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I suppose that you'll cost me the deuce of a lot, I suppose I must pay mid look pleasant^ Though youWe only a small insignificant dot — My three-year-old luarrior — at present. But if ever you iiccd the paternal ' tip,' If ever you sin aiul must suffer. Be brave and go straight, or I'll *give you gyp'- If I don't you may call vie ' a duffer.' 234u9i] I CONTENTS I. FERNHALL V. LOAMSHIRE , II. *MOP FAUCIBUS H^SIT' jy III. SNAP'S REDEMPTION 25 IV. THE FERNHALL GHOST . . or V. THE ADMIRAL'S ' SOCK-DOLLAGER ' . , , .45 VI. THE BLOW FALLS 57 VII. LEAVE LIVERPOOL jj VIIL THE MANIAC g. IX. ' THAT BAKING POWDER ' ,q2 X. AFTER SCRUB CATTLE . . . . . . . 109 XI. BRINGING HOME THE BEAR j,g XIL BRANDING THE 'SCRUBBER' ,2^ Xm. WINTER COMES WITH THE * WAVIES ' . . . .135 XIV. A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE ,43 XV. FOUNDING ' BULL PINE ' FIRM iq^ XVI. BEARS XVII. IN THE BRULE ... • • • • . loo XVIH. THE LOSS OF ' THE CRADLE 202 f ' X SNAP CHAPTER XIX. THE GAMBLERS ' PUT UP ' . XX. LONE MOLNTAIN ... XXI. AT THE TOP XXII. AT THE END OF THE ROPE XXIII. READING THE AVILL XXIV. snap's SACRIFICE . XXV. THE FLIGHT OF THE CROWS XXVI. snap's STORY . . . . XXVII. CONCLUSION PAan . 216 . 227 . 238 . 248 . 267 . 269 . 280 . 293 . 304 ILLUSTEATIONS. IN THE CHIMNEY THE ADMIRAL FISHING . ' GOOD-BYE ' . . . . SNAP AND THE MADMAN . TONY AND THE SCRUBBER IN THE WOOD . . . IN THE BRULE ' HANDS UP ' . . . ' GOOD-BYE, PARD ' ON THE FACE OF THE CLIFF . SNAP'S SACRIFICE . . . Front is2nece To face ;page 52 78 100 132 160 198 224 246 252 278 1 PAQB . 216 . . 227 . 238 . . 248 . 257 . . 269 . 280 . . 293 . 304 100 132 160 198 224 246 252 278 S NAP -•o*- CHAPTER I FERNHALL V. LOAMSIIIRE * What on earth shall we do, Winthrop ? * asked one of the Fernhall Eleven of a big fair-faced lad, who seemed to be its captain. *Do! Pll be shot if I know, Wyndham,' he replied. * It is bad enough to be a bat short, but really I don't know that we can spare a bowler.' ' Ah, well,' suggested another of the group, * though Hales did very well for the Twenty-two, it isn't quite the same thing bowling against such a team as Loam- shire brings down; he might not "come off" after all, don't you know.' A quiet grin spread over the captain's face. No one knew better than he did the spirit which prompted Poynter's last remark. Good bowler though he was, Poynter had often been a sad thorn in Winthrop' s side. If you put him on first with the wind in his favour, Poynter would be beautifully good-tempered, and bowl sometimes like a very Spofforth. Only then sometimes he wouldn't ! SNAP Sometimes an irreverent batsman from Loamshire who had never heard of Poynter's break from the leg would hit him incontinently for six, and perhaps do it twice in one over. Then Poynter got angry. His arms began to work like a windmill. He tried to bowl rather faster than Spofforth ever did ; about three times as fast as Nature ever meant John Poynter to. The result of this was always the same. First he pitched them short, and the delighted batsman cut them for three ; then he pitched them up, and that malicious person felt a thrill of pleasure go through his whole body as he either drove them or got them away to square leg. Then Winthrop had to take him off. This was when the trouble began. Sul- lenly Poynter would take his place in the field — and it was not every pi* ce in the field which suited him. If you put him in the deep field, he growled at the folly which risked straining a bowler's arm by shying. If you put him close in, he grumbled at the risk he ran of having those dexterous fingers of his damaged by a sharp cut or a * sweet ' drive. For o. course he always expected to be put on again, and from the time that he reached his place until the time that he was again put into possession of the ball he did nothing but watch his rival with mali- cious envy, making a mental bowling analysis for him, in which he took far more note of the hits (or wides if there were any) than he did of the maiden overs which were bowled. But Frank Winthrop was a diplomatist, as a cricket captain should be, so, though he grinned, he only replied. ' That's true enough, Poynter, but I must ,i FERNHALL V. LOAMSIIIRE have some ordinary straight stuff, such as Hales's, to rest you and Eolles, and put these fellows off their guard against your curly ones.' * Yes, I suppose it is a mistake to bowl a fellow good balls all the time. It makes him play too care- fully,' replied the self-satisfied Poynter. * Well, but, Winthrop,' insisted the first speaker, ' if you don't do without a change bowler, what will you do ? That other fellow in the Twenty-two doesn't bowl well enough, but there are lots of them useful bats.' ' I know all that, but I've made up my mind,' replied the young autocrat. ' I shall play a man short, if I can't persuade Trout ' (an irreverent sobri- quet for their head-master) ' to let Snap Hales off in time.' When a captain of a school eleven says that he has made up his mind, the intervention of anyone less than a head-master is useless, so that no one protested. As the group broke up Wyndham put his arm through Winthrop's, and together they strolled towards the door of the school-house. 'Are you going up to see *' the head," Major?' he asked. *Yes,' replied Winthrop. ' What ! about Snap Hales ? ' demanded Wyndham. * Yes,' again replied Winthrop, 'about that young fool Snap.' ' What has he been up to now ? ' demanded his chum. ' Oh, he has been cheeking Cube-root again. It B 2 SNAP seems old Cube-root couldn't knock mathematics into him anyhow, so he piled on the impositions. Snap did as many lines as he could, but even with three nibs in your pen at once there is a limit to the num- ber which a fellow can do in a day, and Master Snap has so many of these little literary engagements for other masters as well as old Cube that at last he reached a point beyond which no possible diligence would carry him.' * Poor old Snap ! ' laughed Wj^ndham. * Then, as he had just got into the eleven,' con- tinued Winthrop, ' he didn't like to give up his half- hour with the professional ; the result of all which was that yesterday old Cube asked him for his lines and was told — "'I haven't done them, sir." * " Haven't done them, sir: what do you mean ? " thundered Cube. * " I hadn't time, sir," pleaded Snap. ' " Not time ! Why, I myself saw you plajang cricket to-day for a good half-hour. What do you mean by telling me you had not time ? " asked Cube. ' " I had not time, sir, because " Snap tried to say, but Cube stopped him with that abominable trick of his, you know it. * " Yees, Hales, yees ! Yees, Hales, yees ! So you had no time. Hales ! Yees, Hales, yees ! " ' " No, sir, I was obliged to " * ** To tell me a lie, sir ! Yees, Hales, yees." ' Here Snap's beastly temper gave out, and instead of waiting till he got a chance of telling his story properly to old Cube, who, although he loves mathe- FERNIIALL V. LOAMSIIIRE 5 matics and hates a lie, is a good chap after all, he deliberately mimicked the old chap with — ' *' Noo, sir, mid ! Ndo, sir, ndo ! " ' Of course the other fellows went into fits of laughter, and old Cube had fits too, only of another kind, and I expect I shall get " fits " from the Head for trying to get the young idiot off for this match. But I really don't see how we can get on without him,' Winthrop added, as he left his friend at the door, and plodded with a heavy heart up to the head-master's sanctum. What happened there the narrator of this truthful story does not pretend to know. The inside of a head- master's library was to him a place too sacred for intrusion, and it was only through the foolish persist- ence of certain unwise under-masters that he was ever induced to enter it. Whenever he did, he left it with a note of recommendation from that excellent man to the school-sergeant. It was not quite a testimonial to character, but still something like it, and always contained an allusion to one of the most graceful of forest trees, the mournful, beautiful birch. I am told that this is the favourite tree of the Russian peasant. I dai-e say. I am told he is still uneducated. It was education which, I think, taught me to dislike the birch. But I am wandering. The only words which reached me as I stood below, wondering if my leave out of bounds would be granted or not — and I had very good reasons for betting on the * not ' — were these : * Very well, if he is no good as a bat it won't TT 6 SNAP much matter. I'll do what I can for you, only win the toss and go in first.' He was a good fellow, our Head, and from Win- throp's face as he came downstairs I expect that he thought so. I was quite right ahout that leave out of hounds. The head-master felt, no doubt quite properly, that on such a day as the day of the Loamshire match, when there were sure to be lots of visitors about, it would not do for one of the school's chief ornaments to be absent. It was very hard upon me because, you see, I could only buy twelve tarts for my shilling at the tuckshop, w'hereas if I had got leave out of bounds I could have got thirteen for the same money, only four miles from school ! That sense of duty to the public which no doubt will lead me some day to take a seat in the House of Commons enabled me to bear up under my trouble, and about two o'clock I was watching the match with my fellows on the Fernhall playing fields. Ah, me ! those Fernhall playing fields ! with their long level stretches of green velvet, their June sunshine and wonderful blue skies ! What has life like them nowadays ? On this day they were looking their very best, and, though I have wandered many a thousand miles since then, I have never seen a fairer sight. Forty acres there were, all in a ring fence, of level greensward, every yard of it good enough for a match wicket, and the ring-fence itself nothing but a tall rampart of green turf, twelve or fourteen feet high, and broad enough at the top for two boys to walk upon it abreast. FERN HALL V. LOAMSHIRE 7 Out in the middle of this great meadow the wickets were pitched, and I really believe that I have since played billiards on a surface less level than the two- and-twenty yards which they enclosed. The hnes of the crease gleamed brightly against the surrounding green, and the strong sun blazed down upon the long white coats of the umpires, the Fernhall eleven (or rather ten, for Snap was still absent), and two of the strongest bats in Loamshire. But, though fourteen figures had the centre of the ground to themselves, there was plenty of vigorous young life round its edges. There, where the sun was the warmest, with their backs up against the bank which enclosed the master's garden, sat or lay some four hundred happy youngsters, anxiously watching every turn of the match, keen critics, although thoroughgoing partisans. Like young lizards, warmed through with the sun, lying soft against the mossy bank, the scent of the flowers came to them over the garden hedge, and the soft salt breeze came up from the neighbouring sea. You could hear the lip and roll of its waves quite plainly where you lay, if you listened for it, for after all it was only just beyond that green bulwark of turf behind the pavilion. Many and many a time have we boys seen the white foam flying in winter across those very playing-fields, and gathered sea-wrack from the hedges three miles inland. By-and-by, when the match was over, most of the two-and-twenty players in it would race down to the golden sands and roll like young dolphins in the blue waves, for Fernhall boys swam like fishes in those good old days, V ■^^.•itnf^eM»ms*^ r ;314*!V*'^A*.> . 8 SNAP and such a sea in such sunshine would have tempted the veriest coward to a phmge. But the match was not over yet, although yellow- headed Frank Winthrop began to think that it might almost as well be. He was beginning to despair. It was a one-day match : the school had only made 15G, while the county had only two wickets down for 93 ; of course there was no chance of a second innings ; the two best bats in Loamshire seemed set for a century apiece ; Poynter had lost his temper and seemed trying rather to hurt his men than to bowl them, and everyone else had been tried and had failed. What on earth was an unfortunate captain to do? Just then a figure in a long cassock and college cap, a fine portly figure with a kindly face, turned round, and, using the back of a trembling small boy for a desk, wrote a note and despatched the aforesaid small boy with it to the rooms of the Rev. Erasmus Cube^Root. A minute or two before, Winthrop had found time to exchange half-a-dozen words with * the Head ' whilst in the long field, and now he turned and raised his cap to him, while an e::.pression of thankfulness overspread his features. The two Loamshire men at the wickets were Grey and Hawker, both names well known on all the cricket-fields of England, and one of them known and a little feared by our cousins at the Antipodes. This man, Hawker, had been heard to say that he was coming to Fernhall to get up his average and have an afternoon's exercise. It looked very much as if he would justify his boast. He was an aggravating bat to bowl to, for more reasons than one. One of mmmlmmmmm) FERNIIALL V. LOAMSIIlRli: 9 his tricks, indeed, seemed to have heen invented for the express purpose of chaffing the bowler. As he stood at the wicket his hat was almost con- cealed from sight behind his pads, his wicket appeared to be undefended, and all three stmnps plainly visible to his opponent. Alas ! as the ball came skimming down the pitch the square-built little athlete straight- ened himself, the bat came out from its ambush, and you had the pleasure of knowing that another six spoiled the look of your analysis. If he was in very high spirits, and you in very poor form, he would indulge in the most bewildering liberties, spinning round on his heels in a way known to few but himself, so as to hit a leg ball into the * drives.' Altogether he was, as the boys knew, a perfect Tartar to deal w'ith if he once got * set.' Grey, the other bat, was q ''',e as exasperating in his way as Hawker, only it was quite another way. He it was who had broken poor Poynter's heart. You did not catch him playing tricks. You did not catch him hitting sixes, or even threes ; but neither did you catch him giving the field a chance, launching out at a yorker, or interfering with a * bumpy ' one. Oh, no ! It didn't matter what you bowled him, it was always the same story. *Up went his shutter,' as Poynter feelingly remarked, * and you had to pick up that blessed leather and begin again.' Sometimes he placed a ball so as to get one run for it, sometimes he turned round and sped a parting ball to leg, and some- times he snicked one for two. He was a slow scorer, but he seemed to possess the freehold of the ground he stood upon. No one could give him notice to quit. 10 SNAP i Such were- the men at the wicket, and such the state of the game, when a tall, slight figure came racing on to the ground in very new colours, and with fingers which, on close inspection, would have hetrayed a more intimate acquaintance with the ink-pot than with the cricket-ball. Although it would have been nearer to have passed right under the head-master's nose, the new-comer went a long way round, eyeing that dignitary with nervous suspicion, and raising his cap with great deference when the eye of authority rested upon him. As soon as he came on to the ground he dropped naturally into his place, and anyone could have seen at a glance that, whatever his other merits might or might not be, Snap Hales was a real keen cricketer. "When a ball came his way there was no waiting for it to reach him on his part. He had watched it, as a hawk does a young partridge, from the moment it left the bowler's hands, and was halfway to meet it already. Like a flash he had it with either hand — both were alike to him — and in the same second it was sent back straight and true, a nice long hop, arriving in the wicket-keeper's hands at just about the level of the bails. But Winthrop had other work for Snap to do, and at the end of the over sent him to replace liolles at short-slip. *By George, Towzer, they are going to put on Snap Hales,' said one youngster to another on the 1 dgs under the ga.rden hedge. ' About time, too,' replied his companion ; * if he can't bowl better than those two fellows he ought to be kicked.' i f~:ii-:ssiak«.- .■"VJU-? .-;if?^-;r; i'ERNITALL r. LOAMSIIIRH 11 *\Vt'll, I dare say both you and hv will he, if ho doesn't come oil' to-day. I expect it was your brother who ^'ot him off his lines to-day, and he won't be a pleasant companion for either of you if the school gets beaten with half-a-dozen wickets to spare.' Towzer, the boy addressed, was brother to the captain of the eleven, and hi.s fag. Snap Hales, when at home, lived near the \\'inthrops, so that in the school, generally, they were looked upon as being of one clan, of which, oi course, Frank Winthrop was the chief. Willy Winthrop was Towzer's proper name, or at least the name he was christened by ; but any- one looking at the fair-haired jolly-looking little fellow would have doubted whether his godfathers were wiser than his schoolfellows. No one would ever have dreamed of him as a future scholar of Balliol, nor, on the other hand, as a sour-visaged failure. He was a bright, impertinent Scotch terrier of a boy, and his discerning contemporaries called him Towzer. But we must leave Towzer for the present and stick to Snap. Everyone was watching him now, and none more closely or more kindly than the man whom Snap considered chief of his born enemies, * the Head.' * Yes, he is a fine lad,' muttered that great man, * I wish I knew how to manage him. He has stuff ^'n him for anything.' And indeed he might have, -hough he was hardly good-looking. Tall and spare, with a lean, game look about the head, the first impression he made upon you was that he was a perfect athlete, one of Nature's chosen children. Every movement was so easy and so quick that you knew instinctively that he was strong, though he 1 I 12 SNAP hardly looked it ; but his face puzzled you. It was a dark, sad-looking face, certainly not handsome, with firm jaw and somewhat rugged outlines, and yet there was a light sometimes in the big dark eyes which gave all the rest the lie, and made you feel that his masters might be right, after all, when they said, * There is no misdoing at Fernhall of which " that Hales " is not the leader.' At any rate he appeared to be out of mischief just now. * Piound the wicket, sir ? ' asked the umpire as Snap took the ball in hand. * No, Charteris, over,' was the short reply, as Hales turned to measure his run behind the sticks. * What ! a new bowler ? ' asked Hawker of the wicket-keeper as he took a fresh guard ; * who is he?' ' An importation from the Twenty-two ; got his colours last week,' answered Wyndham, and a smile spread over Hawker's face, as he saw in fancy a timid beginner pitching him half-volleys to be lifted over the garden hedge, or leg- balls with which to break the slates on the pavilion. But Hawker had to reserve his energy for a while, being much too good a cricketer to hit wildly at any- thing. With a quiet, easy action the new bowler sent down an ordinary good-length ball, too straight to take liberties with, and that was all. Hawker played it back to him confidently, but still carefully, and another, and another, of almost identical pitch and pace, followed the first. * Not so much to be made off this fellow after all,' thought Hawker, * but he will * •..