Superstition Trail

: The Virginian

We did not make thirty-five miles that day, nor yet twenty-five, for

he had let me sleep. We made an early camp and tried some unsuccessful

fishing, over which he was cheerful, promising trout to-morrow when we

should be higher among the mountains. He never again touched or came

near the subject that was on his mind, but while I sat writing my diary,

he went off to his horse Monte, and I could hear that he occasionally

talked to that friend.



Next day we swung southward from what is known to many as the Conant

trail, and headed for that short cut through the Tetons which is known

to but a few. Bitch Creek was the name of the stream we now followed,

and here there was such good fishing that we idled; and the horses and

I at least enjoyed ourselves. For they found fresh pastures and shade in

the now plentiful woods; and the mountain odors and the mountain heights

were enough for me when the fish refused to rise. This road of ours now

became the road which the pursuit had taken before the capture. Going

along, I noticed the footprints of many hoofs, rain-blurred but recent,

and these were the tracks of the people I had met in the stable.



"You can notice Monte's," said the Virginian. "He is the only one that

has his hind feet shod. There's several trails from this point down to

where we have come from."



We mounted now over a long slant of rock, smooth and of wide extent.

Above us it went up easily into a little side canyon, but ahead, where

our way was, it grew so steep that we got off and led our horses.

This brought us to the next higher level of the mountain, a space of

sagebrush more open, where the rain-washed tracks appeared again in the

softer ground.



"Some one has been here since the rain," I called to the Virginian, who

was still on the rock, walking up behind the packhorses.



"Since the rain!" he exclaimed. "That's not two days yet." He came and

examined the footprints. "A man and a hawss," he said, frowning. "Going

the same way we are. How did he come to pass us, and us not see him?"



"One of the other trails," I reminded him.



"Yes, but there's not many that knows them. They are pretty rough

trails."



"Worse than this one we're taking?"



"Not much; only how does he come to know any of them? And why don't he

take the Conant trail that's open and easy and not much longer? One man

and a hawss. I don't see who he is or what he wants here."



"Probably a prospector," I suggested.



"Only one outfit of prospectors has ever been here, and they claimed

there was no mineral-bearing rock in these parts."



We got back into our saddles with the mystery unsolved. To the Virginian

it was a greater one, apparently, than to me; why should one have to

account for every stray traveller in the mountains?



"That's queer, too," said the Virginian. He was now riding in front of

me, and he stopped, looking down at the trail. "Don't you notice?"



It did not strike me.



"Why, he keeps walking beside his hawss; he don't get on him."



Now we, of course, had mounted at the beginning of the better trail

after the steep rock, and that was quite half a mile back. Still, I had

a natural explanation. "He's leading a packhorse. He's a poor trapper,

and walks."



"Packhorses ain't usually shod before and behind," said the Virginian;

and sliding to the ground he touched the footprints. "They are not four

hours old," said he. "This bank's in shadow by one o'clock, and the sun

has not cooked them dusty."



We continued on our way; and although it seemed no very particular

thing to me that a man should choose to walk and lead his horse for a

while,--I often did so to limber my muscles,--nevertheless I began to

catch the Virginian's uncertain feeling about this traveller whose steps

had appeared on our path in mid-journey, as if he had alighted from the

mid-air, and to remind myself that he had come over the great face of

rock from another trail and thus joined us, and that indigent trappers

are to be found owning but a single horse and leading him with their

belongings through the deepest solitudes of the mountains--none of this

quite brought back to me the comfort which had been mine since we left

the cottonwoods out of sight down in the plain. Hence I called out

sharply, "What's the matter now?" when the Virginian suddenly stopped

his horse again.



He looked down at the trail, and then he very slowly turned round in his

saddle and stared back steadily at me. "There's two of them," he said.



"Two what?"



"I don't know."



"You must know whether it's two horses or two men," I said, almost

angrily.



But to this he made no answer, sitting quite still on his horse and

contemplating the ground. The silence was fastening on me like a spell,

and I spurred my horse impatiently forward to see for myself. The

footprints of two men were there in the trail.



"What do you say to that?" said the Virginian. "Kind of ridiculous,

ain't it?"



