LOST CHANCE GULCH

The long night’s quiet rest left the girls refreshed and bright. When Peggie and Jean came over to the lodge at five, they were up and dressed, ready for the run down to the creek for a morning dip.

“You’ll find it very different from sea bathing, girls,” Jean told them. “The water does not have the same buoyancy, but it gives one a feeling of exhilaration all the same. This place has been our swimming hole for years.”

“I should think so, by the beaten path to it,” remarked Ruth. “You can’t lose your way, can you?”

The little path led down to the creek, and along its winding course until it turned a bend, and slipped into rapids around a rough, old butte that the children at the ranch had named Thunder Cloud, years before. Here the creek bed was full of rocks, as if, Polly said, years before, some giant had thrown them down there like a handful of pebbles. A little farther on, the creek broadened and deepened, and there lay the swimming hole.

“There are no rocks in it, here,” said Elspeth. “It’s only up to my shoulders at the center, excepting in early spring, when the snows melt, and then it’s a regular torrent through the whole valley.”

Ted and Sue waded out into midstream carefully. They had dressed in bathing suits up at the cabin, and even putting them on again had brought back the old joyous times at Lost Island last summer.

The water felt cool, but not chilling. Isabel and Ruth splashed about in the shore shallows experimentally, but Polly stood on a rock, and looked around her at the gorgeous scenery. The sun was well up in the heavens, but over everything there still clung the soft, hazy mist of a midsummer dawn. The distant mountains looked as if they had folded violet and pearl cloaks about them. The summits were veiled in straying, ever changing cloud wreaths. Even the near-by buttes of sandstone and shale, rugged and bare as they were, took on a certain beauty of their own in that tender, mellowing light. The bottom of the creek looked golden too, and the water was full of shimmering, shining ripples, as the girls splashed into it, with merry cries.

“I wish there was a long stretch of sandy beach, don’t you, girls?” said Isabel, as she hesitated, a mermaid without a resting place. “This shore is so rocky.”

“Rocky,” exclaimed Sue, floundering around vigorously. “Call this rocky after Maine. These rocks are pebbles.”

“Do you expect a Wyoming swimming hole to be a seaside sun-bath?” called out Ted. “Come on in, Polly. It’s splendid.”

“This used to be the old fording place, mother says, for westbound cattle bunches years ago,” said Jean, as she stopped a few minutes after a spurt up the river and back. “Some of the settlers went this way too. They named it Thunder Ford, so we called the old butte yonder Thunder Cloud. There used to be a chief of that name. I can just remember seeing him once when I was a little girl. I rode up to Sundance with father, and they had a sheriff’s sale of Indian ponies.”

“Oh, tell us about it,” Polly begged at once, wading towards her. “We can hear you.”

“There wasn’t anything to tell. The Indians were in debt, I guess, and had to sell their ponies, some of them anyway, to settle. They showed them off first, and many cowboys had ridden in from outlying ranches to watch the fun. Each Indian would mount his pony, and try to put it through all kinds of tricks, with the cowboys shouting at them, and urging them on. There’s a little square of green grass in the center of the town. At least, it’s supposed to be green, but it was pretty well sun-dried and brown. Father and I stood there, and watched the racing, and I noticed the old Indian next to me. He was very tall and homely, with a broad band tied around his head, and one big eagle’s feather slipped through. Then he wore an old army shirt, and fringed buckskin ‘chaps,’ and last of all, there was a heavy government blanket half trailing from his waist; and mind, girls, this was in July.”

“Maybe he felt that he had to wear it as long as the government had given it to him,” suggested Isabel, thoughtfully.

“Maybe he did. He watched the race with his arms folded, and when father spoke to him, he wouldn’t even glance at him. But I said I couldn’t see, and all at once, he lifted me up in his arms, where I could get a good view of the street and the ponies, and held me there. And afterwards, when we were buying things at the general store, we found out he was old Chief Thunder Cloud who used to be with Sitting Bull years ago.”

“Can we get any bead work, or baskets around here, Miss Jean?” asked Polly, as the remembrance of Mrs. Yates’ commission occurred to her.

“You can buy them at any of the reservations. When the bishop comes, we will ask him.”

“When will he be here?” questioned Polly, with interest.

“Any time. He usually stops over night at our ranch on his way north. It is different being a bishop out here from what it means in the eastern or even middle states. Here he is a pioneer missionary. Do you know, girls, that he even has jurisdiction over the reservations, at least the Shoshone one?”

“He’s tall, and kind of young, and rides a horse like a soldier,” put in Peggie. “And he looks like a soldier. That’s why all the ranchers and cowboys like him, I guess.”

“I’m getting cold,” Isabel exclaimed, shivering.

“I should think you would,” declared Ted, “standing there with the water up to your ankles. Isabel, I sigh to think what would ever become of you in a deep swimming tank. You’d cling to the side like an anemone.”