*^^»*i)> BSBES; FERNHALL V. LOAMSniRE 13 get loose like the rest bj^-and-by, no doubt.' Still it was not as good fun as he had expected. The fourth bah of Snap's first over was delivered with exactly the same action as its predecessors, but the pace was about double that of the others and Hawker was only just in time to stop it. It was so very nearly too much for the great man that for a moment it shook his confidence in his own infallibility. That momentary want of confidence ruined him. The last ball of the over was not nearly up to the standard of the other four ; it was short-pitched and off the wicket, but it had a lot of ' kick ' in it, and Hawker had not come far enough out for it. There was an ominous click as the ball just touched the shoulder of his bat, and next moment, as long-slip remarked, he found it revolving in his hands ' like a stray planet.' Don't talk to me of the lungs of the British tar, of the Irish stump orator, or even of the * Grand Old Man ' himself ! They are nothing, nothing at all, to the lungs we had in those days. It was Snap's first wicket for the school, and Snap was the school's favourite, as the scapegrace of a family usually is, and caps flew up and fellows shouted until even Hawker didn't much regret his discomfiture if it gave the boys such pleasure. He was very fond of Fern- hall boys, that sinewy man from the North, and, next to their own heroes, Fernhall liked him better than most men. Even now they show the window through which he jumped on all fours, and many a neck is nearly dislocated in trying to follow his example. In the next over from his end Hales had to deal with Grey, and he found his match. He tried him 14 SNAP with slow ones, he tried him with fast ones, he tried to seduce him from the paths of virtue with the luscious lob, to storm hira with the Eboracian pilule or ball from York. It was not a bit of good, u]) went the shutter, and a maiden over left Snap convinced that the less he had to do with Grey the better for him, and left Grey convinced that Fernhall had got a bowler at last who bowled with his head. Was it wilfully, I wonder, that Snap gave Grey on their next meeting a ball which that steady player hit for one ? It may not have been, and yet there was a grin all over the boy's dark face as he saw Grey trot up to his end. That run cost Loamshire two batsmen in four balls — one bowled k ^ before wicket, and the other clean-bowled with an ordinary good-length ball rather faster than its fellows. Those old fields rang with Hales's name that afternoon, and at G.30, thanks chiefly to his superb bowling, the county had still two to score to win, and two \vickets to fall. One of the men still in was Grey. At the end of the over the stamps would be drawn, and the game drawn against the school, even if (as he might do) Snap should bowl a maiden. That, how- ever, could hardly be ; even Grey would hit out at such a crisis. At the very first ball the whole school I,' trembled with excitement. The Loamshire man played well back and stopped a very ugly one, fast and well pitched, but it would not be altogether denied, and curled in until it lay quiet and inoffensive, absolutely touching the stumps. Ah, gentlemen of Loamshire ! if you want to win this match why can't you keep quiet? Don't j'ou , I I FERNHALL v. LOAMSHIRE 15 think the sight of that fatal little ball, nestling close up to his wicket, is enough to disconcert any batsman in the last over of a good match ? And yet you cry, ' Steady, Thompson, steady ! ' Poor chap, you can see that he is all abroad, and the boy's eyes at the other end are glittering with repressed excitement. He is fighting his first great battle in public, and knows it is a winnmg one. There is a sting and ' devil ' in the fourth ball which would have made even Grace pull himself together. It sent Thompson's bails over the long-stop's head, and mowed down his wicket like ripe corn before a thunder-shower. And now the chivalry of good cricket was apparent ; Loamshire had no desire to * play out the time.' Even as Thompson was bowled, another Loamshire man left the pavilion, ready for the fray. If it had been ' cricket,' Hawker, the Loamshire captain, would have gladly played out the match. As it was, his man was ready to finish the over. As the two men passed each other the new-comer gave his defeated friend a playful dig in the ribs, and remarked, ' Here goes for the score of the match, Edward Anson, duck, not out!' As there was only one more ball to be bowled, and only two runs to be made to secure a win for Loam- shire, I'm afraid Anson hardly meant what he said. Unless it shot underground or was absolutely out of roach, that young giant, who ' could hit like anything, though not much of a bat,' meant at any rate to hit that one ball for four. By George, how he opened his shoulders ! how splendidly he lunged out ! you could see the great muscles swell as he made the f! t "-"■^1 11 1 16 SNAP il bat sing through the air, you could almost see the ball going seaward ; and yet — and yet The school had risen like one man ; they had heard that rattle among the timber ; they knew that Snap's last * yorker ' had done the trick ; cool head and quick hand had pulled the match out of the fire, and even his rival Poynter was one of the crowd who caught young Hales, tossed him on to their shoulders, and bore him in triumph to the pavilion, whilst the chapel clock struck the half-hour. .iajBJ«,L_ji! ■WWR 17 CHAPTER II ' MOP FAUCIBUS H^SIT ' Boys in the fifth form at Fernhall shared a study with one companion. Monitors of course lived in solitary splendour, with a bed which would stand on its head, and allowed itself to be shut up in a cup- board in the corner. Small boys who had not attained even to the fringe of the school aristocracy lived in herds in bare and ex, eedingly untidy rooms round the inner quads. Even in those days there were monitors who were worshij^pers of art. Some of them had curtains in their rooms of rich and varied colouring ; one of them had a plate hung up which he declared was a piece of undoubted old Worcester. Tomlinson was a great authority on objects of virtu, and a rare connoisseur, but we changed his plate for one which we bought for sixpence at Newby's, and he never knew the difference. Then there was one fellow who had several original oil paintings. These repre- sented farmyard scenes and were attributed indiffer- ently to Landseer, Herrin^, and a number of other celebrated artists. Whoever painted them, these pictures were the objects of more desperate forays than any other property within the school limits. I remember them well as adorning the room of a certain ; i-^ 18 SNAP man of muscle, to whorxi, of course, they belonged merely as the spoils of war. The rightful owner lived three doors off, but I don't think that he ever had the pluck to attempt to regain his own. However, in the small boys' rooms there were none of these luxuries of an effete civilisation. There was a book-shelf full of ragged books, none of which by any chance ever bore the name of anyone in that study ; there was a table, a gas-burner, a frying-pan, and a kettle. I'hese last-named articles might have been seen in every study at Fernhall, from the study of the monitor to that of the pauper, as we called that unfortunate being who had not yet emerged from the lower school. In the long nights of winter, when the wild sea roared just beyond the limits of their quad, and the spray came flying over the sea-wall to be dashed against their study windows, all Fernhall boys had a common consolation. They called it brewing : not the brewing of beer or of any intoxicating liquor, but of that cheering cup of tea which consoles so many thousands, from the London charwoman to the pig- tailed Chinaman, from the enervated Indian to the half-frozen Eussian exile in Siberia. At first the head- masters of Fernhall tried hard to put down this prac- tice. Sergeants lurked about our passages, confiscated our kettles, carried away the frying-pans full of curly rashers from under our longing eyes, and ' lines ' and flagellations were all we got in exchange. At last a new era began. A great reformer arrived, a ' Head ' of liberal leanings and wide sympath3^ This man frowned on coercion, and, instead of taking away our kettles, gave us a huge range of stoves on which to '^ ■WIWWP :.:^f '3I0P FAUC1BU3 ILESIT ' 19 belonged raer lived f had the i'ere none here was ih by any t study; n, and a ive been stud}^ of lied that Prom the rhen the h quad, 11 to be lall boys L'ewing : I liquor, io many he pig- to the e head- 's jirac- iscated curl^p and last a Head' 3 man ay our ich to 3 ])oil them. From a cook's point of view, no doubt, the range of stoves was a great improvement on the old gas-burner, but, in spite of the liberality of the 'Head,' small clusters of boys still stood night after night on iliose old study tables and patiently fried their bacon over the gas. Unfortunately this was not the worst of their misdoings. Besides the appetising smell of the bacon and the delicious aroma of chicory or tea, there was too often a strong flavour of * bird's-eye ' or ' latakia ' about the passages. Almost to a man, the school smoked. How it had crept in I don't pretend to know, but the habit had been growing in the school for years until it was almost universal. This was the one thing which our new head-master would not tolerate at any price, and it was pretty well understood throughout the school that his dealings with the first offender detected in the act would be short and severe. About the time of the Loamshire match he had taken to beating up our quarters in person, not, I think, from any desire to detect the smokers in the act, but from a hope that the fear of his coming might act as a deterrent. About a week after Snap Hales's great bowling feat, Fernhall was brewing as usual. The dusk had fairly set in ; a crowd of l^oys were jostling one another wdth tlie cans and frying-pans at the great public stoves, and Snap and many others were breaking school-rules as usual in their own studies. Mind, I am pledged to serve up my boys ((II nntiirel and not smothered in white sauce, so that if you don't like my menu you had better take warning in time. The bacon had been tinished, the c 2 m r-f:\ '■V M^ II !^^ V 11 i^l 20 SNAP hot rolls from the tuckshop had been submitted to digestions which were capable of dealing even with hot rolls and butter, and now Snap Hales, Billy "VVinthrop, and one Simpson were desperately endea- vouring to enjoy, or appear to enjoy, the forbidden pleasures of tobacco. Billy had an elaborately carved meerschaum between his teeth, while Snap lay full length on an extemporised divan, making strange noises and strange faces in his endeavours to get on terms with a * hubble-bubble.' Billy's jaws ached with the weight of the meerschaum, and Snap was as blown with trying to make his instrument of torture draw as if he had been running the school mile. Simpson was in a corner cutting up some * sun-dried honey dew,' which he had procured in a cake — ' such,' he said, ' as the trappers of the North-West always use.' To tell the truth, he liked ' whittling ' at that cake of tobacco with his knife a great deal better than smoking it, for the first two or three whiffs invariably sent a cold chill through his frame and a conviction that, like Mark Twain, he had inadvertently swallowed an earthquake. Suddenly the boys stopped talking ; there was a heavy rap at the door, preceded by a vain attempt to open it, and followed by the command, in deep tones, to ' open this dooi.' ' Nix ! by Jove ! * whispered Simpson, whiter now than ever with fright. * Bot ! ' replied Snap unceremoniously. ' It's only that fool Lane, up to some of his jokes. Go to Bath, Legs,' he added at the top of his voice, • OiJen this door at once,' thundered someone on I t -^*»'*"r-flM*(^ •MOP FAUCIBUS ILliSIT' 21 the other side, while lock and hinge rattled beneath the besieger's hands. ' Don't you wish you may get it, old chap,* * Shove away, and be hanged to you,' * Try your skull against the panel, blockhead,' and several similar remarks, were now hurled at the enemy by those in the study. Meanwhile, preparations for repelling an assault were rapidly being made. 'Boys, open this door, don't you know who is speaking to you ? ' said the voice once more. * Oh yes, we know,' laughed Snap, * and we are getting ready to receive you, siu.' ' Deuced well old Legs imitates the Head, doesn't he ? ' whispered Billy Winthrop. ' Not badly,' answered Snap in the same tone. * Have you got everything ready ? ' he added. * Yes,' said Billy ; * but let me try my fire-arm first,' and, dipping the nose of a large squirt into the inkpot, he filled it, and then discharged it at a venture through the key-hole. The result was satisfactory. From the sounds of anger and hasty retreat in the passages the boys guessed that the shot had told, and indulged in a burst of triumphant laughter in con- sequence. But the enemy was back again in a minute wrenching furiously at the door, which now began to give. * Let us die in the breach,' cried Snap, catching up a large mop, which he had used earlier in the day to clean his study floor, and emptying over it the remains of the cold coffee. 'Billy, stand by with your blunderbuss. Simpson, at the next shove let the door go ! ' he whispered, and the boys took up their 1 22 SNAP places — Snap with his mop in rest opposite the en- trance, Simpson with his hand on the key, and Billy's deadly weapon peepinj^ over his leader's shoulder. At the next assault Simpson let the door go, and Hales rushed headlong out to meet the foe, getting the whole of Billy's charge down the hack of his neck as he went. Someone kno Iced up the mop, so that it cannoned from him to another of the attacking party, whom it took fairly in the face, plastering him up against the opposite wall, a full-length portrait of ' the Head ! ' For once Snap's spirits deserted him. The mop fell from his nerveless hand. He even forgot to say that he did not do it. It was too gross a sin even for a schoolhoy to find excuses for. Nor had ' the Head ' much to say — partly, perhaps, hecause 'mops and coffee ' was not a favourite dish with him, and he had had rather more of it at his first essay than he cared to swallow, and partly, no doubt, hecause (diplomat though he was) for the life of him he could not re- member what was the dignified thing to do under such unusual circumstances. The Sergeant recovered himself first. ' They've all been smoking, Sir ! ' he asserted maliciously. * I suppose I'd better take their pipes.' ' Yes, Sergeant, and their names,' replied the Head. ' No need of that,' muttered our implacable foe. * I know this here study better nor ever a one in Fernhall.' ' Hales, and you, Winthrop minor, report your- selves to me in my library after morning school to- morrow,' said the Head, and, slowly turning, the great it M- 'MOP FAUCIBUS ILESIT' 23 man went, his mortar-board somewhat on ono side, while down the long cassock which he wore the streams of coffee ran. Two minutes after his departure, No. 19, the scene of the fray, was full of friends and of sympathisers. 'You'll get sacked, of course,' remarked one of these, 'but,' he added, *I don't see that there is any- thing worse than that which Old Petticoats can do.' * You don't think he could hang us, for instance, eh. Legs?' asked Snap sarcastically. 'Well, you are a nice, cheerful chap, you are ! ' he added. ' Never mind, old fellow,' urged another, * they will give you a good enough character for Sandhurst, and what do you want more ? ' ' You want a good deal for Sandhurst now. Viper ! replied Snap ; * they'd rather have a blind mathoma- tician than a giant who didn't know what nine times nine is.' In spite of their comforters our friends felt for at least five minutes that there was something in their world amiss. Then suddenly Snap began to laugh, quite softly and to himself at first, but the laugh was infectious, so that in half a minute every boy in the passage was holding his sides, and laughing until the tears ran down his cheeks. By-and-by inquiries were made for Simpson, who had not -been seen since the openmg of the door. In answer to the shouts addressed to him, a sepulchral voice replied, and after some search the unfortunate wretch was produced from behind the door, white with fear and tobacco- smoke, flat as a cake of his own beloved honeydew, his knees trembling, and his hair on end with terror. 24 SNAP Luckily for him, he had drawn the door hack upon himself, and had remained unnoticed behind it ever since. In spite of the tragedy with which it had begun, the remainder of the evening was spent in adding one more to the works of art which adorn Boot Hall How, to wit, one life-size portrait of the Very Reverend the Head-master of Fernhall, drawn upon the wall against which he had so recently been flattened, in charcoal, by one Snap Hales ; while underneath was written, to instruct future generations: IN MEMORIAM, JUNE 22, 1874. ' MOP FAUCIbUS H^SIT.' ■ (It 25 CHAPTEE III snap's redemption It was all very well to keep a stiff upper lip when the other boys were looking on, but when Snap and Towzer got up to their dormitories they began to give way to very gloomy thoughts indeed. Snap Hales especially had a bad time of it with his own thoughts. It did not matter so much for young Winthrop. His mother w^as a rich woman and an indulgent one. His expulsion would grieve her, but he would coax her to forgive him in less than no time, he knew. It was very different for Snap. He had no mother, nor any relative but a guardian, who was as strict as a Pharisee, and too poor himself to help Snap, even if he had had the will to, which he had not. Over and over again Snap had been told that his whole future depended on his school career, and it appeared to him that that career was about to come to a speedy and by no means honourable end. But that was not all. Snap's greatest friend on earth wsls his school-chum's mother. Mrs. Winthrop had always been almost a mother to Snap, and had won the boy's heart by the confidence she showed in him. Snap didn't like being expelled ; he didn't like 1 i 26 SNAP Towzer being expelled ; but still less did he like the prospect of being told that he, Snap Hales, had led the young one into mischief. And j^et that was what was before him. Snap was sitting on the edge of his bed, half undressed, and meditating somewhat in this miserable fashion, when a bolster caught him full in the face. Looking up quickly, he caught sight of a face he knew grinning at him over his partition. It was one of B. dormitory. B. had had the impertinence to attack F. That bolster was the gage of battle. Silently Snap slipped out, bolster in hand. Someone had relit the gas and turned it up as high as he dared. Bound and under it were ten or a dozen white-robed figures, armed with wdiat had once been pillows, but now resembled nothing so much as thick rox3es with a huge knot at the end. A week ago Snap had crept into B. dormitory and driven a block of yellow soap well home into the open mouth of the captain of B. That hero's snores had ceased, but he had sworn vengeance as soon as he was able to swear anything. This then was B.'s ven- geance, and the blows of the contending parties fell like hail. At first, respect for their master's beauty- sleep kept them quiet, and they fought grimly and quietly like rats in a corner. Gradually, though, their spirits rose, and the noise of battle increased. * Go it. Snap, bash his head in,' cried one. ' Let him have it in the wind,' retorted another, and all the while even the speakers were fighting for dear life. Suddenly a diversion occurred which B. to this day declares saved F. from annihilation. Unobserved by any of the combatants, a short man with an t 4 ^...^^^v- -*»^.. a SNAPS REDEMPTION 27 enormous ' corporation ' had stealthily approached them, the first iniimation which they had of his presence being the stinging cuts from his cane on their almost naked bodies. No one stopped for a second dose, so that the little man was pouring out the vials of bis wrathful eloquence over a quiet and orderly room, when his gaze suddenly lit upon an ungainly figure trying to sneak unobserved into B. roum. It was the miserable Postlethwaite, butt Ptud laughing-stock of both rooms, who, having no taste for hard knocks, had been quietly learning his repeti- tion for the next day by the light of a half-extin- guished gas-jet in the corridor. Like a hawk upon its prey, the man with the figure pounced upon poor Postlethwaite. ' What brings you out here, sir ? ' he cried. * What do you mean by it, sir ? Why aren't you in bed, sir ? ' * Please, sir,' began Postlethwaite. ' Don't answer me, sir,' thundered the master. ' You don't please me, sir ! you're the most imperti- nent boy in the school, sir ! Do me a thousand lines to-morrow, sir ! ' ' Please, sir ' ' Please, sir, pleas'^, sir, didn't I tell you not to say, please, sir ? ' cried the now furious pedagogue, fairly dancing with rage, butting at the trembling lout with his portly stomach, and driving his flaming little nose and bright eyes almost into his victim's face. Poor * Postle ' was now a trembling white shadow nearly six feet high, penned in a corner, with the 28 SNAP !' ! solid round figure of his foe dancing angrily in front of him. ' Please, sir, please, sir,' continued the master savagely. ' I'll please you, sir. I'll thrash you within an inch of your life. I'll cane you on the spot, sir ! ' 'Please, sir,' whined the miserable P's-^ti. '^nd this time he would be heard. ' Please, sir, 1 haven't got a spot, sir ! ' An uncontrollable titter burst from all those hitherto silent beds, and the fiercest-mannered and kindest-hearted little man in Fernhall retired to his room, to indulge in an Homeric laugh, having set a score of impositions, not one of which he would re- member next day. As for Postle, he crept away, quite ignorant that he had made a joke, but terribly nervous lest his enemy should again find him out. Next morning, after lecture. Snap Hales was pre paring with Billy Winthrop to meet his doom. They had hardly had time to exchange a dozen words with Frank Winthrop since the event of the night before, and now as they approached the Head's house they saw him coming towards them. His honest brown face wore a graver look than usual, aid even Snap felt his friend's unspoken rebuke. ' You fellows need not go up to the H )dil,' he said quietly, * the monitors have leave to deal with your case.' That was all, and our school- hero pa , . d on; but his words raised a world of speculation in our minds, for the whole school, of course, knew at once of this message to Snap and Towzer. Of course we under- 1 wmmm mmmmismm^s--A^'.'