A MOUNTAIN MYSTERY.

Ralph said nothing of his adventure of the night till the next morning. As he had expected, his young chums put it down to a feverish imagination. Even the professor suggested a dose of quinine; but Mountain Jim walked over after the morning meal to where the boy had seen the apparition, which, Ralph was beginning to believe, the figure must have been.

The lad accompanied the mountaineer, who had expected to find some tracks or traces by which Ralph’s adventure might be verified. But the ground was rocky, and the soft bed of the forest beyond held no tracks, so that they were disappointed in their anticipation of finding some clew to the strange appearance of the night.

“You’re certain sure, dead certain sure that you did see something. Didn’t just dream it?” questioned Mountain Jim as they made their way back to camp where the others were busy packing the ponies, even Persimmons being by this time able to cast a “diamond hitch.”

“I’m positive,” declared Ralph firmly; “if I hadn’t been so certain that what I saw was a man, I would have fired. But who could it have been?” he added in a perplexed voice. Jim shook his blond head.

“Great Blue Bells of Scotland, I dunno, boy,” he said, thoughtfully puffing at his pipe. “You ain’t the sort of lad to dream things, I can see that. But it’s got me. If we’d been in the gold country now it might have been a prospector, but nobody goes through here, not even hunters, for right where we are now is a bad place for game.”

So, for the time being, the mystery of the midnight visitor was unsolved and almost forgotten. It was destined to be recalled later in a startling manner, but for the present even Ralph began to believe that he might have been the victim of some sort of an hallucination, caused, possibly, by the fact that he was only half awake when he had beheld the figure on the rock.

As Mountain Jim had said, the country through which they were now traveling was indeed a bad section for hunters. Although the boys made several detours after game, not so much as a rabbit did they see. The day following the night on which Ralph had seen, or thought he had seen, the figure of the watching man, they encountered, for the first time, a tract of country common enough in the Canadian wilds but particularly unpleasant to travel through, namely, a brulee or vast tract of woods through which a forest fire has swept, leaving desolation in its path.

Nothing more depressing can be imagined than these burned forests. Naked, blackened trees, with rags of scorched bark peeling from their bare trunks, tower out of a desert expanse of gray-black ash. Horses or foot travelers passing through, churn up clouds of this ashen dust which chokes the nostrils, burns the eyes and blackens everything with which it comes in contact.

Our travelers found themselves on the outskirts of such a place some time before noon on the day mentioned. Mountain Jim had at first thought of making a detour up a mountain side, but after a consultation it was decided to press on through the desolate waste, where charred trunks stuck up like the blackened stumps of teeth in an old man’s jaws.

As they plunged into the brulee they found their ponies sinking over the fetlocks in the ashes. In places, huge piles of trunks, burned through at the base, lay like barriers across their path, and it was necessary to go around them to find a passable way. Long before they were out of the wretched place the water in their canteens was gone, and their throats were clogged and lips cracked from the dry, acrid dust that rose in clouds. From time to time the boys were compelled to rub their eyes to relieve the tingling smart in them, and speedily their faces were blackened like those of coal heavers. A more sorry-looking party it would be hard to imagine than that which, hour after hour, painfully wended its way through the burned forest. Not a sprig of green, not a rill of water refreshed their sight. No birds or animals could be seen or heard. On every side was nothing but black desolation.

Ralph and young Ware rode ahead, side by side, while behind straggled the rest of the party. Mountain Jim brought up the rear behind the pack animals, which needed urging with whip and voice through the desolation of the brulee. Now and then, far off, they could hear the crash of some forest giant as its burned-through trunk gave way and it came smashing to the ground with a roar like thunder, not infrequently bringing two or three of its mates with it.

Jim had warned the boys and the professor to be on the lookout for such things, and as Ralph and Harry Ware rode along they kept a bright and vigilant watch for any tree that looked as if its fall was imminent.

“Gee whiz! I feel like an ant that has lost its way in the ashes of a camper’s fire,” was the graphic way in which Hardware expressed his feelings, as for the twentieth time that morning he tried to clear his throat of ashes.

They ate a hasty lunch, of which, the boys declared, ashes formed the chief ingredient, for the dry, implacable gray dust appeared to sift into every mouthful they tasted. A long stop was out of the question. There was no knowing how far the brulee extended and they must push on and get to water, for already the ponies were beginning to show signs of distress. The poor animals’ sweaty sides were caked with gray dust till they all appeared of one uniform drab color. For the matter of that, the travelers themselves were no better off. Like a dull monochrome, they were cloaked in ashen gray from head to foot.

Hardly speaking, for their spirits were at the lowest ebb in this ghastly ruin of a majestic forest, they pushed on. The only life in the brulee appeared to be the black flies and mosquitoes which bit till they drew blood, further annoying them.

“I thought I’d rough it in the West,” muttered Ralph once as his pony tumbled over a blackened trunk that lay across the trail, “but this beats anything I’ve ever experienced,—pah!” and he spat out a mouthful of ashy dust.

The afternoon wore on, and still they stumbled along through the brulee without any signs of its coming to an end. As far as they could see the forest of blackened trunks extended, the same carpet of ashen dust was everywhere. The sun, growing lower, hung like a glowing ball of copper in a red sky, seen through the dust that they kicked up as they moved painfully along.

The horses were driven half mad by the biting flies, and their fetlocks were cruelly bruised and cut by the charred logs and rocks. It was heartbreaking traveling, but of a kind that must befall sooner or later everyone who ventures into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies.

