The band of gold grabbers, whose prisoner Miss Maclan had become, had met the snowstorm supinely. They had, besides, obeyed their prudent leader by remaining buried in its protective mantle until the day was broken. The ravine crest had quickly been banked up, so that shielded them; and the marshland, offering no poor resistance to the tempest, had turned no gusts back. They had suffered the least of any exposed in that time of anguish. The danger over, they set to cleaning the camp with coarse jokes, and thronged to breakfast at a bugle call, after having worked on a cup of coffee alone with the wolfish appetite of sojourners in that high latitude. They were well provisioned, none of the wormy "crackers," rank pork, and burnt horse bean coffee of commerce, but good flour bread, deer and bear meat, and honest salt pork. Captain Kidd would have lost half the troop in this onerous wintry expedition with an inferior table.

For the leaders a marquee had been erected, raised of the canvas that sheltered them nightly, in which a folding table stood on picket pins for legs, so that the guests could squat around. Well loaded with hearty fare and various liquors, it was the article of furniture most prominent.

The captain and his lieutenants were received by a youth of eighteen, who took their rifles with the address of an experienced servant, and a Negro.

As soon as he arrived Kidd bade the latter withdraw.

"¡Vamos! 'moosey!" he cried, "For your big ears are not wanted. The Drudge will do the waiting. Tell the señora to breakfast with her new toy! I have a business conference to make with my partners. Mind, none of your sneaking curiosity, or I'll sell you to the Blackfeet for a slave. They are swarming out there!"

The Negro dived under a flap of canvas with a terrified face, as much afraid of his threat as of his master, thus evading a tin plate that was wantonly skimmed after him, and might have cut his head.

"Sit to it, gentlemen," said Kidd, rubbing his hands, "and don't let the good things get cold."

They had not waited for this apology for grace to begin the meal like so many carnivora. For about a quarter of an hour no one uttered a word except "Pass the mustard," "Don't let that bottle go to sleep thar!" and so on, whilst "Drudge" was kept on the trot.

He was only about eighteen, we repeat; but he appeared older from being tall, large in the joints, muscular, and especially from the resolution on his manly countenance; he was sallow, and his restless eyes dark. He seemed a prey to incurable melancholy. Though he was too crafty to let his true sentiments be exposed, it was clear that he served these ruffians with inward repugnance, not to say hatred. Two of them in particular filled him with disgust, and they always spoke in a scornful and threatening tone; they even struck him and kicked him, as if they considered him their thrall. These were "Quarry Dick" and "Lottery Paul," Kidd's next men, of whom Mr. Filditch has made an unflattering mention. Their more intimate acquaintance is about to be given.

The chief was the first to break the silence with a remark that summed up the prevailing sentiment, no doubt, as all growled or grinned approvingly.

"The storm was no feather," he said, "but it has blown over nicely. Old Nick has taken first-rate care of his chicks."

"I don't think anything less would have pulled us through so far," said his right hand neighbour sarcastically.

"And so he ought. We work mighty hard for him, you bet!" said his opposite, emphatically.

"To say nothing of what we are going to do pretty soon 'on,'" concluded the one facing the captain, upon which all four laughed.

"Yes, it's blown over, and our old friends in Texas are catching it about this time. I hope it will wash the slate of some of my unpaid scores in barrooms I could tell you of! But care killed a cat; I'll have none of that in my tumbler. There's only one thing kept me awake last night, and that was not the thought of the storm."

"What, my friend Corky Joe?" inquired the captain, who seemed to feel peculiar affection for this lieutenant.

This singular, or even comic title, that of the wolverine, otherwise carcajieu of the Canadian trappers, the wickedest wild beast of Northwest American fauna, seemed no misnomer for a daredevil, spirited, malicious, alert, quick to whip out a knife or draw a pistol to back his impudent and defiant speech. The finest shot with either hand was he, the best horseman and the most tireless and reliable sentinel of the band.

"I only would like to know who cut off our friends in the narrow ways."

"Oh, as for that, the girl whom we brought in alone knows; but I am sure they knew we were 'no good settlers,' to have laid our representatives low. I am reserving the questioning of that girl till our more important 'talk' is over. Light your pipes, gentlemen, if you are done polishing your eyeteeth, and let us hold the council."

"There's one thing sure," observed the Frenchman, "the more I look on this forsaken country, through smoke or with a clear eye, whither the Cap. has brought us, the more firmly I wish I had it well behind me. It's enough to make a man wish he was a grizzly; nothing else can thrive here."

"Come, come, Frenchy," remonstrated the leader, "we are no more delighted than you. It is not here I mean to lay out Kiddville! But there is no other way to the port whereto I steer."