. J^i^i snap's redemption 29 stood that the monitors could, in exceptional cases, interfere, and from time to time used their privilege, but this was mostly in such disgraceful cases as were best punished privately. A thief might be tried and punished by the upper twelve, but not a mere breaker of school-rules. Even expulsion need not carry more than school disgrace with it, but the sentence of the monitors' court meant the cut direct from Fernhall boys, now and always, at Fernhall, and afterwards in the world. And what had even Hales or Towzer done to merit this '? The half-hour before dinner was passed in specu- lation. Then someone put up a notice on the notice- board, and we were told by one who was near enough to read it that it was to the effect that the monitors would hold a roll-call directly after dinner in place of the usual first hour of school, and at this every Fern- hall boy was specially warned to be present. There was no need to enforce this. Every name was answered to ac tha^. roll-call, and, for once, in every case by tli'^ boy who bore it. The roll- pall v/as held in the big schoolroom, a huge and somewhat bare building, full of rough ink- stained desks and benches, with a raised platform at thp further end. On this, when the roll-call was over, stood the whole Sixth, with their prisoners. Snap and Towzer. Frank was there (the captain of the Eleven), and beside him even a greater than he, the School captain, Wyndham — first m the schools, first in the football-field, and first in everything, .except per- haps cricket, at which his old chum Frank Winthrop was possibly a little better than he. I think that, \fi \f ■ :!? 1 1 I :l ' ii III 30 SNAP much as we admired Yvlnthrop, Wyndliam was first of our school heroes. He could do so many things and did them all well. After everyone had answered his name a great hs 1' of expectation fell upon us all. Then Wyndham cam> the front and spoke. We had none of us heard many speeches in those days ; would that at least in that respect life in the world were more like old school times ! Perhaps it was because it was the first speech that we had ever heard that it roused us so. Perhaps it was a very poor affair really. But I know that we thought none of those old Athenians would have ' been in it ' with Wyndham, and I personally can remember all he said even now. There were no masters present, of course, so that he spoke sometimes even in school slang, a boy talking to boys, and plunged right into the middle of what he had to say at once. ' You know,' he said, ' the scrape into which Hales and Winthrop minor have got themselves, and you probably know what the punishment is for an ofience like theirs. What the punishment ought to be, I mean. Your Head-master is going to leave it to you to say what their punishment shall be ; it is for you to say whether they shall go or stay. ' Oh yes, I know,' Wyndham continued as he was half of us with our hands raised, or our mouths open, ' you are ready to pronounce sentence now. But it won't do. You must hear me out first. I am here by Mr. Foulkes's permission to plead for Hales and Winthrop, and I had to beg hard for that permission, for the breach of school rules was as bad as it could I >; SNAP'S REDEMPTION i .31 be. Not, mind yon, that our Head cared twojience a])0ut the mop ; he laughed, when he told me of that, as much as you fellows could have done; but he won't have smokmg at any price, and he is justly annoyed, because, in spite of the serious scrape they were in, two of the boys reported to him for the disturbance in F. dormitory last night were Hales and Winthrop. You know the Head remembers quite as well as we do how splendidly Hales pulled the Loamshire match out of the fire ' (cheers), ' and he wants to keep him at Fern- hall ; but you know discipline is more essential in a school than a good bowler in an eleven. ' Now, then, as to this smoking. I am not going to talk any soft rubbish to you fellows. >Ve have all smoked. I have certr.inly, and I told the Head that if Hales went I ought to go. It was a great deal worse in us than in you fellows. We ought to have set an example and did not. As to the sin of smoking I haven't a word to say. My father smokes, and he is the best man 1 know. There is no mention of tobacco in the Bible, so the use of it can't have been forbidden there. It isn't bad form, whatever some folks say, for the first gentleman in Europe sets us the example ; but (and here is the point) it is a vice in a Fernhall boy because it is a breach of discipline. Now, that ought to be enough for boys half of whom want commissions in the army, the very breath of whose life is discipline ; but, as we are discussing this thing amongst ourselves quietly, I'll tell you why I think the Head considers smoking a bad thing for us. We are all youngsters and have our work to do. To do it well, we want clear heads and sound minds. :l\. 32 SNAP n ': ■'! r ! 't Tobacco is a sedative, and sends the brain to sleep — soothes it, say the smokers. Quite so, by rendering it torpid. Men don't paint or write with their pipes in their mouths. They may dream with them there before beginning the day's work, or doze with them there when the work is done, but down they go when the chapter has to be written or the portrait painted. As to the effect of tobacco on your bodies, you know as well as I do whether the men who win the big races are heavy smokers. Why ! I would as soon eat a couple of apples before running the mile as smoke a pipe. Besides all this, we can't afford to smoke good tobacco, and bad tobacco is poison. We don't want loafers, and smoking means loafing. You don't play football or cricket with a pipe in your mouth, do you ? No ! and I want more players and fewer smokers. Old Fernhall has never yet taken a back seat in school athletics ' (here the cheering silenced the speaker). ' Very well, then don't let her now ; but, mind you, ''jumpy" nerves won't win the A.hburton shield, or short winds break the mile record. ' I want the school to give up smoking. I've been here now longer than any of you, and I love the old school more than any of you can love her. She has made me, God bless her, and I want to do her one good turn before I leave ' (here Wyndham's voice got quite husky, but I suppose it was only a touch of hay-fever). ' I believe most of you fellows would like to do me a good turn ' (shouts of applause) . ' I'm sure that there is no Fernhall boy to whom I would not do one ' (here the very oak benches seemed in danger of being broken. The enthusiasm was getting dangerous). 'If that is so,' i| mmmim^fmm SNAP'S REDEMPTION 33 a' I i he continued, * give up smoking until you leave Fern- hall. The Head is sick of trying to stop smoking by punishment. He says that the whip is not the thing to manage a good horse with, and he believes heart and soul in his boys. He does not want to see the school fail in its sports. He doesn't want to sack Towzer and Snap ' (dear eld chap, he even knew our nick- names), ' but as head of this school, as colonel of our regiment, he must and will have discipline. So he puts it to you in this way, and he puts you on your honour as gentlemen to keep to his terms if you accept them. ' If you choose voluntarily to pledge yoursel/es to give up smoking as a body, he on his part will ignore the events of last night altogether ' (wild excitement in the pit). ' Now, Fernhall, will you show you're worthy of such a brick as our Head ? Will you do me one good turn before I leave ? Will you keep Towzer and Snap, or your pipes ? ' ' Towzer and Snap ! Towzer and Snap ! ' came the answer from four hundred boys' voices, in a regular storm of eager reply. * Very well, hands up for the boys,' said the Cap- tain, and a forest of hard young fists wpnt up into the air. ' Hands up for the pipes,' cried Wyndham with a grin. Not a hand stirred. * Bravo, gentlemen. I accept your promise. The monitors have handed over all their own pipes, cigars, and other smoking paraphernaHa to the Head. We did that before coming to you. Now we want you to hand over all your pipes to us, to be labelled, stored, D 1 34 SNAP '. 11 M i V and returned \Yhcn j^ou leave. It is agreed, I suppose,' and not waiting for an answer he turned and shook hands with Snap and Towzer, and then, pushing them off the platform, he said, ' There, take them back, you fellows ; they are a bad lot, I'm afraid, but I think you have bought them a bargain.* Snap and Towzer hardly realised what had hap- pened to them for the first few minutes. When they did they bolted up to the Head to thank him. No one ever saw Hales so subdued as he w^as that after- noon. He had pulled steadily against the powers that be ever since he had come to school, yet when he came down from the library all he could say was, * By George, he's a trump. Why ! he chaffed me about the mop, and wanted to know if we all used mops to clean out our brew-cans.' The array of pipes, ranging from the black but homely * cutty ' to a chef d'ceuvre in amber and meer- schaum, which filled one of Mr. Foulkes's big cupboards, was a sight worth seeing, and if the time of our mile was not better next year it certainly was not worse : there were more players in the football field, and the fact that they had bought back their two favourites by a piece of self-denial did much to elevate the cha- racter, not only of the redeemed ones, but of the School itself. For one whole term (until Wyndham left) not a pipe was smoked within the school limits, and if smoking ever did go on again it certainly never again became the fashion, but was looked on rather as a loafer's habit than as the badge of manhood. r I ■v.. mumi^^^^v^^rv mupp" <> > id shook ng them ack, you I think 35 ad hap- len they m. No it after- ers that ^hen he ty was, fed me \ll used Lck but I meer- boards, ir mile worse : nd the Durites e cha- 3f the not a md if again as a CHAPTER IV THE FERNHALL GHOST 'For a week after the reprieve recorded in the last chapter Snap and Towzer went about like cats who had been whipped for stealing cream. They honestly • desired not to be led into temptation, and hoped that no one would leave the jug on the floor. For a week, perhaps, even if this had happened, these two penitent kittens would have made believe that they did not see it. The holidays were now rapidly approaching, and the glorious July weather seemed expressly sent for the gorgeous frocks and sweetly pretty faces which would soon adorn playground and chapel during ' prize week.' Snap and Towzer were in Frank Winthrop's study, Towzer getting his big brother's tea ready, and Snap looking on. After a while the conversation turned upon a subject of immense interest, just then, to all Fernhall boys. ' Major,' said Snap to Winthrop the elder, ' what do you fellows think of the ghost ? ' ' Think ! ' replied the monitor with wonderful , ignity, ' why, that you lower school fellows have been getting out of your dormitories and playing tunes D 2 36 SNAP I , 1 ■' (■ / f i 1, 1! upon combs, jew's-harps, and other instruments of music, when you ought to have been asleep, with a hmip of yellow soap between your jaws to keep you quiet.' * Oh, stow that,' replied Snap, * fellows don't play such tunes as the Head has heard for the last week on Jew's-harps and combs. Either those fellows who belong to the " concert lot " had a hand in it, or there is something fishy about it. I say, Frank, be a good chap and tell us, are the Sixth in it ? ' ' The Sixth in it, I should think not,' replied Winthrop ; ' but I can't answer for all the monitors, even if I wanted to.' Snap winked at Towzer at this rather cautious denial, remarking : ' Well, it is a good thing the ghost has not for- gotten his music. He has been here every year since Fernhall was a school.' ' Yes,' broke in Billy, lifting his snub nose from the depths of an empty coffee-cup, ' and to-night is the night of the Ninth ; the night, you know, on which it walks round the Nix's garden and n.cross the lawn,' ' Does it ? ' quoth Frank. ' Well, if it is wise, it won't walk across that lawn to-night. If it does, it will get snuff, I can tell j'ou.' 'Why, Major, why should it get ''bottled" to- night more than any other night, and who is to " bottle " a ghost ? ' inquired Snap indignantly. ' Never you mind, young 'un, but you may bet your bottom dollar that if the ghost walks to-night it will be walking in the quad at punishment drill for the rest of this term.' *m THE FEUNHALL oitost 37 lents of , with a eei") you n't play ast week ows who or there le a good rephed nonitors, cautious not for- ery year ose from ^ht is the L which it lawn.' s wise, it t does, it tied" to- ho is to tiy. bet your ht it will 1 for the As this was all the boys could get from their senior, they had to be content with it, and l)efore long took their departure. At the bottom of the stairs Snap took Billy's arm, and conferred earnestly with him as to what the great man's prophecy might mean. ' Well, you see,' said Towzer, looking abnormally wise, * old Frank is precious thick with the Beauty ' (a daughter of ' the Head '), * and after the match the other day I saw them having a long talk together, and, unless I am mistaken, he was showing her just the way the ghost ought to come.' * By Jove, Towzer,' cried Snap, * Scotland Yard won't have a chance with you when you grow up. One of the *' Shilling Shocker " detectives would be a fool to you. You've got it, my lad'; there Is a deep- laid and terrible plot on foot, as the papers say, and one aimed at a time-honoured and respected institu- tion, our friend the ghost. Let's go and see Eliza- beth.' Now Elizabeth was a ladv, if a id ad heart and gentle ways with small boys could make her one, although the humble office which she held was that of needlewoman at Fernhall. In these degenerate days a maid-servant and a wife together are supposed to mend me, tend me, and attach the fickle button to the too often deserted shirt. But they are only supposed to. They don't as a matter of fact, and indeed the manner of life of my buttons is decidedly loose. But in those old days the ancient needle- woman of Fernhall wielded no idle weapon. Her needle and thimble were the sword and shield with i ».. .,# "-^t!^^'- ■IP I ; i i \ '\ ;ii if ! ' li i i J!^ I 38 SNAP which she attacked and overcame the uiitidmess of four hundred boys, and in spite of the wild tugging at buttons and collars as the Irishman of the dormi- tory sang out * Bell fast,' * Double in,' while the last of the chapel chimes were in the air, no clean shirt at any rate came buttonless to the scratch. To Elizabeth, then, the boys betook themselves, and, being special favourites, she took them into her own little snuggery, and they had tea again. Oh no, don't feel alarmed, gentle reader : two te' ten teas if you like, matter nothing to Fernhall ^o — their hides are elastic, and even the pancakes of Shrove Tuesday merely cause a slight depression of spirits for the next twenty- four hours. * Now, 'Lizabeth, you dear old brick, we want you to tell us something. What's up to-night at " the house " ? ' ' Nothing that I know of. Master Winthrop, except that some of them officers is a coming up from their barracks to dinner with Miss Beauty and the other young ladies as is staying here.' * Oh ! o — — oh, as the man said when the brick- bat hit him where he'd meant to put his dinner ; and what, Lizzie darling, may they be going to do after dinner ? ' * Piano-punching, I suppose, dear, and a little chess with the governor ; and then what '? ' ' Bed ? It will be slow for them, won't it ? ' * No, Master Hales, piano-punching indeed, when Miss Beauty plays sweet enough to wake the blessed dead.' * Did wake them, " Grannie," the other night, THE FEUNHALL UUUSi" 39 liiiess of tugging I dormi- the last shirt at m selves, into her Oh no, ten teas o — their Shrove f spirits ant you at "the p, except om their he other le hrick- ler ; and do after a little ?' ? ' )d, when blessed r night, didn't she, and they seem to have taken an active share in the musical part of the entertainment ? ' ' There's no talking with such a random boy as you, but there, if you want to know, that's just what they have all come about. They say that when Miss Beauty was going to bed the other night she heard that soft, wailing music, like what we hear here every year just about this time, and she was so sure that there was something realty unnatural about it that the Professor has given her leave to sit up with the other guests, and Captain Lowndes, and the rest in the monitors' common room, to see if they can catch the ghost, and for goodness sake don't you say as I told you, but if you knows the ghost tell him not to walk to-night, as the Professor says such nonsense must be stamped out for good. There now ! ' Poor old Elizabeth looked as if she had committed a crime, and puffed and blew and pulled at her two little chin tufts (for, alas, she was bearded like the pard) in a way that nearly sent the boys into convul* sions at her own tea-table. But they contained themselves (and about three plates full of muffins), and by-and-by departed. There was a long and earnest conversation in a certain study that night. There was a surplice missing from amongst the properties of the choir, and then the four hundred wended sleepily from chapel to their dormitories. In half an hour the lights were out in all windovrs save those of the head-master's house ; stillness fell upon Fernhall ; a big bright moon came out upon the scene and made those long grass meadows gleam like >*,.* ■ M 40 SNAP I i ■: I I •is Em; i| the silver sea just beyond tliem ; a bat or two whirled about above the master's orchard, and but for them, and the merry party up at the house, Fernhall, once the smuggler's home, now the busy public school, slept to the lullaby of the summer waves. Fernhall slept, its busy brain as quiet as if no memories of an evil past hung thickly round that grey old house by the sea. Could it be that such evil deeds were done there in the storied days of old ? At least there was some ground for the country folks' legends and superstitions. Not a rood of ground under or around the ' House ' was solid ; it was all a great warren, only that the tunnelling and burrowing had been done by men and not by conies. Under the basement of the head -master's house were huge cellars, such cellars as would have appeared a world too wide even for the most bibulous of scholars. A cupboard of very tiny dimensions would have held ail the strong liquors which our Head drank in a year. These cellars had two entrances, one from the house, and the other half a mile away, below what was now low-water mark. For year by year the waves en- croach upon Fernhall, and in time those old smug- glers who made and used these vaults will get their own again. They, no doubt, many of them, have gone to Davy Jones's locker, but their chief sleeps sound on shore, in a stately vault, which blazons his name and his virtues to the world. In his day smuggling was a remunerative and genteel profession, and he and all his race were past masters in the craft. Living far from the great centres of life, upon a bleak and M \ Ll ( 1% ••' •^, ^ ^^% <■ m^mmm THE FERNHALL GHOST 41 ^vhirled them, II, once school, if no id that ich evil d? At y folks' ground IS all a rrowing house ppeared eholars. ve held a year. J house, as now ves en- smug- jt their ve gone •und on tne and ng was be and Living ik and dangerous coast, little notice was taken of the quiet old squire who yearly added acre to acre and ^7hiled away the cheerless days with such innocent pursuits as sea-fishing and yachting. Fernhall yokels say that the last squire and his wife did not agree. She was not a native of the Fernhall moorland, but a soft south-country thing with a laugh in her eye and bright clothes on her back when she first came amongst them ; a parson's daughter, some said, but no one knew and few cared. Very soon she grew, like the rest of the people round her, silent, serious, or sad — a quiet grey shadow, with the laugh and bright clothes stored away perhaps somewhere with her memories of that sunny south. All at once her face was missed from church and market, but no one cared to ask whither she had gone. Someone, with grim Fernhall humour, sug- gested that the Squire had added to the ' spirits ' in his subterranean vaults. That was all, then, and to-night was the anni- versary of her strange disappearance. There are nights when the world is still and you can feel that she is resting. There are other nights when the stillness is as deep, nay, deeper ; but it is not the stillness of rest. The silence is throbbing and alive with some sad secret, and the listening earth is straining to caich it. This was suoh a night. The whitely gleaming grass stretched away until it reached a vague land of moonlit shadows. The waves were almost articulate in their moanings. The leaves of the poplars kept showing their white underside in the moonlight, until the whole trees swung in the night w T J i' w. ! I III 42 SNAP breeze, a grove of sheeted spectres. Anyone watch- ing the scene was at once seized with the idea that something was going to happen, and, hke the watchful stars and bending trees, strained every nerve to listen. At last it came, faint and far off, sad but unutter- ably sweet, a low wail of plaintive music — so low that at lirst it seemed the mere coinage of an overwrought fancy. Nearer it came, and nearer, now growing into a full wave of sound, now ebbing away — the mere echo of a sigh, but always coming nearer and nearer, until it seemed to pause irresolutely by the gate which divides the master's garden from the monitors' lawn. Was it another fancy, or were there for a moment a crowd of white, eager faces pressed against the window which looks upon that lawn ? Fancy assuredly, for the moon now gleamed back blankly from the glass. For a moment a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand passed over the moon, and as it cleared away a deep- drawn sigh attracted the watcher's eyes to the garden gate. The moon was full upon it ; you could see it shake if it shook ever so little. In that listening midnight you could almost hear the flowers whisper- ing to each other, but the gate neither creaked nor shook, and yet someone had passed through it, some- one with bent head, and slow, tired feet, who sighed and told the beads of her rosary as she passed. The moonlight played strange tricks that night ; it seemed to cling to and follow tlut silent figure, leaving a white track on the dew-laden grass. And now it paused for one moment before that Vrindow, through which those tear- dimmed eyes had so often and so longingly ■VI..J** -'*»i'yiB,.