"Very quaint," I answered, groping for the explanation. There was no

rock here to walk over and step from into the softer trail. These second

steps came more out of the air than the first. And my brain played me

the evil trick of showing me a dead man in a gray flannel shirt.



"It's two, you see, travelling with one hawss, and they take turns

riding him."



"Why, of course!" I exclaimed; and we went along for a few paces.



"There you are," said the Virginian, as the trail proved him right.

"Number one has got on. My God, what's that?"



At a crashing in the woods very close to us we both flung round and

caught sight of a vanishing elk.



It left us confronted, smiling a little, and sounding each other with

our eyes. "Well, we didn't need him for meat," said the Virginian.



"A spike-horn, wasn't it?" said I.



"Yes, just a spike-horn."



For a while now as we rode we kept up a cheerful conversation about elk.

We wondered if we should meet many more close to the trail like this;

but it was not long before our words died away. We had come into a

veritable gulf of mountain peaks, sharp at their bare summits like

teeth, holding fields of snow lower down, and glittering still in full

day up there, while down among our pines and parks the afternoon was

growing sombre. All the while the fresh hoofprints of the horse and the

fresh footprints of the man preceded us. In the trees, and in the opens,

across the levels, and up the steeps, they were there. And so they were

not four hours old! Were they so much? Might we not, round some turn,

come upon the makers of them? I began to watch for this. And again my

brain played me an evil trick, against which I found myself actually

reasoning thus: if they took turns riding, then walking must tire them

as it did me or any man. And besides, there was a horse. With such

thoughts I combated the fancy that those footprints were being made

immediately in front of us all the while, and that they were the only

sign of any presence which our eyes could see. But my fancy overcame my

thoughts. It was shame only which held me from asking this question of

the Virginian: Had one horse served in both cases of Justice down at

the cottonwoods? I wondered about this. One horse--or had the strangling

nooses dragged two saddles empty at the same signal? Most likely; and

therefore these people up here--Was I going back to the nursery? I

brought myself up short. And I told myself to be steady; there lurked in

this brain-process which was going on beneath my reason a threat worse

than the childish apprehensions it created. I reminded myself that I was

a man grown, twenty-five years old, and that I must not merely seem like

one, but feel like one. "You're not afraid of the dark, I suppose?" This

I uttered aloud, unwittingly.



"What's that?"



I started; but it was only the Virginian behind me. "Oh, nothing. The

air is getting colder up here."



I had presently a great relief. We came to a place where again this

trail mounted so abruptly that we once more got off to lead our

horses. So likewise had our predecessors done; and as I watched the two

different sets of footprints, I observed something and hastened to speak

of it.



"One man is much heavier than the other."



"I was hoping I'd not have to tell you that," said the Virginian.



"You're always ahead of me! Well, still my education is progressing."



"Why, yes. You'll equal an Injun if you keep on."



It was good to be facetious; and I smiled to myself as I trudged upward.

We came off the steep place, leaving the canyon beneath us, and took to

horseback. And as we proceeded over the final gentle slant up to the

rim of the great basin that was set among the peaks, the Virginian was

jocular once more.



"Pounds has got on," said he, "and Ounces is walking."



I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he nodded as he fixed the

weather-beaten crimson handkerchief round his neck. Then he threw

a stone at a pack animal that was delaying on the trail. "Damn your

buckskin hide," he drawled. "You can view the scenery from the top."



He was so natural, sitting loose in the saddle, and cursing in his

gentle voice, that I laughed to think what visions I had been harboring.

The two dead men riding one horse through the mountains vanished, and I

came back to every day.



"Do you think we'll catch up with those people?" I asked.



"Not likely. They're travelling about the same gait we are."



"Ounces ought to be the best walker."



"Up hill, yes. But Pounds will go down a-foggin'."



We gained the rim of the basin. It lay below us, a great cup of

country,--rocks, woods, opens, and streams. The tall peaks rose like

spires around it, magnificent and bare in the last of the sun; and we

surveyed this upper world, letting our animals get breath. Our bleak,

crumbled rim ran like a rampart between the towering tops, a half circle

of five miles or six, very wide in some parts, and in some shrinking to

a scanty foothold, as here. Here our trail crossed over it between two

eroded and fantastic shapes of stone, like mushrooms, or misshapen heads

on pikes. Banks of snow spread up here against the black rocks, but

half an hour would see us descended to the green and the woods. I looked

down, both of us looked down, but our forerunners were not there.