"Port! More like alkali water; there's not an ounce of anything worth a man's stooping to pick up over all the tracks we've crossed. The fact is, the hangers round Varina have 'stuffed' you with yarns of the wonderland which gets farther away the nearer you come to it! Gammon about the valley covered with surface gold! I know what gold bearing earth is, having been in Californy in the good old years!" with a smack of the lips. "This volcanic tract is burnt out. Any metal has long since melted and run away miles below. Either you have swallowed the old trapper's drunken mouthings for gospel, or you have let Corky Joe here get you in a coil! The bigger lies he tells, the more you like him, I believe! I wouldn't copper his layout one sou! You hear me!"

"You keep my name out of it!" cried the individual alluded to, with an unfriendly tone.

"I'll kick you out of it if you lead us astray! I am not to be bluffed off by you, ugly face! This is a free country, ain't it? And my opinion is that you fawn on the chief to have the longest pull at his bottle of select brandy!"

Scarcely were the words spoken before the Wolverine reached across the low board with a gleaming bowie knife. Luckily, the Frenchman knew the man he had taunted, and threw himself back, which gave Kidd time to shove himself between.

"Put up your knives," he roared. "What do you friends want to waste a stab and a cut for when we are literally surrounded by the enemy? It's only when we have eaten the last round of horseflesh that we should carve one another, and we have not come to that corner yet. Come, come, don't rile me with your snarling!"

"All right, old man, that's past now," returned the Parisian, "only we'll come to a settlement before we come to the settlement, or I am much mistaken – "

"Still at it, confound you!" cried the captain, laying his hand on his revolver butt.

"Oh, no, that's only a leetle friendly caution. Here's his health! All I have to say is that if you had listened to Dick and me, who wanted to 'clean up' the new mines at Deadman, Wyoming, instead of this uncombed savage, the carcajieu, who bolsters you up in your obstinate fit to keep on going ahead, we should not be where snowstorms rage. Why, you knew us down south, but the Wolverine was no acquaintance of yours a month before you gathered the gang; my pile on that for a fact!"

"That's so, Paul," returned the leader, dreamily.

"Why not even have gone through the Mormon country? We all know they are 'temperance folk'; but, bless you! It's next door to a teetotal town that one drinks the best tarantula juice."

"That's true!" said Dick.

"I daresay," replied the chief bandit, "that I have gone a trifle out of my way, but you ought to know that I was bound to leave no 'pointer' on my path as to my true aim. Things were getting too hot for us on the border – we are well out of sheriffs' and vigilance committees' curiosity. I do not like there being so many folks afoot just where I believed we should find a desert, but perhaps last night's blizzard has scattered them like so many loose pebbles. What do you think of our scrape?" he demanded of Corky Joe.

"About as bad as they make 'em," was the unhesitating answer.

"What's your opinion, Dick?"

The English ex-convict shook his head sulkily.

"It's a beast of a country," he grumbled. "There's more snow falls in an hour here than would fill St. James' Park for a week! It will be almost a treat to be a roast at a redskin's torture fire."

"I concur," added Lottery Paul, laughing. "All right, Quarryman, we are two of a pair, and I'll stick to you when you say we must claw out of this trap."

"What's the use of this bullying bounce?" cried the captain, "We are all in the same box, aren't we?"

"I don't know so much about that. Paul and me are new to this wild tramping business, and never came to such passes as these deuced mountain passes before. The Californian Sierra is molehills to it!"

"In short," took up the Frenchman, "we believe your gold mine is a fraud. Your course so far tends to take us over the Rockies, where many a better man has left his bones, and though a solid chunk of gold as big as a house awaits me yonder, I have my reasons not to go over to the Pacific coast."

"Same here," subjoined the English felon, scowling.

"What I go on to say is, every step forward means harder fare – the tracts you assured us were desolate are growing Injins, your gold mine does not show up, and so, give us a couple of hundred dollars apiece for having escorted you so far, and we'll march off on our own hooks."

"That's my say, too," coincided Dick, delighted with the Parisian's eloquence.

"I have heard you out," proceeded the captain, smoothing his brow with an effort. "Now, hearken to me. You are green to these parts – very well. From my youth up I have heard stories of a Wonderland on whose threshold we now are. The Indians regard it with awe, and only peer into it from afar; but trapper and hunter have penetrated it by design or hazard, and all their tales cannot be campfire lies. Moreover, they have brought palpable evidences to the border. At Santa Fe I gambled with a trapper, whose jacket was bright with diamond buttons, stones that he found in a marvellous garden where the berries were turned to petrifaction as they grew; the chokecherries were rubies, the blueberries turquoises, the pigeon berries garnets, the Indian pears flawless crystal. He had collected a pouchful in half an hour, for which a Jew at St. Peter's gave him eight hundred dollars as they were turned over to him in the rough."