“All out now,” Jean called. “And we’d better run to keep up the circulation. Next time we’ll bring down the swimming suits, and kimonos, and dress here. It’s too long a trip in wet clothes.”

Up the path they went, dripping wet, and radiant with health and happiness.

“Hurry up and dress, girls,” Jean said, as they came to the guest cabin. “After breakfast, we’ll ride over the other way towards the sheep range, and you’ll have a chance to look them over.”

“Oh, look down there at Don,” cried Peggie, suddenly, and the next minute she was flying as fast as her feet could carry her towards the corral.

“Head him off, Peg, head him off,” shouted Don. “Not that way, over here. Oh, suffering cats, look at that!”

“He’s making a bee line for the bars, Don; I can’t stop him,” Peggie cried.

A flying streak of gray darted madly across the bare, brown earth of the corral. Headlong after it raced Don, waving his arms and whooping shrilly.

“What on earth—” began Ruth, but Sue, Ted and Polly were already on the way to the corral also, and Jean was laughing.

“It’s Don’s timber cub,” she said to Ruth and Isabel. “He’s loose.”

Don caught at a coiled rope that hung on a saddle on the fence, just where he had left it before saddling up for the ride. The streak of gray made for the open passage like an escaped fleck of quicksilver, and Don set his teeth, and threw out on a chance.

“I got him,” he called, as the rope circled out through the air, and drew taut and snug over something. “He’s a dandy little cub. I brought him in last week. Two months old. From Badger Hole Creek. The herders said the mother was shot when she was hanging around the sheep one night nearly two weeks ago. This little shaver must have been trying to find her ever since. I’m going to tame him.”

Tenderly he bent over the palpitating little form, and loosened the rope. The wolf cub looked like a shaggy, big-headed little Spitz dog, with a very pointed nose. It tried to burrow down in Don’s coat sleeve, and he trotted it back to its new home, a cage he had fashioned for it in the shade of the wagon shed.

“What’s his name, Don?” asked Sue, eagerly.

“Kink,” grinned back Don. “Suits him, doesn’t it? I’ll have him tamed in a month, but he’s pretty shy now.”

“Breakfast,” called Mrs. Murray from the back door of the house, and they hurried back to the cabin to dress.

“Put on your riding skirts,” warned Jean. When they had finished eating, there was no delay about the start. Don had the five ponies saddled in a few minutes, and this time it was easier mounting, but it was still hard to get accustomed to the movement of the ponies.

“I feel as if I were going to tumble off any minute,” Ruth declared.

“You should ride the funny little burros down in Colorado if you want a good jogging,” Jean said. “Last summer mother was pretty well tired out after the shearing and shipping and all that, so after the extra helpers had gone, I took her down for a little trip to the Springs, and we had a good time. It was her first vacation in thirty years. I don’t like to ride burros at all. The best horses for these roads are the cross-breeds, half Indian pony, half easterner, like ours.”

“Oh, aren’t we going on Topnotch to-day?” asked Ted, as they took the opposite turn at the creek crossing.

“No. We’re bound for the north this time. It’s a good ride, and easy for you, and you’ll get used to the saddle.”

After they had passed the valley and lower buttes, great, rolling tablelands came in view, their jagged bluffs fringed with scrub-pine and spruce.

“This is the open range,” Jean said. “It goes on for miles and miles to the north, higher and higher till it blends into Bear Lodge.”

“Oh, girls, don’t you remember that place in the Bible?” exclaimed Polly, halting to lift her head and draw in deep breaths of the clear fine air. “I mean where it tells about the cattle on a thousand hills. Who’d want an old, smelly, burnt sacrifice, when he could have this, and all the cattle on them.”

The full heat of the day was still far off, and the morning calm and hazy. The lazy, droning sound of insects came from the shadowy depths of sage-brush on either side of the path, and High Jinks would shy every now and then as a honey-laden bee or flippant butterfly darted by his nose.

“Is it far?” asked Polly, after they had passed the low, sun-dried bed of Coon Creek, and struck out across a long, open stretch of upland with only a ragged pine here and there to break its barren monotony.

“About five miles the short way, but nearly fifteen if we had to go around the hills west of here. Father fixed a short cut years ago when we used to pasture our herd on the Black Pine stretch. He built a bridge over the gulch up here. Some of the road is so overgrown now that you have to take your time. Polly, don’t hold Jinks in if you can stand a little gallop. He’s just ready to dance for a run.”

“I won’t hold him in—” began Polly, and she slackened her hold on the bridle. The pony shook his head free joyously, and started off on a helter-skelter canter that made Polly lean forward, and grip his sides with her knees like an Indian. Her cap dropped off, and her hair tumbled down from its pins, but she liked it. Jean and Peggie had shown her how to adjust herself to every turn and twist of the pony, how to grip with her knees, and lean over his neck, and stand in the stirrups when he ran. Many things had she learned with the other girls too, in just one day at the Crossbar, and not the least of them was to consider the temperament and feelings of the pony she rode.