"They'll be camping somewhere in this basin, though," said the

Virginian, staring at the dark pines. "They have not come this trail by

accident."



A cold little wind blew down between our stone shapes, and upward again,

eddying. And round a corner upward with it came fluttering a leaf of

newspaper, and caught against an edge close to me.



"What's the latest?" inquired the Virginian from his horse. For I had

dismounted, and had picked up the leaf.



"Seems to be interesting," I next heard him say. "Can't you tell a man

what's making your eyes bug out so?"



"Yes," my voice replied to him, and it sounded like some stranger

speaking lightly near by; "oh, yes! Decidedly interesting." My voice

mimicked his pronunciation. "It's quite the latest, I imagine. You had

better read it yourself." And I handed it to him with a smile, watching

his countenance, while my brain felt as if clouds were rushing through

it.



I saw his eyes quietly run the headings over "Well?" he inquired,

after scanning it on both sides. "I don't seem to catch the excitement.

Fremont County is going to hold elections. I see they claim Jake--"



"It's mine," I cut him off. "My own paper. Those are my pencil marks."



I do not think that a microscope could have discerned a change in

his face. "Oh," he commented, holding the paper, and fixing it with a

critical eye. "You mean this is the one you lent Steve, and he wanted

to give me to give back to you. And so them are your own marks." For a

moment more he held it judicially, as I have seen men hold a contract

upon whose terms they were finally passing. "Well, you have got it back

now, anyway." And he handed it to me.



"Only a piece of it!" I exclaimed, always lightly. And as I took it from

him his hand chanced to touch mine. It was cold as ice.



"They ain't through readin' the rest," he explained easily. "Don't you

throw it away! After they've taken such trouble."



"That's true," I answered. "I wonder if it's Pounds or Ounces I'm

indebted to."



Thus we made further merriment as we rode down into the great basin.

Before us, the horse and boot tracks showed plain in the soft slough

where melted snow ran half the day.



"If it's a paper chase," said the Virginian, "they'll drop no more along

here."



"Unless it gets dark," said I.



"We'll camp before that. Maybe we'll see their fire."



We did not see their fire. We descended in the chill silence, while the

mushroom rocks grew far and the sombre woods approached. By a stream we

got off where two banks sheltered us; for a bleak wind cut down over the

crags now and then, making the pines send out a great note through the

basin, like breakers in a heavy sea. But we made cosey in the tent.

We pitched the tent this night, and I was glad to have it shut out the

mountain peaks. They showed above the banks where we camped; and in the

starlight their black shapes rose stark against the sky. They, with the

pines and the wind, were a bedroom too unearthly this night. And as soon

as our supper dishes were washed we went inside to our lantern and our

game of cribbage.



"This is snug," said the Virginian, as we played. "That wind don't get

down here."



"Smoking is snug, too," said I. And we marked our points for an hour,

with no words save about the cards.



"I'll be pretty near glad when we get out of these mountains," said the

Virginian. "They're most too big."



The pines had altogether ceased; but their silence was as tremendous as

their roar had been.



"I don't know, though," he resumed. "There's times when the plains can

be awful big, too."



Presently we finished a hand, and he said, "Let me see that paper."



He sat readin, it apparently through, while I arranged my blankets to

make a warm bed. Then, since the paper continued to absorb him, I got

myself ready, and slid between my blankets for the night. "You'll need

another candle soon in that lantern," said I.



He put the paper down. "I would do it all over again," he began. "The

whole thing just the same. He knowed the customs of the country, and he

played the game. No call to blame me for the customs of the country. You

leave other folks' cattle alone, or you take the consequences, and it

was all known to Steve from the start. Would he have me take the Judge's

wages and give him the wink? He must have changed a heap from the Steve

I knew if he expected that. I don't believe he expected that. He knew

well enough the only thing that would have let him off would have been

a regular jury. For the thieves have got hold of the juries in Johnson

County. I would do it all over, just the same."