> T THE FERNHALL GHOST 43 watch- ea that *^atchful ervc to iniitter- ow that vrought ing into 3re echo until it divides Was a crowd w which le moon For a 's hand a deep- garden 1 see it Lstening k^hisper- ved nor , some- sighed I. The seemed a white ised for h those igingly turned towards her own loved south, and as she paused the silence broke, the window was dashed open, and three athletic ligures, figures of men who feared neither man nor devil, sprang out with shouts of laughter, surrounded that v.'hite figure, still so strangely quiet, and demanded — its name ! At the open window from which the three had issued were now gathered half a dozen ladies, looking half amupad, half frightened. Among them was Beauty, the Head's daughter. With boisterous laughter, that jarred harshly upon the stillness of that midsummer night, the three had dashed upon their prey. Why, then, do they pause ? It seemed to those who watched that some whisper had reached their ear,-, and chilled their courage. For one moment the figure's arms were raised aloft, and then the men recoiled, and it passed on ;is if uncon- scious of these things of clay, steady and stately, with head bent, slow feet, and hands which still >old the rosary beads. For a moment it stood large and luminous on the skyline of that hill which overhangs the sea, the favourite 'look-out' of the oil lords of Fernhall ; for a moment it raised it> iceted arms as if calling down a curse upon the fated mansion, and then floated seaward and was gone. The chapel-bell tolled one, and again the Fernhall ghost had baffled the inquisitive investigations of dis- believing men, and had asserted itself in spite of the nineteenth century, the — th Eegiment, and the new Head-master. In vain Beauty sought an explanation from her discomfited cavaliers ; all she could elicit was that there was something uncanny about it, <'»«■'' • ■ ^9^ 44 SNAP " i! Hi something not fit for ladies to hear, and she had better go to bed and think no more about it. It would not come again for a year, anyway. So, at last, mightily dissatisfied, the ladies went, and when the men were driving homo to barracks long and heartily pealed their laughter and gallant Captain Lowndes vowed again and again that ' That boy would make a right good soldier, sir, hang me if he wouldn't ! What was it he said again, the yo^ng scoundrel? ** I've not a rag on except this surplice, Captain, and, by Jove, if you don't take your hands off I'll drop that. If the ladies don't like me in the spirit, I must appear in the flesh.'" .,<►.• »-v.M»»i^.^ If ,.**•! A ^ p.,_« l»"«l 45 CHAPTEE V THE admiral's ' SOCK-DOLLAGER ' ' Well, Snap, how are you this morning ? Yon -ook very down in the mouth.' ' Yes, sir, I don't feel very Hvely,' repHed Snap. The speakers were Admiral Christopher Winthrop and our old friend Harold, or Snap Hales. The mid- summer term had come to an end, and the boys were all at home at Fairbury for the holidays. Frank and Billy Winthrop were somewhere about the home- farm, and the old A(Vll the qufilities undesirable in a boy who has his way to make in the world.' Although he spoke jestingly, Mrs. Winthrop knew enough of Snap to see that there was a good deal of earnest in his jest. His guardian, Mr. Howell Hales, a solicitor in large practice, had never had time or in- clination to do more than his bare duty by his father- less nephew, so that Fairbury Court had become the boy's real home, and Mrs. Winthrop almost uncon- sciously had filled the place of mother to him. ' What is it. Snap,' she said now, laying her hand on his strong young arm, and looking up into his face inquiringly, * have you got a worse character than usual?' * Yes ! worse than usual,' laughed Snap grimly ; and then, seeing that his hard tone had hurt his gentle friend, his voice softened, and he added, ' Yes, Mrs. Winthrop, it is very bad this time, so bad that the Head doesn't want me to go back next term.' * Not to go back next term ? why, that's expulsion,' blurted out the Admiral. ' No, sir, not quite as bad as that ; it's dismissal,' suggested Snap. 'I don't see any difference. Chopping straws I sail that,' said old Winthrop. ' Splitting hairs, don't you mean, Chris?' asked Mrs. Winthrop with a half- smile ; ' but I see the difference. Snap. There is no disgrace about this, is there ? ' *No, I didn't think so,' replied Snap, 'but my uncle says I am a disgrace to my family and always shall be.' ' He always did say that,' muttered the Admiral -■?S^i«il®«(S*Bjffasr*iSIB!aHa wmmm^ea^m THE ADMIRAL'S ' SOCK-DOLLAGEE Uf * Never mind what your uncle says ; I mean,' addctl the old gentleman, correctmg himself, * don't take it too much to heart. You see he has very strict ideas of what young lads should be.' ' "What is it that you have been doing, Snap ? Is it too bad to tell me ? ' asked Mrs. Winthrop after a while. For a moment the boy hung his head, thinking, ^ and then raised it with a proud look in his eyes. ' No, dear,' he said, dropping unconsciously into an old habit, * it isn't, and so it can't be very bad ! ' And with that he told the whole foolish story of his share in the smoking orgy, of his reprieve, of the mop inci- dent and the bolster fight, and, last of all, of that Fernhall ghost. At this part of the recital of his wrongdoings the Admiral's face, which had been growing redder and redder all the time, got fairly beyond control, and the old gentleman nearly went into convulsions of laughter. ' Shameful, sir ; gross breach of discipline, sir ; ha ! ha ! ha ! " Dcm't like me in the spirit, had better take me in the flesh." Capital— cap — infamous, I mean, infamous. Your uncle never did anything like that, sir, not he,' splattered the veteran ; ' couldn't have done if he had tried,' he added sotto voce. ' But,' said Mrs. Winthrop, after a pause, * what are you going to do. Snap ? ' 'My uncle wants me to go iiito the Church or Mr. Mathieson's office,' replied the boy. ' The Church or Mr. Mathieson's office — that is a strange choice, isn't it ? ' asked his friend. * Which do you mean to do ? ' 50 SNAP ifi illi i it. f-i i ■J ' Neither,' ans^Yel•ed Snap stoutly ; * I'm not tit for one, and I should do no good in the other. I shall do what some other fellows 1 know have done. I'll emigrate and turn cow-boy. I like hard work and could do it,' and half consciously he held out one of his sinewy brown hands, and looked at it as if it was a witness for him in this matter. * What does your uncle say to that. Snap ? ' asked the Admiral. ' Not much, sir, bad or good. He says I am an ungrateful young wretch for refusing to go into Mr. Mathieson's office, and that I shall never come to any good. But, then, I've heard that from him often enough before,' said Snap grimly, ' and I think he will let me go, and that is the main point.' * And when do you mean to start ? ' asked the Admiral. ' Oh, as soon as he will let me, sir. You see, my father left me a few hundred pounds, so that I dare say when Mr. Hales sees that my mind is made up he will let me go. You don't think much worse of me, I hope, sir, do you ? ' ' Worse of you ? ' said the old sailor stoutly, ' no ! You are a young fool, I dare say, but so was I at your time of life. Come up to lunch ! ' And; planting his rod by the side of the stream, he turned towards the house, Mrs. Winthrop and Snap following him. At lunch Snap had to tell the whole story again to Billy and Frank, but when he came to the point at which he had decided to ' go west,' instead of eliciting the sympathy of his audience, he only seemed to rouse their envy. i^^. B^^j-*f>* ■v>»;i«?WK^^ THE ADMIRAL'S * .S0CK-D0LLA(1KR ' 51 again ' By Jove,' said Frank, * if it wasn't for this jolly old place I should wish that I had got your character and your punishment, Snap ! ' For a week or more botli the Admiral and hia sister had been very unlike their old selves, so quiet were they and distrait, except when by an effort one or the other seemed to rouse to a mood w^hose merri- ness had something false and strained in it, even to the unobservant young eyes of the boys. AVhy was it that at this speech of Frank's Mrs. Winthrop's sweet eyes filled with sudden tears, and that pfece of pickle went the wrong way and almost choked the Admiral ? Perhaps, if you follow the story further, you may be able to guess. After lunch they all wandered down again to the trout-stream, where 'Uncle's Ogden,' as they called the Admiral's rod, stood planted in the ground, like the spear of some knight-errant of old days. It was a lovely spot, this home of the Winthrops — such a home as exists only in England ; beautiful by nature, beautiful by art, mellowed by age, and endeared to the owners by centuries of happy memories. The sunlight loved it and lingered about it in one moss- grown corner or another from the first glimpse of dawn to the last red ray of sunset. The house had been built in a hollow^ after the unsanitary fashion of our forefathers ; round it closed a rampart of low wooded hills, which sheltered its grey gables from the winter winds ; and in front of it a close-cropped lawn ran from the open French windows of the morning- room to the sunlit ripples of the little river Tane as it raced awr.y to the mill on the home-farm. i 52 8NAP il^iili li x ■ i 1 1. ; 1 f I • f For ^ve centuries the Winthrops had Hved at Fairhury, not briiiianlly, p«^rhaps, but happily and honestly, as squires who knew that their tenants' interests and their own were identical ; sometimes as soldiers who went away to fight fc^* the land they loved, only to come back to enjoy in it the honours they had won. It was a fair home and a fair name, and so far, in five centuries, none of the race had done anything to bring either into disrepute. No wonder the Winthrops loved Fairhury. But I am digressing, and must hark back to tho Admiral, who has stolen on in front of his followers and is now crouching, like an old tiger, a couple of yards from the bank of the brook. Above him, waving to and fro almost like that tiger's tail, is tho graceful, gleaming fly-rod, with its long light line, which looks in the summer air no thicker than gos- samer threads. In front of the old gentleman's position, and on the other side of the stream, is a crumbling stone wall, and for a foot or two from it, between it and the Admiral, the water glides by in shadow. Had you watched it very carefully, you might, if you were a fisherman, have detected a still, small rise, so small that it hardly looked like a rise at all. Surely none but the most experienced would have guessed that it was the rise of the largest fish in that stream. But the Admiral was 'very experienced,' and knew almost how many spots there were on the deep, broad sides of the four-pounder whose luncheon of tiny half-drowned duns was disturbing the waters opposite. At last the fly was dry enougli to please him, and Admiral Chris let it go. A score of times :l\ IU-. "tfrnmrmmmm M PS l-l -<; m» mm mmmm wmmm^ wtm ; f i I I H«i THE ADMIRAL'S ' SOCK-DOLLA GER ' 53 1 before, in the last few days, he had had just as good a chance of ])egniHng his victim, and each time his cast had been Hght and true, so that the harshest of critics or most jealous of rivals (the same thing, you know) could have found no fault in it. Each time the xly, dry as a bone and light as thistle-down, had h't upon the stream just the right distance above the feeding fish, and had sailed over him with jaunty wings v/ell cocked, so close an imitation of nature that the man who made it could hardly have picked it out from among the dozen live flies which sailed by with it. But a man's eyes are no match for a fish's, and the old ' sock-dollager ' had noticed some- thing wrong — a shade of colour, a minute mistake in form, or something too delicate even for Ogden's fingers to set right — and had forthwith declined to be tempted. But this time fate was against the gallant fish. The Admiral had miscalculated his cast, and the little dun hit hard against the crumbling wall and tumbled back from it into the water ' anyhovr.' Though a mistake, it was the most deadly cast the Admiral could have made. A score of flies had fallen in the same helpless fashion from that wall in the last half-hour, and as each fell the great fish had risen and sucked thom down. This fell right into his mouth. He saw no gleam of gut in the treacherous shadow, he had seen no upright figure on the bank for an hour and a half; he had no time to scrutinise the fly as it sailed down to him, so he turned like a thought in a quick brain, caught the fly, and knew that he too was caught, almost before the Admiral had had time to realise that he had for once made a bad r" w»^i ''If!:! iff ••I w i 1 i 54 SNAP cast. And then the struggle began ; and such is the injustice of man's nature that even gentle Mrs. Win- throp did not feel a touch of compassion for that gallant little trout, battling for his life against a man who weighed fifteen stone to hl3 four pounds, and had had as many years to learn svisdom in, almost, as the fish had lived weeks. No doubt she would have felt sorry for the fish if she had thought of these things, but then you see she didn't think of them. * By George ! I'm into him,' shouted the Admiral. Anyone only slightly acquainted with our sporting idioms might have taken this speech literal^, and wondered how such a very small whale could have held such a very large Jonah. But the Admiral never stopped to pick his words when excited, as poor Billy soon discovered. An evil fate had prompted Billy to snatch up the net as soon as his uncle struck his fish, and now, as the four-pounder darted down stream, the boy made a dab at him with it. ' Ah, you young owl ! You lubberly young sea- cook,' roared the infuriated old gentleman. * What are you doing ? Do you think you're going to take a trout like a spoonful of porridge ? Get below him, and wait till I steer him into the net.' Frightened by Towzer's futile * dab,' the trout had made a desperate dash for the further side of the stream, making the Admiral's reel screech as the line ran out. Skilfully the old man humoured his victim, now giving him line, now just balking him in his efTorts to reach a weed-bed or a dangerous-looking root. People talk of salmon which liave taken a day to kill ; it is a good trout which gives the angler ten ti^i: THE ADMIRAL'S ' SOCK-DOLLAGER ' 55 the ^in- Ithat lan had the felt fngs, minutes' ' pla}'/ The Admiral's trout was tired even in less time than that, and came slowly swimming down past a small island of water weeds, heyond the deep water on the house-side of the stream, submis- sive now to his captor's guiding hand. Gently the Admiral drew him towards the shallows, and in an- other moment he would have been in the net, when suddenly, without warning, he gave his head one vicious shake, and, leaping clear out of the water, fell back upon the little island, where he lay high and dry, the red spots on his side gleaming in the sun. It was his last effort for freedom, and now, as he lay gasping within a few inches of the clear stream, of home and safety, the treacherous steel thing dropped out of his mouth, the current caught the belly of the loose line and floated it down stream, and the Admiral stood on the further bank dumb with disgust, the last link broken which bound his fish to him. In a moment more the fish would recover from his fall, and then one kick, however feeble, would be enough to roll him back into the Tane, and so good-bye to all the fruits of several weeks' patience and cunning, and good-bye, too, to all chance of catching * the best trout, by George, sir, in the brook ! ' It was hard ! But there was another chance in the Admiral's favour which he had not counted upon. Even as the fish fell back upon the dry weeds Snap slid quietly as an otter into the stream. A few strong, silent strokes, and he was alongside the weeds, and as the fish's gaping gills opened before he made what would have been to the Admiral a fatal effort Snap's fingers were inserted, and the great trout carried off through his w " 6G SNAP iii I jiiil t 1 ; ; 1 ' I f ■ \ \ : t \ i ; i ) n \ 1 1 i ! 1 1 i'i own element as unceremoniously as if it really was an otter which had got him. * I'm not a bad retriever, sir, am I ? ' asked the l)oy as he laid his prize down at old Winthrop's feet. That worthy sportsman was delighted. ' No, my boy,' he replied, * you are first-rate, though perhaps Mr. Howell would call you a sad dog if he saw you in those dripping garments. Be off and change into some of Frank's toggery.' ' All right, sir ; come on, Frank,' replied Snap, and together the three boys raced off to their own domain in one of the wings of Fairbury Court, given over long ago to boys, dogs, and disorder. Meanw'hile the Admiral retired to weigh his fish, which he did most carefully, allowing three ounces for its loss of weight since landing — an altogether un- necessary concession, as it had not been out of the water then more than five minutes. However, he entered it in his fishing journal as 3 lbs. 11 ozs., caught August 2, and retrieved by Snap Hales. As he closed the book he sighed and muttered, ' That is about the last trout I shall take on the Tane.' 67 CHAPTER VI THE BLOW FALLS The day after the Admiral's triumph over his fishy tenant he and his sister called a meeting in the morning-room after hreakfast. It was an mformal meeting, but, as he said that the business to be done was important, the young squire restrained his impa- tience to go and see the men about rolling the cricket pitch in the park, and waited to hear what his uncle had to say. ' I'm sorry, Frank,' the old man said, ' that you will have to put off '' the Magpies " for next week, but I am afraid we can't have any cricket here this August.' < Why, uncle,' expostulated Frank, ' it is the very best fun we have, and the Magpies are capital good fellows as well as good cricketers.' 