"Did you ever meet 'Oregon Ol,'¹ in your rustling about? He's a Nor'wester who has traversed this region more than most; he never wants for gold, and he hardly takes a trap out with him, and often brings back the powder he started with. And Marcellin's Choctaw Boy, and Hopeful Ed., and Simmins the Knifer, all familiar with the Yellowstone River to its uppermost forks. They have lined their pockets without handling the spade, on surface flakes alone. And Jim Ridge, the father of the Old Birds of the Sierras – with his copper face companion the Cherokee!" he went on, with a deep and sudden frown and a baleful glance, "Look at their equipments, at the way they buy the cream of everything, and take two or three trains a year up into the highlands. What is all that for? Provisioning themselves for staking out all the best spots in an auriferous region – the motherland of the gold and silver of which mere washings go down thither by driblets! Those mountaineers are leagued with the Yager, and they have found an enormously rich hole in the Yellowstone Basin. There's enough to make each of us twenty times, ay, fifty times a millionaire, and those dozen hunters selfishly stand us off! Go your way, if you are bent on it, without any dollars from me. I will persevere, though I am left alone, in striving to wrest this secret from that crew. I tell you, boys, I have had enough of a hard life with the prospect of walking off a mule's back till a rope round my neck brings me to a short stop. I want, with the worst kind of want, to go see Europe with a big draft on the Bank of England, and have some of these Eye-talian princelings black my boots before I die in 'em."

Then, seeing that he had kindled his hearers with cupidity, he concluded:

"Who loves gold galore, comes along with Mr. Pirate King!"

"I catch on," cried Joe, as if inspirited.

"They do say, though, that the Yellowstone Valley is haunted – spirits of Injin devils guard the incalculable treasures, spit hot poison at the invader, smother him in scalding mud, shower rocks upon him from tall bluffs – so if you are afraid of what hasn't daunted Old Jim and his band, why, leave me and Joe to have the first chop 'rise' on you when we meet in Nevada City, me and Joe regularly bulging out with whisky, good hotel grub, and gold and diamonds, and you scraping the gutter for the dimes swept out of the stores! Look here! If in ten days we are not knee deep in golden sands, in a vale where eternal summer reigns, then lead me out and shoot me!"

There was a pause: the Frenchman's eyes blazed like fanned coals, the Englishman panted noisily and ground his teeth with a bulldog's anticipatory glee.

"We are on a sure soft thing now," pursued the captain, clinching the nail which he had driven home. "I don't know how it is, but I am confident our vein of bad luck has fined out to a hair, and that fortune is going to do a smile."

"All right," said Dick, after a glance at the Frenchman, who nodded, "we'll tail on for ten days."

"Then another drink round. Joe, pick me out four or five fellows who can use snowshoes without laying themselves up with the mal du racquet (snowshoe lameness), and let them scout about to see if the Indian sign crops up over the new snows."

The lieutenant having left the tent, the captain pulled out a map on sheepskin, and explained in detail where he surmised the treasure of the trappers to be, and where he also hoped to surprise Jim Ridge in his mountain recess. His enthusiastic promises and the effect of the liquors restored the recalcitrant pair to good-humoured allegiance.

In two hours' time, one of the scouts returned, pleading that his snowshoes were unable to help him over a snow coated ciénaga, or bad swampy stretch, where he would have sunk and been smothered. But, in the captain's ear, he whispered a communication which set that worthy to reflection. At the end of it, he directed Lottery Paul to take the rackets and go off investigating in a certain direction, ordered Joe to keep good guard over the camp, and took Dick with him on an exploration of his own.

Installed without any hostile spies at his elbow as provisional commander, Corkey Joe smiled to himself, and muttering: "Nothing could have been better; hang them all three!" he proceeded towards the rocks, where Drudge was standing on guard over a mysterious doorway.

CHAPTER XII
UNDER THE MASK

When Corkey Joe had almost come up beside Drudge, the latter exchanged a knowing glance with him, and, drawing a sheet of tarpaulin aside from the doorway in the rocks, glided like a serpent within. As the canvas fell behind him, the bandit captain's representative calmly took the sentinel's place.

Drudge entered a kind of passage between rocks, covered over with tree stuff and mud, with the snow heaped on that again to hermetically roof it in. Thus to a second doorway of a cave, he found a hanging of buffalo robes fastened on a cottonwood rod.

