OM TOBIN, beguiled into a truce on a solemn promise of a long and soul-satisfying battle later, finally consented to participate in Old Misery's scheme. His rôle was not onerous and consisted of keeping Pretty Soon Jim away from Grass Valley until the mountain man advised to the contrary. Having signed the pact with a drink, Old Misery made a hurried trip to his camp in the hidden hollow.
Old Miguel came from his darkened doorway, bowed low and gave respectful greetings to Senor Comandante. Bill Williams lumbered forth for a chew of tobacco. The cubs, seemingly grown much during their master's brief absence, were ready with a rough welcome.
“Where's the young folks?” asked Old Misery.
“The senorita is near, somewhere. The young senor went with the two miners.”
As her grandfather finished speaking the girl Maria came running from the pines and with a little cry seized Old Misery by the arm and swung back and forth.
“You young limb,” growled Old Misery as he patted her high-piled coils of blue-black hair, “how you behaved yourself since I was gone?”
She threw out both hands in a little gesture of weariness and answered:
“There is no monte. There is one man, my grandfather. There are the animals. The squirrels fight each day with El Carpentero. It is hard to do wrong up here.”
“Sounds like you was sorry and was wanting excitement. Young Yank been behaving?”
And he stared at her sharply.
She shrugged her shoulders and complained:
“He is all ice. Yankee-e Snow fills his heart. He is a
mos' polite caballero. Such cold people, those Yankee—es!”
Old Misery surveyed her flushed face and lively eyes thoughtfully and muttered:
“More sense in him then I'd believed. Knew 'nough to clear out and dodge temptation.”
He dismissed her with a pat on the shapely head and walked to Gilbert's cabin.
TO Bill Williams at his side he confessed:
“You're right, Bill; it won't do to leave 'em alone too much. He may be cold-blooded, but she's all fire, and even ice will melt. The younker's medicine is from Wakantanka to make him see the danger of living alone with that young streak of scarlet in this holler. But you know, Bill, it was a case of have to. I'll take him with me next time. Got to go down the ridge for a day or two. No; you'd best stay here and look after things such as them cubs.”
In the cabin he procured a hammer and a pick and hid them in the pines up the slope. It was dark when he returned and found the girl Maria had cooked his supper. After eating he went to the cabin and found the story book that told of the three amazing Frenchmen and took it back to the fire and threw on pine cones. As he worked his way laboriously through page after page his pipe went out and he did not know it. At last his watery eyes called a halt, and he restored the book to the cabin shelf and rolled in his blankets by Bill Williams' side.
“Bill,” he sleepily confided, “I begin to like the big feller most. Young blood is all right, but luck helped him a heap. Big feller is sorter slow and thick-headed and ain't as wakan as the bookish galoot that gits writings from young women, but he's most like us humans. And stronger'n hell. But don't ever try to read it, Bill, less you find it set down in a Dakota winter-count. Damnest trail you ever see. Every t'other word is a brier or a bramble or a boulder. It's climb up and fall down. Lost my bearings a thousand times and had to guess at lots of landmarks. But I got the drift. I'd like to tell Jim Bridger that yarn. He'd swear I was as bad a liar as folks said he was when he told about his first trip to the Yallerstone Valley.”
In the morning he was up early and cooked his own breakfast. He called for Maria, and she came running, hungry for companionship.
He told her:
“I'm going up back a piece. Be gone all day. I'd take the younker along but he ain't come in. Wanter go along with me, or stay here?”
He was sure from the flashing light in her eyes that she would be for the adventure up the ridge.
She sighed and explained:
“I mus' stay. My grandfather is ver' bad in his mind. Ching-a-ling come two days ago and talked with him. Something Ching-a-ling said made him bad in his mind. Since then he spen' much time making his long knife ver' sharp.”
“That yaller breed come here again when I'm not to home and I'll heave him so far he won't strike till he hits Marysville. Be a good gal and don't bedevil the younker.”
“He is so ver' polite he would not know if one tried to bedeveel him,” she demurely replied. “You will come back, when?”
“To-night, if Tunkan, the Big Rock Medicine, helps me.”