'Yes, I know,' replied his uncle gravely, 'but even cricket must give way sometimes, and now it happens that your mother and I are suddenly called away on business, on very important business,' and here he looked sternly at his sister-in-law, who turned her face from the light, and appeared to busy herselt with the arrangement of a vase of flowers on the old oak over -mantel. ) I ill 58 SNAP n IIM ' But, uncle,' put in Towzer, ' couldn't Frank take care of the Magpies even if you and mother were not here ? Of course it would not be half such fun as if you were here to score and Mother to look on, but Humphreys (the butler) would see that the dinners were all right. I'm sure he could,' added the boy more confidently, catching at a sign of approval in his brother's face. ' It wouldn't do, my boy.' asserted Admiral Chris, ' it would not do at all ; it would be rude to your guests, you wouldn't be able to manage, and besides,' he added, as if in despair for a convincing argument, ' we might l)e able to get back, and then neither your mother nor I need miss the match.' This was quite another story, and so the boys con- sented, albeit with a very bad grace, to postpone their cricket. * What I propose now instead of the match,' con- tinued the Admiral, ' is a little travel for you two, and I've asked Snap Hales's uncle to let him go with you I want you to go off and try a fishing tour in Wales, whilst your mother and I finish our business in London, and then we'll all meet again in a fortnight's time.' ' Bravo, uncle ! ' cried Frank, ' but what am I to do for a rod ? ' ' Oh, if yours is l)rokcn you had better take mine,' replied the Admiral. * What, your big Castle Connel ? Thank you, sir ; it would be as much good to me in such cramped places as you used to tell us about as a clothes-prop ! ' replied Frank. y THE BLOW FALLS 59 Lke lot if )ut 3rs toy lis * No, not the Castle Connel, the Op;den ; I shan't want it, and you will take care of it, I know,' was the unexpected reply. ' Your Ogden, sir ! ' said Frank ; * why, I thought no one might look at it from less than ten paces.' ' You're an impertinent young monkey, Frank, laughed the Admiral, ' but still you may have it.' And so it was settled that the Magpie match should be given up, and Frank and Billy be packed off on a fishing tour in Wales, whilst their mother and the Admiral went up to town and transacted the troublesome business which had had the bad taste to demand their attention during the ]\ridsummer holi- days. A little later in the day a man came up from the village with a note from Mr. Howell for the Admiral. The boys did not see it, but it was understood to con- tain his consent in writing ' to the proposal that Snap should join the expedition.' For the rest of that day all was excitement and bustling preparations for a start. It seemed almost as if they were preparing for something much more important than a fortnight's trip into Wales. Snap was up at the house all day. That with him was common enough. His own pack- ing had not taken him long. The boy was keener- eyed than his young companions, and, in spite of an apparent roughness, was more sensitive to external influences than either of them. Hence it was perhaps that he noticed what they overlooked ; noticed that Mrs. Winthrop's eyes followed her sons about from room to room, that she seemed to dread to lose them from her sight, that the dinner that night was what 60 SNAP iillii ilii I n i If u the boj^s called a birthday dinner, that is, consisted of all the little dishes of which Mrs. Winthrop knew each boy was specially fond, and what struck him more than anything was that two or three times he was sure her eyes filled with tears at some chance remark of Frank's or Willy's which to him had no sad meaning in it. He was puzzled, and, worse than that, * depressed.' The start next morning was even less auspicious than * packing-day ' had been. The midsummer weather seemed to have gone, and the gables of the old house showed through a grey and rainy sky; rain knocked the leaves off the roses, and battered angrily at the window-panes. The pretty Tane was swollen and mud-coloured, and, altogether, leaving home on a fishing trip to Wales felt worse than leav- ing home the first time for school. The Admiral had df ermined on seeing them on their way as far as the county town, and drove to the station with them in the morning. If it had not been so absolutely absurd. Snap would have fancied once or twice that the old gentleman did not like any of the boys to be alone with his neighbours, or even with the servants. It would have been very unlike him if it had been the case, so of course Snap was mistaken. * Towzer,' asked Frank in a whisper as they drove away, ' what was the Mater crying about ? ' The Admiral overheard him, and replied : * Crying, what nonsense, Frank ; your mother was waving good-bye and good riddance to you with that foolish scrap of lace of hers ; that's all. Crying, w ■k THE BLOW FALI-S 61 indeed ! ' and the old seaman snorted indignantly at the idea. It was all very well for the Admiral to deny the fact, and to go very near to getting angry about it, but Snap at any rate knew that it was a fact, and that Admiral Chris knew it too. It was the first untruth he had ever heard from the upright old gentleman by his side, and Snap's wonder and dislike to this journey grew. As Snap looked back a turn in the road gave him another rain-blurred glimpse of Fair- bury, with a little drooping iigure which still watched from the Hall steps, and a conviction that something was wrong somewhere forced itself insensibly upon him, though as yet he was not wise enough to guess where the evil threatened. The rain had an angry sound in it, unlike the merry splash of heavy summer showers : there seemed a sorrow in the sigh of the wind, unlike the scent-laden sigh of summer breezes after rain. Nature looked ugly and unhappy, and the boys were soon glad to curl themselves up in their respective corners of the railway carriage, with their backs resolutely turned upon the rain-blurred panes of the carriage window. At tne station the Admiral had met his favourite aversion, Mr. Crombie. What Mr. Crombie had originally done to offend the Admiral no one knew, but he had done it effectually. Crombie gave Admiral Chris the gout even worse than '47 port or the east wind. Crombie was on the point of addressing Frank when the Admiral intervened and carried off the boys to get tickets. A little to Frank's surprise, his uncle il 62 SNAr I r took third-class tickets, for, although on long jour- neys the old gentleman invariahly practised this wise economy, Frank had been accustomed to hear him say, ' Always take *' firsts " on our own line, to support a local institution.' As the Admiral took his tickets the voice of his persecutor sounded behind him. Crombie had followed his foe. * What ! ' he said — a, t the sneering tone was so marked that it made the boys wince — 'an Admiral travelling third ! ' * Yes, Sir,' retorted the Admiral fiercely. ' God bless me, you don't mean to say there is a *' fourth " on ? Only persons who are afraid of being mistaken for their butlers travel first nowadays,' and with an indignant snort the old gentleman squared his shoulders, poked out his chin, and walked down the platform with a regular quarter-deck roll, leaving Mr. Crombie to meditate on what he was pleased to call * the *' side " of them beggarly aristocrats.' At Glowsbury, the county town for Fairbury, Admiral Chris left the boys, hurrying away with an old crony of his, who, in spite of nous and winks, would blurt out, 'I'm so sorry, Winthrcj. But the Admiral let him get no further. ' Good-bye, lads,' he sang out, and then away he trotted, holding on to his astonished friend, whom he rapidly hustled out of earshot, so that the boys never knew the cause of that old gentleman's sorrow. It didn't trouble them much either, for, once in Wales, the weather grew tine again — provokingly fine, the boys thought. If ever you go to dear little Wales, n V THE BLOW FALLS 68 TraiisatUiiitic cousin, to see tliu view, voii mfiv bci your bottom dollar that you won't seo it. You will ha like t'lat other tourist who ' viewed the mist, but missed the view.' If, however, you can jockey the Welsh climate into a belief that you arc; going there solely for fishing, you may rely on such weather as the Winthrops got, that is to say, clear skies, broiling suns, and tiny silver streams calling out for rain- storms to swell their diminished waters, and crying out in vain. The waters will be clearer than crystal, the lish more shy than a boy of fourteen amongst ladies, and the views perfect . Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to jockey anything Welsh : Wales is very unbelieving, and especially does it disbelieve anglers. The boys opened their campaign on the Welsh borders, fished successfully for samlets — bright, silvery little fellows, which had to be put back — and with a miserable want of success for the brown trout, which they were allowed to keep if they could catch them. Sometimes they walked from point to point, but then they found that their expenses in gingerbeer were almost as great as if they had spent the money in a third-class ticket ; once they tried a long run by rail on the — well, I dare not tell you its real name— so I'll say the Grand Old Dawdler's line. They bought third-class tickets, but travelled first, because the line had only three coaches in at that time, and tlie}^ were all first. Two rustics travelled with them ; it was rather a busy day with the Grand Old Dawdler's line. The station-master at the starting-point, who sold them their tickets, went with them as engine-driver and 'M?^ : I 64 SNAP m guard, and at each of the Utile stations which they passed he acted as station-master. This system of centraHsing ail the service in one person had its ad- vantages : there is only one person to tip, and if he is soher the travelling, if slow (say seven miles an hour), is very fairly safe. Once, and once only, they tried tricycles. Wales is not as level as a hilliard-tahle. Towzer, careless of the picturesque, wished that it was. On tricycles, he explained, if you were not used to them, you could travel on the flat rather faster thiui you could w^alk ; uphill you had to get off and shove, and downhill you were either run away with, or, if you put on the brake, the tricycle stopped, you didn't — on the contrary, you proceeded upon your journey by a series of gyra- tions through the air, until suddenly planted on your head in the next county but two. Besides all this it cost more to send back your tricycle by rail than a first- class ticket would have cost, whereas if you didn't send it back you were liable to be tried at the next assizes. A letter wliicli I insert here, and which ]\Irs. Winthrop still keeps, for the sake, not of its melodious metre, but for the sake of auld lang syne, w'ill give the reader some idea of the Winthrops' fishing ad- ventures. I am inclined to think that Frank wrote it. Big, strong fellow as he was, he had a habit of constantly writing to the Mater, and I happen to know that Snap was too bad-tempered at that time to WTite anything. He had passed all that morning in trying to cast on a certain wooded reach. He had caught the grass ; he had cracked his line like a * coach- whip, and lost a score of flies by so doing ; and THE BLOW FALLS 65 had at last setti.^^ solemnly down to dig up with his penknife a great furze-bush on the bank which ap- peared to his angry imagination to rise from behind at every fly which he tried to throw. ' Aug. 12, 1874. * Dear Mater, — ' Snap Hales arose, from his night's repose, In the midst of the Cambrian mountains, Where from cliff and from crag, over peat-moss and hag, The Tanat shepherds her fountains. {Observe here the resemblance to Shelley.) 11 * He rolled in his tub, and tackled his grub, He booted and hatted in haste. Then said, " If you're wishing, boy Bill, to go fishing, There isn't one moment to waste." * He strode to the brook, and with lordly look Quoth, " Now, little fish, if you're in. Let some grayling or trout just put up his snout And swallow this minnow of tin." ' As if at his wish, up bounded a fish, Gave one dubious sniffle or snuff. Thought ' It's covered with paint, I'll be hooked if it ain't, And the fellow who made it's a muff." * Then Harold had tries with all sorts of flies, Which were brilliant, gigantic, and rare. But among them were none which resembled a ''dun,'' So the fish were content with a stare. M\ it Of the niv/iister left outside." * So Will landed him safe, our tisherman waif, In safety he landed him ; With gohhle and munch he chawed up his luncli. He was hungry after his swim. ' He has sworn he will never again endeavour Those innocent fish to hurt, For all he can get is thundering wet, And any amount of dirt. ' Your truthful ' Frank.' After this, perhaps, it is not surprising that the boys voted fishing very poor fun, and took to moun- taineering instead. Thev had climbed Cader Idris (a very pretty climb from its more difficult side) and Snowdon, and were resting at a first-rate hotel not far from Snowdon's foot, when they found the follow- ing letter on their breakfast-table from the Admiral: — ' Dear Frank, — As your mother is not very well, I intend to bring her down to Dolgelly for a few days. Take some nice quiet rooms where we can all be lodged together at less expense than at an hotel. * Your affect, uncle, ' CilRISTOPIIER WiNTIIROP. ' P.S. — I have some important news to give you, and should like you all to be jit home when we arrive by the 12.50 train to-morrow.' v$ !'E I !■ h i.lV . t „ 'il n i i ? am'.' i 1' ! 68 SNAP Frank read the letter out to the rest at breakfast, and then laid it quietly down by his plate. ' Snap,' he said, ' there is something wrong at home. I can't make out what the Admiral is always harping on economy for. Surely our mother ' (and unconsciously there was a tone of pride in that * our mother ') ' can afford to go to any of these wretched little hotels if she likes. I shan't take rooms. It's all nonsense ; I'm not going to have her murdered hj- Welsh cooks, especially if she is ill.' No one having any explanation of the Admiral's letter to offer, or any objection to staying where they were, the conversation dropped, but the boj^s were restless and unhappy until the 12.50 train was due in. When that train pulled up with a jerk at the platform the three had already been waiting for it half an hour, for their impatience had made them early, and long habit had made the train late. As soon as they could find their mother and Admiral Chris the boys pounced upon them, and in the first burst of eager welcome the cloud vanished. But it reappeared again before the party reached the hotel, and the Admiral was as nearly angry as he knew how to be on finding that the rooms taken for him- self and sister were, as usual, just the best in the hotel. The dinner was a poor and spiritless affair, and Snap noticed that the old gentleman, instead of light- in^^ a cigar after leaving the table, took at once to a pipe. * Wliy, sir,' remonstrated Snap, * you are false to your principles for the first time in my experience of T THE BLOW FALLS 69 you ; I thouglit that you always told uk that the cigar was a necessary appetiser, to be takon before the solid comfort of the evening pipe.' * Nonsense, my boy, nonsense, I never said that. A^ cigar is a poor thing at best. Nothing like a pipe for a sailor,' blurted out the Admiral, looking annoyed at Snap's innocent speech, and glancing nervously in Mrs. Winthrop's direction, while over her sweet face a cloud passed as she too noticed for the first time this little change in her brother-in-law's habits. Coming up to her eldest boy's chair, and leaning caressingly against him, the little mother turned Frank's head towards her, so that she could look down into his honest blue eyes. ' What is it, little mother ; do you want a kiss in public ? For shame, dear ! ' laughed Frank. * Tell me, Frank,' she said, taking no notice of his chaff, * do you want very much to go to Oxford ? ' ' Eight away, mother ? No, thank j^ou. I am doing very well here.' * Tiut when you leave Fernhall, Frank ? ' ' Well, yes, mother ! Yoii wouldn't have me go to Cam.bridge, because, you see, all my own friends are at tiie Nose,' replied Frank. ' The Nose ? ' asked Mrs. Winthrop, looking puzrjled. ' Brazen Nose, dear. Brazen Nose ! — the college, you know, at which Dick and the Kector's son now ace.' ' But w'hat should you say, Frank, if you could a,*, go either to Oxford or Cambridge ? * persisted lir: mother. Hi-: f I. ;|, r. 70 SNAP ;: M iil! ' Conimdiiim, mother. I give it up,' answered the boy lazily ; ' call me early, dear, to-morrow, and ask me an easier one.' Poor little lady, the tears came into her eyes as the smile grew in his, and at last Frank saw it. Jumping up and putting his arm round her, he asked : ' Why, mother dear, what is it ? T was joking. I'll go anywhere you want.' 'Yes, my boy, I know,' sobbed the little woman, ' but you can't go either to Oxford or Cambridge. There, Chris, tell them the rest,' and, slipping out of Frank's arms, she left the room. After this beginning the whole story was soon told. The Admiral's pipe had gone out, his collar seemed to be choking him, but, now that he was fairly cornered, he didn't flinch any longer. * Yes ! ' he said, ' that is about the truth of it. We are all ruined. Fairbury was sold three days after you left it. That is why we sent you down here. We wanted to spare Frank the wronch, and we didn't want any of you punching the auctioneer's head, or any n(>nsense of that sort. We have all got to work now, lads, for our living.' Here the old man rose and put his strong iiands on Frank's shoulders, and looked him full in the face. ' With God with them, my bovb aren't afi'aid, are they ? ' Frank gripped the old man's hand, and Billy crept up close to him, while Hnap, watching from a distance, felt hurt to the heart that he had not lost and was not privileged to sutler with them. 1' THE BLOW i'ALLft 71 And yet * Fairbury sold ' sociiicd too imicli for any of them to realise all at once. Faii'bury seemed part and parcel of themselves. It was to them as its shell to an oyster. The AYinthi-ops (the whole race) had been born in it, and it had i^i'own as they grew. After a while Towzer broke the silence. 'Then, uncle, where are we going home to? he asked. * Home, my lad ! Well, I suppose we must make a new home somewhere. It should not be difficult at ovr age, should it, Frank ? ' added the gallant old man, as if he were the youngest of the young as well as the bravest of the brave. * But, uncle, won't mother's tenants pay their rent ? ' asked Frank. ' My boy, j'our mother has no tenants,' said Mrs. Winthrop, who had re-entered the room, ' and you'll never be Squire of Fairbury, as you should have been. It does seem hard.' And so it did, and one young heart, of no kin to hers, felt it almost as much as she did. and Snap swore then, though it seemed a ludicrous ■ hing even to himself, that, if ever he could, he would put back that sweet woman and her boy in their own old home. But I must hurry over this part of my story. Sorrow and tears are only valuable for the effects they leave behind. Without the rain there would be no corn ; without misfortune and poverty there would be very little effort and achievement in the world. But it is more pleasant to dwell on the happy results than on the causes. 1 ' , V 72 SNAP I r n giisi m hn 1 a >a il AVJien Frank had in 'listed on seeing his mother to her hedroom, with a quaint assumption of authority which she never resisted, the Admiral explained how all their troubles had arisen. A friend to whom Mrs. Winthrop had lent 500?. had repaid that sum to her agent in Scotland. The agent (a lawyer), acting on the Admiral's instructions with regard to small sums paid in the absence of Mrs. Winthrop on the Conti- nent, had invested the 5001. in some bank shares. The shares were bought, he believed, much under their value. Alas, the public knew better than that lawyer. The bank was an unlimited affair, and broke soon after he had bought its shares, and Mrs. Win- throp became responsible for the paj^ment of its debts to the last penny which she possessed. Without any fault of theirs, without warning, the Winthrops had to give up theiv all. This is one of the dangers of civi- lised life, and, unfortunately, company promoters, swindling bankers, and such like are not yet allowed to hang for their sins. Luckily, the Admiral was not involved in the general ruin, and was as staunch and true as his kind generally are in the time of trouble. ' My dear,' he had said to his sister, when he had finished abusing the bank, the bankers, the Government, and every person or thing directly or indirectly connected with banking, ' it was my fault for not looking after the money myself. Nonsense ! of course it was. What should a poor devil of h lawyer know about banking, or law, or anything i xcept bills ? However,' he added more calmly, * there is my little property and pension for you and the boys, and, as for me, I dare say that I :i I: THE BLOW FALLS 73 can get a secretaryship to a club or something of that sort in town.' The Admiral had a hazy idea that the letters R.N. behind his name were sufficient qualification and testi- monial for any public office, from the directorship of a guinea-pig company to the secretaryship of the Eoyal Geographical Society. ' And now, lads,' he was saying an hour after Mrs. Winthrop had retired for the night, ' think it all well over. There is a stool in an office for one of you, if you like. No place like the City for making money in ; or, if you don't like that, Frank, we can find morey enough somehow to send you to the Bar. We have employed attornies enough in our time, and of course some of them would send you briefs enough to give you a start ' (would they ? poor Admiral !) ; 'or there is young Sumner's craze — cattle-ranching or farming in the far West — a rough life, no doubt, but Ah, well, it's not for me to choose. I'm not beginning life. I wish I was — as a cowboy,' and the old man picked up his candle and trotted off to bed with almost enough fire in voice and eye to persuade you that he was still youi?g enough to begin another round with Fate. That night the boys sat up on the edges of their beds until long aft(jr midnight, talking things over. Frank was very grave, and inclined to persuade his younger brother to take to the office-stool. * And you, Major ? ' asked Towzer ; * are you going to the Bar ? ' ' W^ell, no,' replied his brother, * I don't think that I could stand being buried alive in those dim, musty ^1 11 '^'^.i-) 4' i 74 SNAP i-H-^ chambers yet, and I've no ambition to conquer For- tune with the jawbone of an ass.' * Very well, then, if you won't set me an example, let's (hop London and talk cattle-ranching,' said Towzer. * Snap, you've got an old *' Field" in your bag, haven't you ? ' ' Yes, here you are,' replied the person addressed, producing an old copy of that one good X3aper from his portmanteau. * Look in the advertisement- sheet,' suggested Frank, 'there is always something about ranching there.' * " Expedition to Spitzbergen," ' read Snap ; * that won't do. " Wanted another gun to join a party going to the Zambesi." Ah, here you are, " Employment for gentlemen's sons. The advertiser, who has been settled at Oxloops, on the north fork of the Stinking Water, for the last ten years, is prepared to receive two or more sons of gentlemen upon his ranche, and instruct them in the practical part of this most lucra- tive business, a business in which from 35 to 50 per cent, can easily be made, whilst leading that open-air, sportsmanlike life so dear to English country gentle- men. All home comforts found, and instruction given by the advertiser in person. Premium, 200Z." ' * There ! ' cried Towzer, ' what do you think of that ? The 200/. will be part of the start in life which Uncle talked about, and after the first year we can just buy cattle and start for ourselves. You'll come, of course, Snap ? ' * Well, I don't know,' replied Snap ; * I've not got the 200/. in the first place, and in the second place, if 'i Tin-: R[,()W FALLS 75 cattle-ranching pays so wull, 1 don't sec why tliis cattle-king wants to hother himself with pupils for a paltry 200/. a year; Ix'sides, 1 fancy Sumner said that you could learn more as a cowhoy than as a pupil, and the cowhoy is paid, w]iile the pupil pays for learning. I'll come if you go, but not as a pupil.' * I half suspect that Snap is right, Billy,' said Frank ; ' but, anyhow, we must talk this over with the Admiral.' ' Very well,' assented that young enthusiast ; 'but I say. Major, wouldn't it be jolly if it was true ? Fifty per cent., he says. Well, suppose the mother could start us w^ith 1,000/. apiece, that would be 1,000/. profit betw-een us the first year. Of course we would not spend any of it. Clothes last for ever out there, and food costs nothing. By adding what we made to our capital we could make a fortune and buy back Fairbury in no time.' 