He hemmed and hawed a couple of times to give a polite notification of his approach, and after making sure he was alone, stepped within the fur portière.

Prairie travellers are like the Turks in carrying with them such furniture as may transform a cave or a hut into a nest of luxury. Captain Kidd had, therefore, had a delightful snuggery made of the dugout, lined with rugs, blankets and furs, so that cold, damp, and wind were excluded. In the centre of this lair, too, a large silver chafing dish, which might have been stolen from some Central American church treasury, contained clear pine knots, which diffused rather an agreeable and, certainly, a wholesome odour. The low seats were all folding, to be transported readily, but were heaped with furs. A couch of the same valuable material was occupied by a sleeping girl: it was poor Miss Maclan, making up with a prolonged rest for her exhaustion.

In a hammock of grass cloth, hung low, another girl, younger and slighter, with a truly American complexion and contour, gently was swinging. She was well within her teens; a sweet and lofty type of beauty such as Raphael and Murillo painted in their most inspired moments. Her large black eyes seemed to reflect thoughts oftener of heaven than of earth; her transparent skin, fine as satin, showed the blue network of the delicate veins, and offered a violent contrast to black hair in thick and long tresses. Her irresistible charm was heightened by the permanent sadness which covered her lineaments and compelled pity. She smiled faintly on beholding Drudge, and bade him welcome in a tuneful voice as she gave him her little hand.

"But I ought to scold you, friend," she said, "for coming too often. If that hateful man, whose very slave I am, should catch you here, where you could find no excuse to be, ill would befall you."

"That's so, señorita," the youth replied, lightly enough, "but you need not be alarmed about me this time. My only danger is that you will think me intrusive. Captain Kidd has left the camp, and the depth of the snow makes going so slow, that I should not wonder if he made a long stay of it. They have been having another jangle, all in my hearing, for," he went on, with a bitter smile, "they reckon me as an idiot, and go on as if nobody were by."

"Poor Leon!" she sighed, kindly.

"Don't be sorry about that, señorita," he hastened to proceed, "for that's my safeguard. Otherwise I could not watch over you as over a sister. The hour is nigh for me to prove my devotion, methinks."

"I very well know that I can count on Leon with entire trust. Is not our cause, our hope, the same? Misfortune unites us. But I must own that, knowing your implacable hatred for this wretch who holds us in his power, I am often afraid that you will burst out into some imprudence that will destroy you and leave me without a friend in the world. Unless," she added, with a glance at the sleeper, whom their subdued tones did not affect, "this is a new friend whom heaven has accorded me in my distress."

"Rather a spy whom the odious captain thinks to plant in your confidence," returned Leon, with jealousy and doubt. "Coming from the captain, I would not take an angel as a being of light."

"You are wrong there. We have not exchanged many words, Leon, but already we are sisters. Think! She has lost a father lately, and has been hunted by Indians! Poor girl! Her fate is at least as dreadful as mine, and her heart wounds still bleeding. We can trust her, though I have not told her all."

"Tell her nothing superfluous," he cried. "The slave must be cunning and prudent, or he will never have the chance to obtain his freedom. Many a time, though, I have let go the chance to obtain it alone."

"You were right! For what would have become of a boy like you in these deserts in a storm such as shook the earth last night? You would be a mite!"

Leon the Drudge smiled disdainfully, and his pale face was set in an expression of energetic will.

"That is not the fear that held me, señorita," he replied. "I am young, but Indian boys go on the warpath at my age. I have broken in horses that great men about this camp have shrank from backing, and can back a mule or fire a shot to the centre with any of them. But for my double oath, I should have been alone – yes, but free on the prairie, long before this!"

"Explain! For you speak beyond my comprehension."

"Señorita, I made a vow to be revenged on this horde of villainous men, and not to fly save with you. You have not been spared so long but for some fiendish end which a man of honour is bound to loathe beforehand and baffle when discovered. That is why I remain, and why, however tempting the opportunities to slip away, I shall remain until it is possible for you to follow me."

"Alas! I am too closely guarded for that. A princess could not be more narrowly watched if she were affianced to the grandest king on earth and by her hand her father would be saved from ruin."

"Maybe you are more free than you imagine, señorita."

"Now, pray do not fill me with any baseless hopes. And talk less loud, lest you awake that poor slumberer. Alas! I weep, it being only a girl – a child who is incapable of doing anything but wail and pray for deliverance."

"Your defenders, if not deliverers, are at hand."

"At hand? I see no one but you, poor boy, and this sorrowing woman, who can only pray with me."