The expiring flame leaped in the lantern, and fell blue. He broke off

in his words as if to arrange the light, but did not, sitting silent

instead, just visible, and seeming to watch the death struggle of the

flame. I could find nothing to say to him, and I believed he was now

winning his way back to serenity by himself. He kept his outward man

so nearly natural that I forgot about that cold touch of his hand, and

never guessed how far out from reason the tide of emotion was even now

whirling him. "I remember at Cheyenne onced," he resumed. And he told

me of a Thanksgiving visit to town that he had made with Steve. "We

was just colts then," he said. He dwelt on their coltish doings, their

adventures sought and wrought in the perfect fellowship of youth. "For

Steve and me most always hunted in couples back in them gamesome years,"

he explained. And he fell into the elemental talk of sex, such talk

as would be an elk's or tiger's; and spoken so by him, simply and

naturally, as we speak of the seasons, or of death, or of any actuality,

it was without offense. It would be offense should I repeat it. Then,

abruptly ending these memories of himself and Steve, he went out of the

tent, and I heard him dragging a log to the fire. When it had blazed up,

there on the tent wall was his shadow and that of the log where he sat

with his half-broken heart. And all the while I supposed he was master

of himself, and self-justified against Steve's omission to bid him

good-by.





I must have fallen asleep before he returned, for I remember nothing

except waking and finding him in his blankets beside me. The fire

shadow was gone, and gray, cold light was dimly on the tent. He slept

restlessly, and his forehead was ploughed by lines of pain. While I

looked at him he began to mutter, and suddenly started up with violence.

"No!" he cried out; "no! Just the same!" and thus wakened himself,

staring. "What's the matter?" he demanded. He was slow in getting back

to where we were; and full consciousness found him sitting up with his

eyes fixed on mine. They were more haunted than they had been at all,

and his next speech came straight from his dream. "Maybe you'd better

quit me. This ain't your trouble."



I laughed. "Why, what is the trouble?"



His eyes still intently fixed on mine. "Do you think if we changed our

trail we could lose them from us?"



I was framing a jocose reply about Ounces being a good walker, when the

sound of hoofs rushing in the distance stopped me, and he ran out of the

tent with his rifle. When I followed with mine he was up the bank, and

all his powers alert. But nothing came out of the dimness save our three

stampeded horses. They crashed over fallen timber and across the open to

where their picketed comrade grazed at the end of his rope. By him they

came to a stand, and told him, I suppose, what they had seen; for all

four now faced in the same direction, looking away into the mysterious

dawn. We likewise stood peering, and my rifle barrel felt cold in my

hand. The dawn was all we saw, the inscrutable dawn, coming and coming

through the black pines and the gray open of the basin. There above

lifted the peaks, no sun yet on them, and behind us our stream made a

little tinkling.



"A bear, I suppose," said I, at length.



His strange look fixed me again, and then his eyes went to the horses.

"They smell things we can't smell," said he, very slowly. "Will you

prove to me they don't see things we can't see?"



A chill shot through me, and I could not help a frightened glance where

we had been watching. But one of the horses began to graze and I had

a wholesome thought. "He's tired of whatever he sees, then," said I,

pointing.



A smile came for a moment in the Virginian's face. "Must be a poor

show," he observed. All the horses were grazing now, and he added, "It

ain't hurt their appetites any."



We made our own breakfast then. And what uncanny dread I may have been

touched with up to this time henceforth left me in the face of a real

alarm. The shock of Steve was working upon the Virginian. He was aware

of it himself; he was fighting it with all his might; and he was being

overcome. He was indeed like a gallant swimmer against whom both wind

and tide have conspired. And in this now foreboding solitude there was

only myself to throw him ropes. His strokes for safety were as bold as

was the undertow that ceaselessly annulled them.



"I reckon I made a fuss in the tent?" said he, feeling his way with me.



I threw him a rope. "Yes. Nightmare--indigestion--too much newspaper

before retiring."



He caught the rope. "That's correct! I had a hell of a foolish dream for

a growed-up man. You'd not think it of me."



"Oh, yes, I should. I've had them after prolonged lobster and

champagne."



"Ah," he murmured, "prolonged! Prolonged is what does it." He glanced

behind him. "Steve came back--"



"In your lobster dream," I put in.



But he missed this rope. "Yes," he answered, with his eyes searching me.

"And he handed me the paper--"



"By the way, where is that?" I asked.