'Steady there, young 'un; optimism is a good horse, but you are riding his tail off at the start, and I expect that cattle-ranching wants almost as much work and patience as other things,' replied his more sober brother. But Billy's enthusiasm had won the day in spite of reason, and they all turned in to dream of life in the Far West, and easily won fortunes. Only one of them lay awake for long that night, watching the clouds drift across the mountain, and, if anyone had put his ear very close to Snap's pillow, he might have heard him mutter, as he tossed in his first restless slumbers, ' Poor little mother ! it has I '. { . ill ■m. ill ^'1 ! :|| Fl I- : t 76 SNAP almost broken her heart. If we could only win it back ! If we could only win it back ! ' And yet Snap was no kith or kin of theWinthrops, Fairbury was no home of his, nor the gentle lady of whom he dreamed his mother. f i >'ji i i i i ri i M i ji «i Bwi 77 i \ I i j!i 1- ■ ' i-ii CHAPTEK VII LEAVE LIVERPOOL This tale is written for boys, and if the writer knows anything at all about them they like sunshine as much as he does. That being so, we will skip, if j'^ou please, a certain foggy morning in Liverpool, when the heavy sky over the Mersey seemed as full of gloom and rain as men's eyes of tears and sorrow. The great lump in the old Admiral's throat kept getting up into his mouth in a most confusing way, and required a good many glasses of something which he never drank to keep it down. Poor Mrs. Winthrop, strong in a woman's courage to bear suffering, seemed to be think- ing for everyone. There was no tear of her shedding on her son's cheek, and her pretty lips were firm if 'they were white. ' Don't forget, boys, your father's last written words — ' Bring up my boys as Christians iLud gentlemen,' he wrote. You're out of my keeping now, but, whatever your work, remember you are Winthrops.' And then the last signal to those aboard sounded, and those who had only come to say ' good-bye ' hurried off the ship. A party of schoolboys who had come to see a chum leave for the great North- West struck up ' For he's a jolly good fellow ' as the steamer :' ' !!; ' 1l I !« 1^ ' }| IMACE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 14.^ IIIIIM 11^ '- IIIIIM ~" I.I ii'i 1.2 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 .< 6" — ► Photographic Sciences Corporation « ^ :\ \ ^\^ A" 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) 872-4503 6^ I €?■ i \ 6^ 78 SNAP left her moorinji^s, antl, carried off their balance by the heartiness of the chorus, the Admiral himself and everyone not absolutely buried in pocket-handker- chiefs took up the refrain. The last the boys could rememl)er of England was that busy, dirty pier, a crowd waving adieus, and the dear faces of mother and uncle with a smile on them, in which hope and love had for the moment got the better of sorrow. And then they were out on the broad bosom of old Ocean, with limitless stretches of green waves all round, and all life in front of them. As the ship sped on, the air seemed to grow clearer and more buoyant, the possi- bilities of the future greater, and success a certainty. Everyone on board seemed full of feverish energy. If they talked of speculations or business they talked in millions, /lot in sober hundreds, and before they were half across the Atlantic the boys wore beginning to almost despise those who stayed behind in slow and sober England— all except Snap, at least, who annoyed them all by his oft-repeated argument, * If it is so good over there, why do any of these fellows come back ? ' The voyage itself was an uneventful one ; that is to say, no one fell overboard, no shipwreck occurred, and, thanks to the daily cricket match with a ball of twine attaclied to fifty yards of string, the Atlantic was crossed almost befoie our friends had time to realise that they had left England. On landing, the two Winthrops had to make their way to the ranche of a Mr. .Jonathan Brown in Kansas County, to whom the Admiral had sent somethhig like 300Z. as premium for the two boys. For this they I !l '»!?'>»»iiiii>n- ' 'Sffia^^; ^a*ki^>^*- *n00D-BYE ! i * I 1 fH 1 ■ ( ;| i LEAVE LIVERPOOL 79 were promised * all home comforts, and a thoroughly practical education in cattle-ranching and mixed farming, together with the henefit of Mr. Brown's ex- perience in purchasing a small place for themselves at the end of their educational period.' Snap, not having money to waste, or faith in ' ranching and mixed farming,' was to proceed further west and try to find employment along the new line until he could obtain day labourer's work on a ranche. The Admiral had insisted on paying the railway fare for the three of them, and, contrary to his custom, had paid first-class fare, arguing that thus they might possibly make a useful friend on the way, and at any rate sleep soft and warm until the moment came for the final plunge. So the boys entered upon their first overland stage together, gazing with big eyes of wonder at the fairy land which seemed to slip so noiselessly past their carriage windows. It was almost as if the dry land had taken the characteristics of the ocean, all was so big, so boundless, around them. First there seemed to come a belt of great timber near the sea ; then they passed through that and came into an ocean of yellow corn, of which from the windows of tue train they could not see the shore. Most of the time the lads sat in the smoking-car, not because they smoked, but because the smokers were friendly and told such mar- vellous yarns and amused them. On the third day there was an addition to the little party in the smoking-saloon, a very ' high-toned ' person in a chimney-pot hat and gloves. This gentle- man was a great talker, and, liaving t ied in vain to I I I ! .i. : / I'' M ti ^i m J ii M I •in 80 SNAP get up an argument on the merits of some politician, whom he called a * leathor-head ' and a * log-roller,' with the big-bearded man or his two hard-bitten com- panions, who until then had shared the room with the boys, the new-comer expectorated politely on either side of Snap's feet, evidently enjoying the boy's look of annoyance, and then opened fire on him thus : * Say ! I guess you're a Britisher now, ain't you ? ' * I am, sir,' answered Snap with a good-tempered smile. * Getting pretty well starved out over there, I reckon, by this time ? ' 'Well, no! we haven't had to take to tobacco- chewing to stop our hunger, yet,' replied Snap, with a wink at Winthrop. * Wal,' retorted the Yankee, * you look mighty lean, fix it how you will. If it's all so bully in England, why do you come over here ? ' This the Yankee seemed to think a clincher, but Snap was ready for him. * Well, you see, sir, we are only following the examples of our forefathers, who came over and made America, and founded the race you are so justly proud of.' * Founded the race ! fiddlesticks ! The American race, sir, just grew out of the illimitable prairie, started, maybe, by a few of the best of every nation, but with a character of its own, and I guess the whole universe knows now that our Republic can lick creation, as it licked you Britishers in 1781. Perhaps you'll tell me we didn't do th^t ? ' By this time the other occupants of the carriage LEAVE LIVERPOOL 81 were all watching Snap Hales and the top-hatted one, a curled and smooth -looking fellow (* oily,' perhaps, would describe him better than smooth) of thirty or so. The Yankee cattle-men were looking on with a grin at seeing the English boy's * leg puMed ' as they called it — the other two English boys in blank amaze- ment at the quiet good-temper of fiery Snap Hales, under an ordeal of chaff from a perfect stranger. Could it be that the sight of that ugly little revolver, which the stranger had exhibited more than once, had cowed their chum already? Whatever the reason, Snap's unexpected answer came in his sweetest tones. ' Oh no, I'll not deny that ; it's historical, and, besides, it served us right. We didn't recognise that a big son we ought to have been proud of had grown up.' * Oh, then, you'll allow we licked you at Sarytogy and Yorktown ? * * Yes, certainly.' * And perhaps you'll allov that if you tried it on again we'd Hck you again ? ' persisted poor Snap's enemy, whilst the glance Snap gave Frank could hardly keep that indignant Briton quiet on his seat. * Yes, I'll allow that too, if we came to invade your big country at home with a mere handful of men of the same breed from over the seas.' Somehow, Snap's quiet way was rousing the American's temper, and he retorted hocly : * That's the way you talk, is it ; and I tell you, and you'll have to allow, that, man to man, an American citizen can always whip a l)looming Britisher.' o I i - m 1: : i 1 ^ f 4 ! f ^1 ; ■ i 1 82 SNAP Snap gave an actual sigh of relief, or so it seemed to the boys, and his eyes lit up with a glad light, that those who know the breed don't always like to see. He had done his duty ; had kei)t his temper as long as he could be expected to ; and now he might fairly follow his natural instincts. Still quite cool, although his knees were almost knocking together with eager- ness, which others might have mistaken for funk, the boy took up the challenge. * Are you a good specimen, sir, of an American citizen ? ' The man looked puzzled, but replied, un- abashed : 'Wal, as citizens come, I guess I'm a pretty average sample.' * I'm sorry for that, sir,' answered Snap, ' as I'm only a very poor specimen of those Britishers of whom you speak so politely ; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I never fired a revolver in my life, but you said just now that Heenan had whij^ped all England with his fists, and America could lick the old country at that as she can at everything else. Well ! we stop at Bis- march for twenty minutes soon, I see. It isn't time for lunch yet, so, if you'll give your revolver to that gentleman to hold, I'll fight you five rounds, if I can last as long, and these gentlemen shall see fair play. Only, if you lick me, mind I am not a typical Bri- tisher.' The American looked from one to another in an uncomfortable, hesitating way, and then at the long, sUght, boyish figure before him. He had gone too far to draw back — he was three stone heavier than his young adversary — so with a blasphemous oath he LEAVE LIVERPOOL 83 handed the derringer to his bearded fellow-country- man, adding : * It don't seem hardly fair, but, if you will have the starch taken out of you, you shall.' As the pistol-holder left the smoking-room to put the property with which he had been entrusted into his valise he gave Frank Winthrop a sign to follow him. When he and the boy were alone he turned quietly round and said : ' Can your pal fight ? ' ' Like a demon,' anpwerod Frank ; * he was nearly cock of our school, young as he was.' * All right, then, I'll not interfere. He is a good plucked one, but tell him to keep out of the man's reach for the first round or two. I don't suppose he has much science, but one blow from a man so much bigger would about finish your friend.' * I don't believe it,' answered Frank hotly ; but the kindly cattle-man only smiled, and, putting his hand on the boy's shoulde)', led him back into the smoking-car. In another ten minutes the warning-bell on the engine began to toll, and the train ran through a street of rough wooden shanties and pulled up just outside the * city ' (a score of houses sometimes make a city out west), by a little prairie lake. In such a city as Bismarch, in the early days of which I am speaking, even half a dozen pistol shots would not have attracted a policeman, principally because no policemen existed. Sometimes a scoundrel became too daring in his villainies even for such tolerant I^eople as the citizens of Bismarch. "When this o 2 ' t I .♦ 1 I I , ^iii I i ;ili ■■I I u i M ^1; i I y\ fe: 84 SNAP happened someone shot him, though prohably he shot several other people first. At the back of the little group of shanties there used to be a long row of palings about eight feet high. ' Hangman's palings ' they called these, because upon them, for want of trees, the first vigilance committee had nine months previously (the * city ' was only fifteen months old) hanged its first batch of victims to the necessities of civilised law and order. In such a city as this a quiet spar would cause no sensation, and certainly would not be interrupted, so Snap quickly stripped, as if he was behind the old School chapel, and Mr. Eufus R. Hackett, his opponent, did the same. Stripped of gloves and hat, Hackett looked less at his ease than his young enemy, and would probably be still waiting to begin if the boy had not stepped in and caught him on the point of the nose with a really straight left-hander. Now, the writer of this story has been hit very frequently upon the nose. After years and years of practice the sensation is still annoying in the extreme. Your eyes fill with water as if you had inadvertently bolted the mustard-pot ; the constellations of heaven are seen with alarming clearness ; and if you are one of the right sort you come back after that blow like a racquet-ball from the walls of the court. If this is the effect on a nose inured to the rough usage of five- and-twenty years, what must you expect from the owner of a delicately tip-tilted organ, which had been held all its life high above the brutalities of a vulgar world ? Like a wounded buffalo, with his head down and LEAVE LIVEKPOOL h:> blind with rage, the Yankee went for Snap, and, in spite of a weli-m'^ant upper cut from that youngster, managed to close with him, and by sheer weight bore him to the ground. There Snap was helpless, and before the big cattle-man could interfere the boy had a couple of lumps on his face, which bore witness to the good-will with which Mr. Hackett had used his beringed fists. But for Snap himself, Mr. Rufus R. H. would there and then have received a sound hiding from the cattle -man, but, though somewhat unsteady on his feet, Snap pleaded that he might have his man left to himself. Again Hackett tried the rushing game, this time only to meet the boy's left and then blunder over his own legs on to his nose. As the fight went on. Snap recovered from his heavy punishment. Quick as a cat on his feet, he never again let the big man close with him. Every time he stirred to strike. Snap's left hand went out like an arrow from the bow, true to its mark, on one or other of Hackett's eyes. Not once did the boy use his right — that quick-countering left was all that seemed necessary ; and, though the American was more game than his appearance would have led his friends to believe, it was evident before the end of the third round that he was at the boy's mercy. From that moment Snap held his hand, simply taking care of himself and getting out of his enemy's way, and carefully abstaining from admin- istering that brutal coup de grace which a less generous nature would have inflicted. * Say, mate,' quoth one of the cowboys who was Hackett's second, 'it's not much use foolin' around i 1 1^ ? I I li 1 1 86 SNAP here, is it? You can't see the Britisher, and he don't seem to cotton to hitting a bUnd man. Let's have a drink and be friends.' Almost before he could answer, Snap had the fellow by the hand with a hearty English grip. * You'll allow we're the same breed now, Mr. Hackett, won't you ? ' he said. * It wasn't really a fair fight, you know, because I've learnt boxing pud you haven't.' In spite of a bumptiousness which acts on a Britisher like a gadfly on a horse, your real Ame- rican is a right good fellow at bottom ; and for the rest of the two days during which Hackett and Snap travelled together nothing could exceed the kindness of the beaten man and his fellow-countrymen to the three EngUsh lads. *He isn't much account,' apologised one of the cattle-men, *just a school-teaching dude from the Eastern States, I reckon; but you mustn't bear him any malice for hitting you when you were down ; there ain't any Queensberry rules out here in a row, and it's no good appealing to the referee on a Western prairie.' Snap had no intention of bearing malice, nor, indeed, of fighting any more fights, either according to Queensberry rules or the rough-and-tumble rules of the prairie, if he could avoid it, though this one fight was for him an exceedingly lucky event. Soon after leaving the sc^iie of his encounter the train pulled up at Wapiti, and -.as met by a man in the roughest of clothes, driving the rudest of carts. He had come for the * farm pups ' from England, he LEAVE LIVERPOOL 87 I't a Lr. a id said, and if they weren't blamed (iuiclc with their luggage he was not going to wait for them. An offhand sort of person, thought Snap, l)ut, no doubt, when his master, Mr. Jonathan Brown, is near, he will be a goo(' deal more civil. It was not until months later that Snap learnt tliat this dirty rougli, a common "irm-1abourer in all but his ignorance of farming, was ?[r. Jonathan Brown, 'professor of ranching and mixed farming in all its branches.' When Frank and Towzer had vanished out of sight Snap turned from the window with a sigh, and found the good-natured eyes of the bearded cattle- man fixed inquiringly upon him. ' So you are not going to learn farming, my lad ? ' he inquired. * Not with my friends, I can't afford it,' answered Snap. ' Don't think me rude, but what arc you going to do?' * Try to get work at Looloo, on the line, until I can find out how to get paid work as a cowboy uj) country.' * Have you any money to keep you from starving till you get work ? ' asked the American. ' A little ; but I mean to earn my food from the start if I can.' * Well, you've the right sort of grit, my lad,' replied the cattle-man, ' and you're 200/. richer than your friends now, poor as you are, for they have thvown their premium clean away. Look here, my name is Nares, and I own the Rosebud ranche in Idaho. I like the look of you, lad, and I'll give you \ !, ( i ^i fel ^i\ wmmgmm 88 SNAP labourer's wages if you can earn them, and grub anyway, if you like to try.' * Like to try ? ' of course Snap liked to try. It was just a fortune to him, and he said so. 'But,' added his friend, 'when you write home tell your friends not to fool away premiums, but to give a lad enough to live on for the first six months, whilst he is looking for work. You would, maybe, have got nothing to do at Looloo for long enough.' 89 1 ! ll CHAPTER VIII THE MANIAC Winter is not, perhaps, the best time to introduce a boy to the Far West, fresh from all the cosy comforts of home — at least, if he is a boy of the * cotton wool ' kind. To a boy like Snap the keen air was worth a king's ransom ; the forests of snow-laden pines through which the train passed were full of mystery and romance ; his eyes ached at night from straining to catch a glimpse of some great beast of the forest amongst their tall stems, or at least a track on the pure snow. The day upon which Frank and Towzer left him was too full of incident for him to find much time ^o sorrow after his old friends. The train was passing through a district in which great lakes — unfrozen as yet, except just at the edges — lay amongst scattered rocks and pine forests bent and twisted by the Arctic cold and fierce storms of former winters. Inside the cars all was warmth and comfort, although the gaiety of the travellers was sobered down by the presence amongst them of a poor fellow who had lost his wife and two children in a railway accident i week before this. He was now returning from the rough funeral which had been accorded to them at the station of i' ■f> I M i|? 