Tired, choked and irritable, Harry Ware was lagging behind Ralph, who was now riding in advance alone. Behind him he could hear the voice of Mountain Jim unceasingly urging on the pack animals. Mountain Jim never swore, but his range of words which were forceful and expressive without being profane, was amazing. Evidently, too, his adjurations had their effect on the jaded ponies, for they stumbled bravely on leaping logs and dodging stones with renewed agility every time the guide’s voice boomed through that blackened, fire-swept wilderness.

Ralph had fallen into a semi-doze. The deadly monotony of the half-calcined columns on every hand, the close heat of the brulee made him drowsy. The voice of Mountain Jim fell more and more faintly on his ears. Harry Ware, kicking his pony viciously, passed him.

“I’m going to be the first out of this beastly place,” he remarked with emphasis as he rode by.

“Well, don’t kick any more dust in my face than you can help,” rejoined Ralph, only a shade less irritably.

“Oh, shut up!” snapped Harry, ordinarily the best and most even-tempered of boys.

Ralph flushed angrily for an instant and his hand clenched as a cloud of choking dust was spurned in his face by the heels of Harry Ware’s mount. But the next instant he gained control of himself.

“Pshaw! I guess we’re all losing our tempers,” he murmured to himself, “and it’s a fact that this place would make a saint cross—Hold up there, pony! Not much longer now.”

Content with his spurt ahead, Hardware slowed his pony down to a walk a few paces in front of Ralph. He did not apologize for his unthinking act of smothering Ralph with dust. Instead, he gazed sullenly straight ahead of him.

He was hot, thirsty, and bitten mercilessly by black flies. The lad was in no mood to go around obstacles. Rather was he in that savage humor that rushes recklessly on, although he had been warned of the dangers of the brulee. In fact, the frequent crashing of half burned-through trees, as a vagrant wind caught them and snapped them off, would have been sufficient indication that a sharp lookout was necessary to anyone in a less irritable mood. But Harry didn’t think of this. Instead, he urged his tired pony viciously over blackened logs with quirt and heel.

Suddenly Ralph, whose vigilance had not relaxed although he was fearfully drowsy, thought he saw a great blackened trunk directly ahead of them lean over a trifle. He was sure of it in another moment.

“Pull out!” he yelled to Harry, who was driving his pony straight in a path which would bring him under the swaying trunk.

“Oh, mind your own business!” flung back Hardware crossly, and drove his little mount right on.

Ralph did not hesitate a minute. He wore spurs, the same blunt-rowelled pair he had used on the border. He drove these into his pony’s side and brought down his quirt with a crack that made the little animal snort angrily and plunge forward.

In front of him he saw the mighty column sway and oscillate as though in a vain attempt to recover its equipoise. Directly under it was Harry Ware, sullenly riding on with his eyes on the ground. Once more Ralph yelled and his pony gave a wild leap forward.

Suddenly the mighty trunk rushed earthward. Simultaneously Ralph’s hand fell on Hardware’s bridle. He gave a tug that brought the latter’s pony up on its haunches. It reared wildly, almost toppling backward.

At the same instant a cold wind fanned both boys as the trunk swept down. There was a deafening crash almost under the feet of the plunging ponies, and both lads were shrouded in a cloud of black dust that rose up like a dark veil.

“Good heavens! They’re killed!” shouted the professor dashing forward.

About the two boys the dust whirled and eddied. The ponies plunged wildly, almost unseating them, but Ralph held on till he had dragged Hardware’s mount out of the black dust cloud.

As he did so, from ahead of them, came crash after crash with a startling suddenness. The brulee was filled with shocks of sound that rang in thunderous reverberations along the steep rocks. The echoes flung back and forth till the uproar was deafening. In the meantime the party, including the two lads who had been saved from what appeared certain death, stood fast.

They hardly breathed till the crashes grew less and less frequent and a brooding silence settled down over the brulee once more.

Then Hardware, shaking all over, gazed at the great trunk lying recumbent not two yards from them. His eyes filled with tears. He held out a blackened hand to Ralph, who smiled at him through his mask of gray ash.

“I—I—I don’t know how to thank you, Ralph, old man,” he choked out. “If it hadn’t been for you, in my silly temper I’d have gone right on without minding you, and—and——”

He could not go further, but Ralph’s fingers closed on his out-stretched hand.

“That’s all right, old man,” was all he said; but between both boys a thrill ran as their fingers clasped. Hardware had learned a lesson there in the brulee that all the schools in Christendom couldn’t have taught him, and he knew it.

“A mighty near thing,” said Mountain Jim, as the others rode up, “I guess I’ll have a smoke.”

His voice was steady enough, but his hands shook as he filled his old brier. Death had swept by too closely for any of them to recover their nerve for half an hour or more. By that time, as they rode on, the charred trunks were fewer and fewer, and an hour before sundown they came out of that “Valley of Desolation” into a wide canon, carpeted with lush, green grass and watered by a crystal clear stream. On each side towered rocky scraps of cliff clothed with dark pines and balsams.

Boys and men broke into a cheer, and even the dispirited ponies fell into a brisk gait without urging. The travelers forgot their trials as they laved in the fresh, cold water of the mountain stream and watched Jim getting supper, assisted by Jimmie, while the ponies ravenously cropped the fresh, juicy grass. But it was days before the last trace of ashes was removed from their belongings, and one at least of the party was destined never to forget that brulee in the Rockies as long as he might live.