"I built the fire with it. But when I took it from him it was a

six-shooter I had hold of, and pointing at my breast. And then Steve

spoke. 'Do you think you're fit to live?' Steve said; and I got hot at

him, and I reckon I must have told him what I thought of him. You heard

me, I expect?"



"Glad I didn't. Your language sometimes is--"



He laughed out. "Oh, I account for all this that's happening just like

you do. If we gave our explanations, they'd be pretty near twins."



"The horses saw a bear, then?"



"Maybe a bear. Maybe "--but here the tide caught him again--"What's your

idea about dreams?"



My ropes were all out. "Liver--nerves," was the best I could do.



But now he swam strongly by himself.



"You may think I'm discreditable," he said, "but I know I am. It ought

to take more than--well, men have lost their friendships before. Feuds

and wars have cloven a right smart of bonds in twain. And if my haid

is going to get shook by a little old piece of newspaper--I'm ashamed I

burned that. I'm ashamed to have been that weak."



"Any man gets unstrung," I told him. My ropes had become straws; and I

strove to frame some policy for the next hours.



We now finished breakfast and set forth to catch the horses. As we drove

them in I found that the Virginian was telling me a ghost story. "At

half-past three in the morning she saw her runaway daughter standing

with a babe in her arms; but when she moved it was all gone. Later they

found it was the very same hour the young mother died in Nogales. And

she sent for the child and raised it herself. I knowed them both back

home. Do you believe that?"



I said nothing.



"No more do I believe it," he asserted. "And see here! Nogales time

is three hours different from Richmond. I didn't know about that point

then."



Once out of these mountains, I knew he could right himself; but even

I, who had no Steve to dream about, felt this silence of the peaks was

preying on me.



"Her daughter and her might have been thinkin' mighty hard about each

other just then," he pursued. "But Steve is dead. Finished. You cert'nly

don't believe there's anything more?"



"I wish I could," I told him.



"No, I'm satisfied. Heaven didn't never interest me much. But if there

was a world of dreams after you went--" He stopped himself and turned

his searching eyes away from mine. "There's a heap o' darkness wherever

you try to step," he said, "and I thought I'd left off wasting thoughts

on the subject. You see"--he dexterously roped a horse, and once more

his splendid sanity was turned to gold by his imagination--"I expect

in many growed-up men you'd call sensible there's a little boy

sleepin'--the little kid they onced was--that still keeps his fear

of the dark. You mentioned the dark yourself yesterday. Well, this

experience has woke up that kid in me, and blamed if I can coax the

little cuss to go to sleep again! I keep a-telling him daylight will

sure come, but he keeps a-crying and holding on to me."



Somewhere far in the basin there was a faint sound, and we stood still.



"Hush!" he said.



But it was like our watching the dawn; nothing more followed.



"They have shot that bear," I remarked.



He did not answer, and we put the saddles on without talk. We made no

haste, but we were not over half an hour, I suppose, in getting off with

the packs. It was not a new thing to hear a shot where wild game was in

plenty; yet as we rode that shot sounded already in my mind different

from others. Perhaps I should not believe this to-day but for what I

look back to. To make camp last night we had turned off the trail, and

now followed the stream down for a while, taking next a cut through the

wood. In this way we came upon the tracks of our horses where they had

been galloping back to the camp after their fright. They had kicked up

the damp and matted pine needles very plainly all along.



"Nothing has been here but themselves, though," said I.



"And they ain't showing signs of remembering any scare," said the

Virginian.



In a little while we emerged upon an open.



"Here's where they was grazing," said the Virginian; and the signs were

clear enough. "Here's where they must have got their scare," he pursued.

"You stay with them while I circle a little." So I stayed; and certainly

our animals were very calm at visiting this scene. When you bring a

horse back to where he has recently encountered a wild animal his ears

and his nostrils are apt to be wide awake.



The Virginian had stopped and was beckoning to me.



"Here's your bear," said he, as I arrived. "Two-legged, you see. And he

had a hawss of his own." There was a stake driven down where an animal

had been picketed for the night.



"Looks like Ounces," I said, considering the Footprints.



"It's Ounces. And Ounces wanted another hawss very bad, so him and

Pounds could travel like gentlemen should."



"But Pounds doesn't seem to have been with him."