11 Ih' J 90 SNAP Boisfort. A strong, gaunt man, his days had been spent as a Hudson Bay runner, and later on as a watcher upon the railway, or manager of Chinese labour. In spite of his harsh training, even his strong nature had succumbed temporarily to the blow from which he was now suffering. His lost family seemed ever before his strained, wild eyes, and the throbbing and rattle of the engine and its cars seemed to beat into his brain ani madden him. From time to time he would spring' to his feet, clap his hands wildly to his head, and peer out into the snow. Then, moaning, * No, it's not them, it's not them,' he would sink down again into his seat, limp and lifeless. Snap had been watching the man, fearing he was going mad, until his friend Nares touched him and said, * Don't keep your eyes on the poor chap like that, maybe it fidgets him.' Ashamed of what he at once considered an unin- tentional rudeness on his part, Snap withdrew into another corner of the compartment, and had just wandered off into day-dreams, in which Fairbury and * the little mother ' took a prominent place, when he was recalled to himself by a scream and a shuddering exclamation of horror which seemed to pass all along the compartment. Looking up quickly, he had just time to see a wild figure, hatless and grey-haired, hurl itself from the footboard at the end of the cars into the snow, and to hear a wild cry, ' I am coming, chicks, I am coming.' In spite of air-brakes and patent communicators it was some minutes before the train could be brought up all standing, and the pas- sengers who hurried out to see after the unfortunate ■.L-._ THE iMANIAC 91 suicide had a good many hundred yards to go before they reached the spot at which he threw himself from the train, and when they reached the spot an expres- sion of wonder spread over every face. Although the embankment upon which he alighted was considerably below the level of the train, although the train was travelling at express speed for an American line, there was no dead man to pick up from the snow, no man even with fractured limbs or strained sinews, but just the mark of a falling body and then the tracks of a running man leading straight away through the silent snows to the lake-edge. Close to the point at which the man had sprung from the train was a labourer's shanty, just one of those rough wooden structures which the Irish out West set up alongside their labours on the line. Round this, when Snap and Nares came up, was gathered an excited little group of passengers and railway-men. ' Are you sure Madge isn't in the house ? ' someone asked of a little boy of seven, the Irishman's child. ' No, Madgy ain't in the house ; I heerd her hol- lerin' just when the engine went by ; hoUerin' as if someone had hurted her badly,' the child added. * Where's your father, little man ? ' asked Nares, pushing his way to the front. ' Down the line at the bridge, working ; father won't be back till night, and mother's gone this hour or more to take him his dinner.' Nares turned to the men round hirn, and, speaking in low, quick tones, said : * We must follow that poor devil ; he is stark mad, i i ! ill W I ^ I % 1? M • 5W1 \ Mt W n I N I T HP 92 SNAP s and heaven only knows what he will do with the child.' * With the child ! why, you don't mean to say he has got the child ? ' cried one. Nares was busy arranging something with the guard and didn't answer, but it was evident that the men agreed with him, and were prepared to obey him. ' Then you'll hand over Mr. Hales to Wharton, my stockman at Rosebud,' Nares said to the guard, * and tell him to leave a horse at the station shanty for me. I'll be in, most likely, to-morrow.' * You know this labourer is a relation of Wharton's, boss ? ' asked one of the railway men. * No ! is he ? ' was the reply. * Yes, a nephew, they tell me, or something of that sort. Wharton will be wanting to come and help you, I guess.' * Well, then, I'll tell you what to do. Don't say anything to my man. Mr. Hales can stay here at the cottage until I come back, and we'll come on tc~^^her to-morrow. Good-bye.' The guard shook hands, the crowd moved back to the train, the bell tolled as the cars began to move off, and in another minute Snap and Nares were left with one labourer, named Bromley (who had volunteered to help Nares) ; a solitary little group, with a crying child and an empty hut as the only signs of life around them, except for those ominous tracks leading away into the silence and the snow. After some demur it was determined that Snap should be one of the search-party, and that a message should be left with the boy for his father, telling him F HIE MANIAC 93 to follow on Nares' track as fast as possible with food and blankets. This done, the three started at a swinging trot ; first Nares, then Bromley, following the man's tracks, and making the road easier for the boy jogging along in the rear. From the moment of starting the silence of the forest seemed to settle down upon the three. No one spoke ; no bird whistled ; the bushes stood stiff and frozen ; no animal rustled through them ; all the little brooks were jagged with frost ; the only sound was the regular crunch, crunch of the snow beneath their feet, and the laboured breathing of Bromley, who, though willing enough, was not such a ' stayer ' as either Nares or Hales. It was late when the child was stolen, and they had already been some two hours on the trail. The tracks still led steadily on towards the Thompson Eiver, the day was fast darkening and Bromley * beat.' Nares called a halt and proposed that they should stop where they were until Wharton came up with food and blankets, and then (prepared with these necessaries) follow the madman by starlight. Just as they were discussing this course of action a rustling in the bush ahead drew Snap's attention. * There he goes, there he goes,' cried the boy, dash- ing forward, as with a crash a tall grey form with something in its arms rushed through the forest on the other side of a broad dell by which the party were sitting. If an indistinct shout of warning reached Snap he neither understood nor heeded it. From time to time he saw the hunted man ahead of him, and once he distinctly saw the little girl in his arms. Surely ;i ' sfe^i li !& ■'■ill ¥ i. t> L, ■11 i !' i] ; II; 'I' p. ill h i 94 SNAP he was gaming on him. At any rate he was leaving his own companions far behind. Even the tough cattleman's frame had no chance against the legs and lungs of a schoolboy of eighteen. How long Snap ran the madman in view he never knew, but at last he lost him. Panting and tired, he pulled up ; climbed first one knoll and then another, and still no sight of the man or of his own comrades. It was now so dark that he could hardly see the tracks in the snow; the forest a few yards from him was dim and indistinct, and everv minute the darkness deepened. He shouted. His shout seemed hardly to travel further than his lips, it seemed so faint and feeble. It was for all the world like standing by the seashore and trying to cast a fly on the ocean. It fell at his feet. Again he cried, and this time an answer came, but such an answer ! First a laugh, and then a wild eldritch screech. The boy was no coward, but a cold chill crept up to the very roots of his hair, and his heart froze and stood still at the sound. And, after all, it was only Shnena, the night owl, calling to her mate. Being a level-headed and cool lad. Snap soon realised that he had outrun his friends, and that they had (thanks to the darkness) missed his trail and lost him. He had often read of lonely nights in the forest, and envied the heroes of the story, but somehow he did not care about the reality as much as he had ex- pected. The typical ' leather-stocking,' he remembered, always had matches, made a fire and sometimes a bush shelter, lit a pipe, and ate pemmican. Now Snap felt that, though extremely hot now, he would soon be T THE MANIAC 95 !"'.■ bitterly cold, but he had no matches, did not know how to build a shelter, had no pemmican, and did not smoke. As for that buffalo robe, of which so much is always made in dear old Fenimore Cooper's books, there might be one within a few miles, but if so its four-footed owner was probably still wearing it. Snap remembered that a trapper who had no matches rubbed bits of wood together until he had got a light by friction. This was a happy thought, and, taking out his knife, he carefully cut a couple of pieces of dry pine from a stump hard by, and then collected as big a bundle as possible of twigs and dead wood, which he deposited on a spot previously cleared of snow. Then he rubbed the wood, and rubbed the wood, and continued to rub the wood, but nothing came of it. Presently he tried a new piece ; rub, rub, rub, he went, and a large drop of perspiration dropped off the tip of his nose with a little splash quite audible in the intense stillness. Then he gave it up, voted Fenimore Cooper a fraud, or at any rate came to the conclusion that his receipts for kindling fire were not sufficiently explicit. For a time he sat still and listened. He has con- fided to a friend since that lie could * hear the silence.' Certainly he could hear nothing else, unless it were the sudden creaking of some old tree's bough weighted with too much snow. And then his thoughts went after the madman. A thought struck him, and even Snap never fancied that it wns the cold alone which made his knees knock together and his teeth rattle so. What ii, now that he w^as alone, the madman should turn the tables and hunt him ? Was not that him he saw sneaking over the snow in the dim light ' '1 ■i; i "1 1 ■ 1 \ M' i r P i J' I r J I i ■ 1 1 i 96 SNAP of the rising moon ? Snap sprang to his feet with a crackle, accounted for by the fact that part of his clothing had frozen to the log on which he had been sitting, and had elected to remain there. Snap put his hand ruefully behind him. It was very cold even with clothes, it would be colder without ! However, as he rose the shadow moved rapidly away, taking the semblance of a dog to Snap's eyes as it went. By- and-by a long blood-curdling howl told the boy that the shadow he had seen was sitting somewhere not far off, complaining to the moon that the plump English lad wasn't half dead yet, iind looked too big for one poor hungry wolf to tackle all alone. 'Con- found these forests,' thought Snap, ' and all the brutes in them, their voices alone are enough to frighten a fellow,' and then he began to wonder if he would soon go to sleep and never wake any more, and hoped, if so, that Nares would find him and send a message home to Fair bury. At any rate the boy thought, before going to sleep for the last time, he would keep up the practice he had observed all his life, and for a few minutes the hoary pine-trees and the cold, distant stars looked down on an English boy bending his knees to the only power in Heaven or earth to which it is no shame for the bravest and proudest to bend. Like a son to a father he prayed, just asking for what he wanted, and pretty confident that, if it would not be a bad thing for him, he would get it. When he rose to his feet the forest seemed to have put on a more friendly air, the trees didn't look so rigid and funereal, the stars were not so far off. Who knows, perhaps Nature, w THE MANIAC 97 God's creation, had also heard the boy's prayer to their common Creator. For hours and hours, it seemed to him, Snap tramped up and down, hke a sentry on his beat, beneath the pine at whose foot lay his unli^^^ fire. After a while he began to dream as he walked, for surely it was a dream ! Somewhere not far off from him he could hear a human voice, and hear it more- over so distinctly that the words of the song it sang came clearly to his ears. Snap shook himself and pinched himself violently to be sure he was awake, and then stood still again to listen. Yes, there was no mistake at all about it. Hush-a-by, baby, on the tree-top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, crooned. the voice, and its eifect in the stillness of the night was to frighten Snap more even than Shnena or the wolf. Creeping in the direction from which the sound came, so stealthily that he did not even hear himself move. Snap got at last to a point from which he could see the strange singer. Crouching under a log sat the wretched lunatic, naked to his waist, his grey hair hanging in elf-locks over his eyes, and in his arms a bundle, wrapped round in his own coat and shirt, which the poor fellow rocked as a woman rocks her child, singing the while a snatch of a song w'hich he had heard in happier days sung to his own little ones. There were tears in Snap's eyes as he looked, and he longed to go to the man's help, but he dared not. Alone he would have no strength to compel the lunatic to do what was I'easonable, and to talk to him would be idle. At that moment tlio H i ,i .1/ * r-.' t iRf ! I I 1 I '4i ii I r i 1^ I 1 I I : 98 anAi' i man looked up and sat listening like a wild beast who hears the hounds on his scent. * They want to take you too, my darling,' he whispered, and Snap could hear every word as if it had been yelled into his ears, ' but they shan't, the devils ! they shan't ; we'll die together first ! ' Muttering and glancing back, the man crawled on hands and knees into the scrub and was gone. Snap rubbed his eyes ; it seemed like a dream, so noiselessly did the madman creep away and disappear. As he stood, still staring at the place. Snap heard a bough crack behind him, then another and l. mother, and the tread of men approach- ing in the snow. In another minute Nares had the boy by the hand, the weary night-watch was over, and a match inserted amongst the twigs sent up a bright flame as cheering as the voice of his friends. Having partially thawed, and eaten as much as he could. Snap told Nares and his two companions what he had just seen, and as morning was just breaking, and active exercise seemed the boy's best chance of ever getting warm again, the four once more took up the trail. Stooping down over the tracks made by the maniac as he crawled into the scrub, Nares uttered an ejaculation of horror. * Poor wretch,' he said, * look at that,' and he pointed to a huge track, which looked half human, half animal, in its monstrous shapelessness. * It's his hand, frost-bitten and as big as your head,' said Bromley ; * he can't go much further, I'm thinking.' But he did, and it was full day when the pursuers came out upon a bit of prairie and saw in front of them the broad flooded waters of ' T^ THE MANIAC 00 tliu Thompson liiver, and a short distance ahead ol them a miserable hunted man still staggering on with his load. As he saw him the child's father uttered a cry and dashed to the front. The madman heard it, looked back, and tied wildly towards the river. Madness uses up the life and strength rapidly, no doubt, but the wasting flame burns fiercely while it lasts, and this last effort of the frost-bitten dying man seemed likely to make pursuit hopeless. * He is going for the river, heaven help the child ! ' gasped Nares. About four liundred yards before reaching the river, a broad but slow-running watercourse ran parallel to the Thompson. This svas frozen over owing to its shallowness and the sluggishness of its waters. Even the Thompson had a thin fringe of ice on its edges. Without pausing, the madman dashed on to the ice of the scream, which swayed and broke beneath his weight. Crash, crash, lie went througli, first here, then there, but somehow, though the whole surface of the ice rocked, he struggled on hands and knees from one hole to the other, and reached the farther side in safety. But his troubles in crossing had given his pursuers time to close upon him, and as he gained the shore Snap saw the child's father draw a revolver with a curse and fire at his child's would-be murderer, for that the madman meant to plunge into the Thompson with his victim, and so elude his pursuers, seemed now beyond a doubt. For some reason, for which he could not account. Snap's sym- pathies were with the wretched madman, and without pausing to think he knocked up the IrishnuiiTs revolver before he could fire a second shot, and daslied u 2 . J ! T' tf iilir I J i i '»' '>\ \ii fM I, ■ • 1 ;;! 'i! ! •t .? napi 100 SNAP on to tlu! weak and broken ice. ' I never j^ave it time to let me in,' Snap explained afterwardH, and, indeed, with his bkod up as it had never been Ijetbre, and strong with years of Fernhall training, the boy seemed to skim across the ice like a bird. And now they were on the Hat together, with the strong black river ahead. Death the penalty, the child's life the prize. If Snap's friends wished to, they could not get to him soon enough to save him, had the madman turned. Luckily for Snap, the hunted man never looked behhid him, but naived, frost-bitten, bleeding, struggled on for his terrible goal. If Fernhall boys could have seen Snap then they would have remembered how that young face, white and set, once struggled through a Loamshire team just at the end of a match, and won the day for Fernhall. Football, unconsciously, was perhaps what the lad was thinking of at the moment, as step by step he gained on his prey, and yard by yard the black river drew nearer. At last it was but thirty yards away, and with a final elibrt Snap dashed in. * Take 'em low,' the Fernhall captain had said in old days, ' never above the waist, Snap,' and Snap re- membered the words now. With a rush he was alongside, down went his head with a scream tliat he couldn't repress, his long aims wrapped round the madman's knees, and pursued and pursuer rolled headlong to the ground on the very edge of the angry tl(^od. How long they struggled there Snap didn't know. It was worse than any ' maul in goal ' in old days, but, liVe the bull-dog of his land, once he had his grip, Snap wijuld only loose with life. In vain "ti V 1^"^^^'" SNAP AND rilK -AIADMAX 234u9o I f 'I '^liil s ,■■( tW i w •,:i \ i I'i i . T \ m THE MANIAC 101 the madman bit and struck, rolling ovor and over, shrieking with rage and fear. Hiding his head as much as possible, Snap held on, getting comparatively very few serious injuries, before strong hands dragged his opponent down, and as prairie and river and sky seemed to fade away a kindly voice snid ' Thank God, the boy's all right.' When Snap recovered from the swoon which fatigue and hunger, cold and blows, had ended in, he found himself rolled in blankets, under just such a shelter as twelve hours ago he had longed to make for himself; a little yellow-haired girl was sleeping near him, and a huge fire throwing its rosy gleams on both, and on the kindly, bearded face of Nares, the cattleman, busy over a kettle of soup. The unfortu- nate cause of all their trouble was happier even than Snap. When Nares and Bromley, and the father of the little girl, had come up and overpowered him and released Snap, life seemed almost to leave the poor maniac. Blood was streaming from his side where the first revolver bullet had entered ; his hands were swollen and dead to all feeling ; his body was frost-bitten, but his mind was happily a blank ; and before they could make a fire or do anything for his comfort, a more merciful Friend than they looked down and took the poor fellow to meet ' his chicks ' in a kingdom wliere frost-bite and railway accidents are uiiknown. n f .; .'i \*' r m M ft i;u I i ii I! i t li 102 SNAP CHAPTEPt IX ' THAT BAIQNG POWDER ' * Well, boss, we did think as you'd took root in Chicago, or mebbe that the Armours had juit yon through their pork-making machine.' ' Well, no, aot quite that, Dick, you old sinner. How are the boys ? ' replied Nares to a grey-headed old man, who was sitting complacently on the driver's seat of a cart, and watching * the boss ' put his own luggage on board. There are no porters and no servants, even for a big cattle-man, out west. ' How air the boys, you said. Well, right smart and active at meal-times, thank ye, and pretty slack at any other. But what's that, anyway, that j^ou're bringing along ? ' and the old man's eyes rested with a look of no little disgust on the English-dressed and (to Western eyes) soft-looking lad, Snap Hales. * That ! ' replied thy boss, ' that is just — well, let me see., a colt I want you to break ; a child I want you to nurse, Dick,' replied Nares. ' Nuss ? ril nuss him,' growled the old man. * We don't want no loafers up at Rosebud.' Poor Snap coloured up to his eyes, but felt more comfortable as Nares gave him a wink and a hand- up into the cart. ^•jr^i^wrmam wm 'THAT BAKING POWDER' 103 ' Now then, air you fixed behind ? ' cried Dick. ' We are,' replied Nares. ' Then git,' yelled his foreman, l)ringinff his whip across his horses' flanks, and for the next five minutes Snap and Nares, and the boxes, bags, Sec, of each of them, bounded about like parched peas in a pan. As the old man gradually steadied his horses to a trot, he turned round with a grin. ' That's pretty well sorted you, I reckon,' said he, ' and may be took the first coat off your tender-foot's hide.' Luckily for the tender-foot (our friend Snap), it is one of the laws of nature that, given a lot of objects of various weights shaken up together, the lightest invariably comes to the top. During the last five minutes he had varied liis seat frequently from the uncompromising corner of a trunk to the yielding and comfortable person of the burly Nares, from whose waistcoat (being of a pliant and springy character) the next bump would have removed him to a seat upon the prairie. Luckily, that bump never came. Mile after mile of prairie rolled by, yellow where the snow (very thin hereabouts) left it uncovered, and apparently too sterile to feed a goat. Further on it improved, and great tufts of golden bunch grass showed through the thin sprinkling of snow, and here and there a sage-hen fluttered up or a jack rabbit scuttled away. About noon cur friends crossed a river, on the further side of which were the feeding-lands of Nares's ranche. Some miles again from the river was a range of low rolling hills and broken lands, the shelter provided by Nature for the beasts of the field against ' ! I" i 'I .11 111 ! k:: iif ' lis i I 1* m i I 'J) t'l; 104 SNAP ' 'ii blizzards and