“They’re all good chums, if you only know how to treat them right,” Peggie had said, and the girls believed it.

Peggie came after her on her pony, Twinkle, but Polly beat her, and they both reined up short and waited for the rest. Sue had dismounted, picked up Polly’s cap, and was bringing it.

“Twinkle isn’t quite as fast a runner as Jinks,” Peggie said loyally, “but he has a very understanding way with him. I like a horse that understands, don’t you? I don’t like the white patch over Jinks’ eye, because it always looks as if he had an eyeglass on, like Mr. Cameron, the owner of the Red Star outfit.”

By this time the rest had caught up.

“Look west, girls,” said Jean, suddenly, pointing with her quirt. “See where the ground sinks, and there’s a fringe of timber? That’s Lost Chance Gulch, where father built the bridge.”

“What a queer name,” exclaimed Isabel, who was ever ready to scent a story of romance. “Who lost the chance?”

“An old trapper named Zed Reed. He built a shack down in the gulch, father says, years and years ago, and always vowed there was gold there. Folks said he was a little bit light headed. I can remember seeing him come to our place. Father used to give him work now and then to feed him. He was very tall, and had a long red beard, and curly red hair, and he wore a coonskin cap with the tail hanging down one side. I used to like to have him come because he could play on the fiddle. He carried it in an inside coat pocket that he had had made specially to hold it, and he would play the loveliest tunes on it. The people around here, and even the Indians, called him Old Darned Coat. Isn’t that a funny name?”

“Why?” asked Polly. “I never came across so many dandy stories about people and places.”

“This country up here is full of stories,” answered Jean, dreamily. “I love them. They are so real, and so full of human interest. People said that, years before, Zed had been engaged to Colette Buteau, the daughter of the French Canadian that used to keep the old trading post on the Dakota border at Twin Forks. She died a day or two before the wedding. She, with her father, was killed by the Sioux. Zed was never the same after that, and he said he would wear his wedding coat for the rest of his life. It was a green broadcloth coat, with black velvet collar and large silk-covered buttons, and it had big revers, and a skirt to it, and the lining was quilted silk. I suppose it was a very wonderful coat in those days, but Zed kept his vow, and as the years went on, and the coat grew shabbier and shabbier, he would darn each little frayed rent as tenderly and carefully as possible. Mother says that finally it seemed to be all darns, and they called him Old Darned Coat. I can remember him coming to the back door, and bowing so courteously to mother, and saying, ‘Howdy, Mis’ Murray. Could I get just a little piece of darning silk from you, I wonder—silk twist is best of all, and I’ll work it out on the wood pile.’”

“Did he die?” asked Sue, her eyes wide with interest.

“Yes. Father found him in his shack, just asleep, with Colette’s picture beside him on his fiddle, and under the two, the old darned wedding coat. He was buried in it.”

The girls were silent as they passed the level upland. The ground was dipping again, and patches of trees became frequent. Ted and Sue were in the lead now, and finally, as they came in sight of Sundance Mountain in the far distance, about forty miles off, Peggie told them why it was called that.

“I love its name,” she said, in her odd way, half shy, half abrupt. “It always makes me think of the days that Sandy tells us about, before even father came here, when the Indians would send out runners from tribe to tribe to call them to the Sun Dance, and they would all gather each year at the mountain to hold the dance and feast for seven days, I think it was.”

“It must have been happy for them,” Sue said, “when the land was all their very own, I mean. Sometimes, I don’t blame them for fighting for it. After all, it had been theirs for so long. How would we like to be chased off, like a lot of stray cats, just because we didn’t want our country taken from us.”

Polly reined in her pony sharply.

“Look!” she cried. “Is that the bridge, Miss Jean?”

“That is it,” Jean answered, and they urged the ponies forward.

The path made a sharp turn to the left, and instead of the tall grass of the low ground, up here they found the earth rough, and strewn with jagged points of rock. They had come to the end of the trail, and could look down into the shadowy depths of Lost Chance Gulch. A bridge of logs spanned it, with hand rails on each side, and they rode over it in Indian file, the ponies picking their way daintily. All excepting Polly. Jinks hesitated at the bridge, and backed away.

“Now, what does ail him?” asked Polly, but before she could answer, something crashed through the underbrush beside her. All she saw was the haunches of a brown doe, but Jinks did not like it a bit, and he began to live up to his name. The rest had gone on. And all at once a figure came out from the gloom of the gulch, such a strange looking figure, that for the moment, as she looked at him, and he at her in equal astonishment, she thought it must be the ghost of old Zed himself.