"I talk of men – men determined, able, and daring – one of whom you have seen."

"The man they call the Wolverine!" she ejaculated, hiding her eyes like a child to whom Bogey was promised to appear, "A man that terrifies me! He is the second self of this horrid Captain Kidd. His name pourtrays him, and his sight fills me with dread."

Drudge smiled softly.

"What has his name and his appearance got to do with it?" he cried. "Both may be put on! The gem and gold are not at all prepossessing when natural. How does the domestic dog escape being devoured by the prairie wolves when abandoned at a camp? He joins them, frisks with them, and howls more loudly than they! If Corkey Joe resembled a missionary, he would stand pretty conspicuous out from our gang of Border Terrors. It is by putting on their style that he has hoodwinked them."

"Oh, if I could be sure that you are not cheated, and that this fright of a man is truly what you say!"

"I say so straight. The Carcajieu may or may not be a beauty, but his look is only skin-deep anyhow. I'll answer for his faithfulness with my own head. I know what he is worth."

"Then, tell me – "

"No, I cannot, señorita," he interrupted sharply. "I promised to keep the secret. No more, beyond his being your most devoted."

"Now, Leon, do not fill me up with a belief of which the removal would be heartbreaking!"

"No fear of that, señorita!"

"Very well; spite of the repulsion he causes, I will be polite to him, kind – I will even speak to him – "

"Why not at once?"

"Oh, not at once!"

"I say that is best, for it's a first-rate chance, the captain and the chiefs being out of the camp, and Joe the ruling spirit. Do you consent to receive him?"

"But I would rather – that is, a little preparation. Let me consult with this young lady."

"It is not her secret! Do you waver? Do you recoil?"

"No!" she cried, at the taunt, with a decisive tone, which startled and thrilled him; "Let him come! Go, bring him, Leon!"

"He waits yonder, as the sentry in my stead."

"Let him come, and heaven grant that you are not deceived!"

As Drudge departed the young girl leaned breathlessly forward with an anxious gaze for the person who replaced him in the doorway.

Behind Corkey Joe the screen fell, forming a dark background to set his figure off. The right-hand man of the gold seekers' leader had not modified his aspect or apparel, and yet there was a change which elicited an exclamation of surprise from the girl. His step was firm, his usually stern and spiteful face beaming with pity and frankness. The features that had originated invincible repulsion were still there, but, with the morose and mocking expression, had vanished all foundation for distrust and dread. He stepped forward and saluted her respectfully.

She glanced towards the sleeper.

"Let her repose," he observed, with even more sympathy in his eyes of cold steel blue; "she will need her strength restored for what we all may have to pass through."

"No doubt," she sighed. Fixing a clear gaze on the man, she smiled faintly, and promptly held out her hand, saying, "Heaven bless you, unsuspected friend, for being alone in this host of heartless men, to take some interest in a poor orphan!"

"Señorita," answered Joe, in Spanish-American, which tongue she had used, "I have only joined this bad set at the peril of my life, in pursuance of my duty, incidental to which comes in the rescue of you."

"Leon told me so."

"Then he spoke the truth."

The brief silence was broken by the prisoner.

"I am almost sorry, though, that you have ventured to speak to me," she said; "the captain is so jealous a tyrant, that anything makes me tremble. Still, your voice inspires a confidence of which I was very much in want, and, notwithstanding your not engaging appearance – " for the sunshine seemed to have left Lieutenant Joe's countenance again, so that he glowered unpleasantly as ever – "something within tells me that your heart is too good to deceive me, and that you really intend to do me a good service."

"The little bird in your bosom sings the truth, señorita. If needs must, I shall lay down my life to save yours – though that's no more than an American is brought up to do for the fair sex. As for my looks, those artist fellows don't come out here to paint tailor's models and opera lobby heroes. Besides, if you ever saw a church procession in Mexico, you may remember the Devil that the monks flog and the boys pluck by the tail. He's no pattern of manly beauty; but, very often, he is the widow's son and the best young man of the town, come to shuck off his mask and shear off the claws. 'Shouldn't wonder," he went on, smiling, "but that, without paint and powder, your bridegroom would be pretty jealous if he had me for best man and I drew the bridesmaids' eyes to my corner. At present, my ugly mug, and my talk, and my warpath gait are too useful to be laid on the shelf. I thank you sincerely, young lady, for the confidence you are kind enough to put there, in my hand, and it will not be a parrot's age before I shall try to justify it."

"I believe you, señor, and I, too, shall be glad to have the time come."

"And now, moments being counted, to business! We may never get such a chance again."

1. See The Treasure of Pearls in this series.