"Oh, Pounds, he was making coffee, somewheres in yonder, when this

happened. Neither of them guessed there'd be other hawsses wandering

here in the night, or they both would have come." He turned back to our

pack animals.



"Then you'll not hunt for this camp to make sure?"



"I prefer making sure first. We might be expected at that camp."



He took out his rifle from beneath his leg and set it across his saddle

at half-cock. I did the same; and thus cautiously we resumed our journey

in a slightly different direction. "This ain't all we're going to find

out," said the Virginian. "Ounces had a good idea; but I reckon he made

a bad mistake later."



We had found out a good deal without any more, I thought. Ounces had

gone to bring in their single horse, and coming upon three more in the

pasture had undertaken to catch one and failed, merely driving them

where he feared to follow.



"Shorty never could rope a horse alone," I remarked.



The Virginian grinned. "Shorty? Well, Shorty sounds as well as Ounces.

But that ain't the mistake I'm thinking he made."



I knew that he would not tell me, but that was just like him. For the

last twenty minutes, having something to do, he had become himself

again, had come to earth from that unsafe country of the brain where

beckoned a spectral Steve. Nothing was left but in his eyes that

question which pain had set there; and I wondered if his friend of old,

who seemed so brave and amiable, would have dealt him that hurt at the

solemn end had he known what a poisoned wound it would be.



We came out on a ridge from which we could look down. "You always want

to ride on high places when there's folks around whose intentions ain't

been declared," said the Virginian. And we went along our ridge for some

distance. Then, suddenly he turned down and guided us almost at once to

the trail. "That's it," he said. "See."



The track of a horse was very fresh on the trail. But it was a galloping

horse now, and no bootprints were keeping up with it any more. No boots

could have kept up with it. The rider was making time to-day. Yesterday

that horse had been ridden up into the mountains at leisure. Who was on

him? There was never to be any certain answer to that. But who was not

on him? We turned back in our journey, back into the heart of that basin

with the tall peaks all rising like teeth in the cloudless sun, and the

snow-fields shining white.



"He was afraid of us," said the Virginian. "He did not know how many of

us had come up here. Three hawsses might mean a dozen more around."



We followed the backward trail in among the pines, and came after a time

upon their camp. And then I understood the mistake that Shorty had made.

He had returned after his failure, and had told that other man of the

presence of new horses. He should have kept this a secret; for haste had

to be made at once, and two cannot get away quickly upon one horse. But

it was poor Shorty's last blunder. He lay there by their extinct fire,

with his wistful, lost-dog face upward, and his thick yellow hair

unparted as it had always been. The murder had been done from behind. We

closed the eyes.



"There was no natural harm in him," said the Virginian. "But you must do

a thing well in this country."



There was not a trace, not a clew, of the other man; and we found a

place where we could soon cover Shorty with earth. As we lifted him we

saw the newspaper that he had been reading. He had brought it from the

clump of cottonwoods where he and the other man had made a later visit

than ours to be sure of the fate of their friends--or possibly in hopes

of another horse. Evidently, when the party were surprised, they had

been able to escape with only one. All of the newspaper was there save

the leaf I had picked up--all and more, for this had pencil writing on

it that was not mine, nor did I at first take it in. I thought it might

be a clew, and I read it aloud. "Good-by, Jeff," it said. "I could not

have spoke to you without playing the baby."



"Who's Jeff?" I asked. But it came over me when I looked at the

Virginian. He was standing beside me quite motionless; and then he put

out his hand and took the paper, and stood still, looking at the words.

"Steve used to call me Jeff," he said, "because I was Southern. I reckon

nobody else ever did."



He slowly folded the message from the dead, brought by the dead, and

rolled it in the coat behind his saddle. For a half-minute he stood

leaning his forehead down against the saddle. After this he came back

and contemplated Shorty's face awhile. "I wish I could thank him," he

said. "I wish I could."



We carried Shorty over and covered him with earth, and on that laid a

few pine branches; then we took up our journey, and by the end of the

forenoon we had gone some distance upon our trail through the Teton

Mountains. But in front of us the hoofprints ever held their stride

of haste, drawing farther from us through the hours, until by the next

afternoon somewhere we noticed they were no longer to be seen; and after

that they never came upon the trail again.