along. The clouds of snow ever whirling about Cameron's head and in front of his eyes hid the distant landscape and engulfed the head of the cavalcade before him. Without initiative and without volition, but in a dreamy haze, he sat his pony to which he entrusted his life and fortune and waited for the will of his mysterious companion to develope.

About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and dropped in beside Cameron's pony.

"A chinook coming," said Raven. "Getting warmer, don't you notice?"

"No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do feel a little more comfortable," replied Cameron.

"Sure thing. Rain in an hour."

"An hour? In six perhaps."

"In less than an hour," replied Raven, "the chinook will be here.

We're riding into it. It blows down through the pass before us and it will lick up this snow in no time. You'll see the grass all about you before three hours are passed."

The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction. With incredible rapidity the temperature continued to rise. In half an hour Cameron discarded his mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket.

The wind dropped to a gentle breeze, swinging more and more into the southwest, and before the hour was gone the sun was shining fitfully again and the snow had changed into a drizzling rain.

The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air became sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the rivulets became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents which they had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them away.

The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature. He was in high glee. It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.

"We will make it all right!" he shouted to Little Thunder as they paused for a few moments in a grassy glade. "Can we make the Forks before dark?"

Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it expressed doubt.

"On then!" he shouted. "We must make these brutes get a move on.

They'll feed when we camp."

So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies that were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the chinook had already melted the snow. Mercilessly and savagely the trader, with whip and voice and charging stallion, hustled the wretched animals into the trail once more. And through the long afternoon, with unceasing and brutal ferocity, he belabored the faltering, stumbling, half-starved creatures, till from sheer exhaustion they were like to fall upon the trail. It was a weary business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of Nighthawk seemed to have passed into his master, and with an insistence that knew no mercy together they battered that wretched bunch up and down the long slopes till at length the merciful night fell upon the straggling, stumbling cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.

At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt, rode to the rear and grunted something to his chief.

"What?" cried Raven in a startled voice. "Stonies! Where?"

Little Thunder pointed.

"Did they see you?" This insult Little Thunder disdained to notice. "Good!" replied Raven. "Stay here, Cameron, we will take a look at them."

In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an eager gleam in his eyes.

"Stonies!" he exclaimed. "And a big camp. On their way back from their winter's trapping. Old Macdougall himself in charge, I think. Do you know him?"

"I have heard of him," said Cameron, and his tone indicated his reverence for the aged pioneer Methodist missionary who had accomplished such marvels during his long years of service with his Indian flock and had gained such a wonderful control over them.

"Yes, he is all right," replied Raven, answering his tone. "He is a shrewd old boy, though. Looks mighty close after the trading end. Well, we will perhaps do a little trade ourselves. But we won't disturb the old man," he continued, as if to himself. "Come and take a look at them."