snowstorms. Nares usfid to boast his ranche had every advantage obtainable in America — plenty of water, river-lands to cut hay upon for winter feed, hills and broken land for shelter in storm-time, and a railway handy to take produce to market. There are very few such ranches nowadays in America, as even its great prairies are not boundless — a fact much overlooked by its go-ahead citizens. ' I reckon the cows sold pretty well, boss^ this year,' suggested the old man when he had unhitched the team and kindled a bit of a fire for lunch. * Yes, they sold well, Wharton, and none of them got damaged on the way down. There won't be much to do on the ranche now till spring,' added Nares. * Guess that's why you're bringing an extra hand along,' snapped the old man. ' Why ! Jeehoshaphat ! what's the matter with you now ? ' he shouted. Poor Snap had tried first one side of the fire, then the other, with an equal want of success. On one side the smoke nearly choked and blinded him, on the other worse things awaited him. A blanket, which just accommodated ' the boss ' and Wharton, was stretched on the windward side of the fire. With a weary sigh Snap threw himself down beside it. With a yell of pain he bounded up again, holding first one foot, then the other, in the air, and all the time applying his hands sorrowfully to the softest part of his person. The old foreman had laid a trap for the tender- foot, and he had sat upon it, the ' it ' being a bed of what the natives call prickly pears, a peculiarly vicious kind of cactus about the size of a small potato, which unobserved spreads all over the ground, and sends its I '■ 'THAT jlAiaNG POWDER" 105 long thin spines through everything which presses upon them. When, at last, the good-natured Nares understood his friend's sorrows, and had managed to stop laughing, he gave Snap a place on the blanket, and, turning him over on his face, proceeded tenderly to pluck him. It is no fun to be converted at a moment's notice into a well-filled pincushion. At lunch Nares told old Wharton the story of the maniac-hunt recorded in the last chapter. As he told the story of little Madge's danger and salvation Wharton's eyes wandered from * the boss ' to the boy l)eside him. At last, when the story was over, he sighed softly ' Jee-hosh-a-phat.' Then he rolled his quid and expectorated. Then he got up and held out his great fist to Snap with these words, ' Say ! were them pears pricnly ? Well, never mind. I guess you needn't sit on no more now. I'm a-gwine to be your " nuss," Britisher ; ' and it is only fair to add, the old man kept his word. An hour or two afterwards Nares and Snap got out at Rosebud, and our hero entered his new home, a big one-storied house built of rough logs dovetailed into each other, the cracks filled up with moss and covered over with clay. Indoors, the floor was covered with skins. On the walls were antlers of deer and wapiti and mountain sheep, from which hung half a dozen rifles, hunting-knives, itc. There was a bench or two about the place, a big table, at one end a huge open stove, and along the walls were ranged a dozen shelves or bunks not unlike those you see on board ship. A small room opened off from the main apart- ment, and in Viiis Nares himself slept and kept his \k !■* ,1 M' I :',.*, i K'> ^ ' B if w 106 SNAP accounts. Outside were some few smaller buildings — a cook-house, a forge, and so on. A huge piece of land enclosed with rough timber fencing ran alongside the house. This was a corral for horses or weak cattle. A smaller corral for horses likely to be wanted at a short notice also adjoined the ranche. * Not;, Snap,' said Nares, ' this is Eosebud, Eosy enough for a worker, what we call a " rustler " out here, but not a l)ed of roses for a loafer. There's your bunk when you are up here, but I expect you'll be wanted out on the feeding-grounds most of your time. Anyhow, for the first day or two you can help me with the books, and try your hand at the cooking.' So Snap tried his hand at bread-making and failed ; flour and wat-^r ^von't make bread of them- selves, and, even when you have made your dough, if you don't flour your hands the compound will stick to them. However, old Wharton set the boy right and gave him the soup to look after. * Put some salt in it,' said the old chap, ' you'll find it in a tin up there,' pointing to a shelf over his head. ' You'd better just taste it to see as you get it right. The boys don't like no fooling with thch* broth.' So Snap got down the tin and put a couple of spoonfuls into the broth and tasted it ; two more, and tasted again ; and still the compound did not seem salt enough. *I say, Wharton,' said Snap, after tasting the salt itself, ' this is very weak salt of yours.' 'Guess it is,' replied the old man, * table-salt the boss calls it ; I call it jist rubbish. But never mind, 'THAT BAKING POWDER' 107 m \i t shove in the lot if it don't taste strong enough.' So in it went, and Snap stirred vigorously, added some onions, and himself looked forward to a share of his cJipf fVoeurrc. By-and-hy the ' boys ' trooped in, tall, bronzed fellows in great wideawake hats, loose shirts, and huge spurs. Each brought his saddle with him and chucked it into a corner as he entered. * How do, boss ? ' they remarked ; * How do, Wharton ? ' and then most of them added, staring at Snap, ' Why, who the deuce are you anyway ? ' This question having been satisfactorily answered, all sat down to food, and Snap thought he had never seen such a rapid and wholesale consumption of meat and drink in his life. ' Where are the rest of the bovs ? ' asked Nares of one of the three who had come in. ' Gone after a band of cattle which we found after you left, boss. I guess we'll have 'em in to-morrow. There are several want branding : one old scrub bull in partickler.' ' Yes,' added another, ' and I'm thinking he'll go on wanting for some time yet. You can't hold him with any ropes on this ranche.' Gradually even the cowboys' appetites seemed satisfied, and one by one they stretched themselves out on rugs by the fire, and puffed away silently at their pipes. They were long thin men for the most part, and tightly belted at the waist. ' Mighty good soup that to-day,' said one. ' Glad you liked it,' said Snap proudly ; ' I made that. I don't think it was bad for a first attempt.' . !!■ ■: ^ If -^ 1 h: a \l 108 SNAP ' Satijfying, anyhow,' said Nares, 'I never felt so full before.' * Yes, I'm full up," added someone else, and then silence again ensued for a space. Presently there was a crack and the tinkle of falling brass, and a button flew on to the hearth. ' Bless me,' cried old Dick Wharton, ' if I don't feel as if I was getting fuller every minute.' This seemed to be the general feeling ; even Snap shared it. * Why, what in thunder's the matter ? ' cried Frank Atkins, leanest and hardest of hard riders. ' This yere belt has gone round me with six holes to spare these two years, and now it won't mee+ by an inch.' It certainly was odd. They had sat down like Pharaoh's lean cattle, they had risen like his fat cattle, and they had gone on ' rising ' ever since, until now they were all portly as aldermen. Suddenly a light dawned upon Wharton. ' Say, boy, what did you put in that broth ? ' * Nothing,' said Snap, * except salt and onions.' ' Where did you get that salt ? ' ' Why, out of the tin over your head,' said Snap. ' This 'un, eh ? ' inquired the old man, holding up a small round tin. ' Yes, that's it.' ' Wal,' said the old man slowly, ' I've heerd of Houses of Parliament being blowed up by dynamite, but I never heerd tell of a ranche being bust up by Bor wick's baking-powder afore ! ' i ! if^ 109 CHAPTEll X AFTER SCllUli CATTLE That first niglit Snap was glad enough to get to bed. Not that he was sleepy ; on the contrary, tired out as he was, he was preternaturally wideawake. Every- thing was so new to him, and, besides, that horrible Borwick was still an unquiet spirit withni Inm. The cowboys of the North-West are probably the only possible rivals to the ostrich in the matter ot diges- tion still extant. Like the ostrich, they could safely dine on door-nails and sup on soda-water bottles, so that they had already forgotten Borwiclv and were snoring peacefully. Snap wished he could imitate them. The bed in which he found Inmselt combined all the advantages of a bed and a thermo- meter Founded upon pine boards, it consisted ot hve pairs of blankets. In summer heat you slept on one blanket out of doors. In temperate weather you h1. pt under one indoors. As it grew colder the number oi blankets above yon increased, until four above (with a buffalo-robe) and one below indicated blizzards and frostbite on the prairie. _ It seemed to Snap that just as he was going oh to sleep someone struck a match, lit a pipe, and then bec^an lighting the fire. This was old Wharton, Init Sv m \> i':' i .Ml '^ \& ^ ( li I ► no SNAP he let the boy He (being a charitable old soul) until he roused him up with : * Now, lazybones, you can wash in the crik outside if you've a mind to, only breakfast is ready.' Snap hopped out of his blankets and ran down to the crik, although no one else seemed to care about it, and so biting was the cold that he felt it would have been worth his last dollar to be allowed to take a hand at the wood-chopping going on outside. The worst of it was that he couldn't chop ' worth a cent,' as big Frank Atkins informed him, and indeed, although he hit the log all over and with every part of the axe, it seemed even to Snap that he made very small progress. The sense of his own uselessness was getting absolutely oppressive to the boy as it was borne in ujwn him more and more that even cooking, chopping, and such like, want learning, and don't come naturally to any of us. Breakfast was a short ceremony — bacon and jam — ' trapper's jam,' that is, made from bacon grease and a spoonful of brown sugar, washed down with a huge draught of weak tea. After this everyone lit his pipe, and old Wharton, turning to Snap, said : ' You may as well go along with the boys to meet Tony and the rest with them scrub cattle. They're a bit short-handed, and I can't go myself ; the boss will be making things hum here up at the ranche for the next day or two.' A few minutes later Atkins came up with a dun- coloured pony, ' a buckskin ' he called it. ' Theer,' said Wharton, * if I'm vour nuss. Shaver, « V Ai'TEK bCKL'li CATTLL: 11 it- that theer'B your cradle ; and you'd better p;et in ri};lit now.' There was a grin on everyone's face, but Snap, though afraid of being laughed at, was afraid of nothing else, and had ridden a little since he was a very small boy, so he climbed unhesitatingly into the great cowboy saddle. As he did so his amiable ' Cradle ' laid back her ears, and tried to get hold of his toe in her teeth. Being frustrated in this, she curled herself into a hoop, and began to ' reverse ' as the waltzers call it. Then she stood still and waited. Atkins threw himself into the saddle and cracked his whip, Snap touched his mare with the spurs, and then the Cradle began what Wharton called ' rocking,' i.e. bucking, in a way that only prairie-reared horses understand. To his credit be it said Snap sat tight for the first ' buck,' at the second he went up into very high latitudes with his legs almost round his horse's neck, at the third he ' came south,' reposing grace- fully on the buckskin's quarters like a costermonger on his ' moke,' while at the fourth he sat promptly down upon the prairie, from whence he watched ' tliat cayouse ' linish her performance l)y herself. When Atkins and Wharton and the rest had finished laugh- ing, which took longer than finishing breakfast, they picked up the crest-fallen Snap and put him upon a quieter beast. ' That's one of yourn too,' laughed Wharton ; ' you'd better have the six buckskins for your string, my lad, but I'd keep old White-foot just for Sundays or any time as you feel lonesome and want amuse- ment.' t"'i|' ij I ill I ^ I" mmmmmmm M 112 SNAP .i ! Snap didn't reply, but thought to himnelf that if indeed the six horsen in the little corral were set aside for his use, it should not be long before he was master of the good-looking, bad-tempered brute which had just grassed him so ignominiously. * Not hurted much, are you, young 'un ? ' asked Atkins. 'No.' ' That's right, let's get,' and, so saying, Atkhis led off at a canter, Snap's new steed following at a gait easy as a rocking-chair. The early morning is alwa.ys the very best of the day, even in our begrimed and foggy English cities ; on the plains of the North-West the morning air is as exhilarating as champagne. Every living thing feels and acknowledges the influence of the young day. Horses toss their heads and strain their strong muscles *n a glorious * breather ' without encourage- ment fj'om the rider, while the rider feels his blood racing through his veins, his heart beating, his brain quick and clear, and the whole man full of unconscious tluinkfubiess to God for the delight of merely living. All that day Atkins and Snap rode towards and through the foot-hills, and at night camped where someone had evidently camped not long ago. Being handy and anxious to learn. Snap soon made friends with his companion, found the poles on which the last wanderers had hung a blanket in lieu of a tent, found some wood for firing, fetched the water for the billy, • and learned how to hobble the horses. That night he felt, as he watched the stars through the tops of the big bull-pines, he had really begun life ^' •m^^ Al'Tia? S('RUI5 CAITLE 113 out west, iiiul mi^lit al'tcr aU learn to bold his own with tho strong men roiuul him. It wns an inii)r()V('- ment on the nijj;lit before, when evervthin,^ seemed very hopeless and stranuieiits. He doesn't trot, and he only ' shuffles ' whcii he is walking. If I had said ' roll,' which lii viae degree describes his action, the word would not h. ■ neces- sarily implied the use of feet at all, so i luiist stick, please, to * slope,' as being the best word to express the smooth, quiet way which a bear has of convey- ing himself with a ceitain rapidity out of harm's way. The light was very liu". as the irv^ was tha mysterious season between midnigu; and dawn, and Snap knew very little about rifles, but, being thoroughly English, v,JuVi>ut counting the cost he snatched up a Wmchcster repeating rifle, and proceeded to ' pump lead ' at the vanishing bear as long as he could see him. Then all was still again, and remained so until two cheekv little ' rol)lier-l)ir hi mm BRANDING THE 'SCRUBBER' 127 From time to time along the route the occurrence of one of the big home ranches causes a delay. Here a great corral or enclosure of rough logs has been erected, and smaller pens of a like nature. The whole party camp near the ranche, and the cattle are herded beside it. In the morning comes the chief work of the year. Every cow with a calf at her iieel is the subject of careful scrutiny. If she bears the Rosebud l)rand, the calf belongs to the Rosebud ranche, and has to be caught there and then and branded. If not branded whilst still a calf, the little beast will be lost to the owner, for, once grown up, with no ever- present nurse to point out to whom she belongs, the unmarked heifer belongs to anyone who can catch and brand her. There are always a few scrub cattle on every range — beasts like some of those whose capture has been described in the last two chapters — who had succeeded so far in escaping the cowboy's hot iron. The work of * cutting out,' that is, separating, the beasts to be branded from the rest of the herd, is to the cowboy what Rugby Union is to the schoolboy. It is full of excitement, tries every muscle of the horse, every quality, mental or physical, of the rider. This, on a small scale, was the w'ork awaiting Snap on the morrow of his bear-hunt. Amongst the beasts driven in were a few which required to be branded, and, though their capture was mere child's play to the old hands, used to following a dodging heifer through a herd a thousand strong, it was intensely exciting to Snap. How the ponies twisted and turned amongst the crowding beasts, never for one moment It.': h I I, I Vii il 128 SNAP losing touch of the animal which they wanted to cut out, was a marvel to him for many a day. Polo on a quick pony is trying to a man's seat, but cattle-driving on a pony which twists like a snipe and doubles like ;i hare, without any warning to the rider, is even more so. Having cut out, lassoed, and branded all that were unmarked save one, Tony Jind Wharton held a con- sultation as to that one. Tne men had not much to do ; they had just had work enough in the crisp air to ' get their monkey up,' and were ready for any- thing. ' Say, Dick,' said Tony, ' shall we brand that old bull ? the old varmint has had the laugh of us long enough. Let's scar his rump for him this time, any v/ay ! ' The scrub bull alluded to by Tony was an old acquaintance of the men at Eosebud i-anche. i\fore than once had he been thrown and tied, always to break away and set the branders at defiance. Whilst the men were talking he was gradually drawing away from the herd, a strong, heavy-built beast, lierce and long-horned as a Texan bull, strong and sturdy as an English shorthorn. A short, crisply curled coat of a dull brown made him look, l)ut for his more graceful build, more like a buffalo t. ai a domestic beaet. ' All right, boys, let's have another go at him,' assented Wharton ; and Wliarton, Tony, Snap, and another rode quietly out to surround and drive in the veteran. The ponies certainly entered into the spirit of the thing. Anything more meek and more inno- BEANDING TEE 'SCRUBBER' 129 cent than * the Cradle ' as he wandered casually out with Snap on his back, now and then stopping for a moathful of grass, and again turning his back com- pletely on the bull, Snap thought he had never seen. And yet somehow the ponies were all round the bull, and, unless he had the pluck to run the gauntlet, he had only one way open to him, and that led into the small corral. Little by little they drew in, pushing their victim so slowly in front of them that he must still have believed that he was choosing his own course, and only moving at all because he wished to. By quiet, clever generalship old Wharton and his boys got the bull within a short run of the corral. Then the bull began to hesitate. He evidently ' smelt a rat,' and did not mean to go another yard. This was the critical moment. Swinging their lariats round their heads, the four riders dashed at the bull with a yell which would have turned a party of Zulus white with envy. Snap, not to be outdone, yelled in chorus w'hat was really a relic of the old hunting days at Fairbury, and dashed forward with the rest. For a moment the grand old bea::it lowered his great shaggy front, and looked as if he meant to stand the charge. If he had done so, the band of horsemen must have split upon him as waves upon a rock. But the yell and tl e swinging lassoes were too much for his nerves. Turning slowly, he galloped into the corral, the horses dashed after him, the huge bars of the fence were put back into their places, and the scrub bull was fairly caged. So far, so good. But this same bull had often been caged before, and was still uubranded, K m »: I 130 SNAP ' Will you rope him, Tony ? ' asked Wharton. ' You bet,' replied that worthy, divesting himself of pretty nearly everything except his lasso, so as to be 'pretty handy over them rails, ii so be as it's necessary,' he explained. In the corral was a post, firm-set in the ground, and stout as heart of oak. Bound this Tony coiled his lasso, leaving lots of loose line and the fatal noose free. Meanwhile the bull kept his eye on Tony just as Tony kept his eye on the bull. Snorting and paw- ing the ground, the beast backed against the rails, and then, finding that there was no escape, lowered his head and came with a perfect roar of rage at his self-composed enemy. Tony stood his ground just long enough to throw his lasso, and then darted away. The long loop flew straight enough to its mark, but by some ill-luck failed to fix upon the bull, who, free and savage, fairly coursed poor Tony round the ring. But the cowboy ' didn't reckon to be wiped out by one of them scrubbers, no-how,' and, seizing his opportu- nity, scrambled over the rails of the corral like a monkey up a lamp-post, remarking, when he reached the other side in safety : ' Jeehoshaphat ! I did think he would have venti- lated my pants for me that time, anyways.' At the next attempt Tony's lasso settled round the great beast's horns, tightened as he plunged past the post, and as he reached the end of his tether brought him with a stunning crash to the ground. As Snap said afterwards, ' those cowboys hopped over the fence like fleas, and had the old bull's leg tied up, and his head made fast to the pole with the strongest green ■ 1 T BRANDING THE 'SCRUBBER 131 hide-rope on the ranche, before you could say Jack Robinson.' For a while the great beast stood trembling, and still dazed by his fall, but the sight of Tony with the branding-iron roused him to fresh fury. The huge quarters seemed to contract for a mighty effort, the shaggy neck bent down with iriesistible force, the thongs of green hide creaked and then snapped, as snapped the withy bands which bound the wrists of Samson. There were four men and a bull in fche corral when those ropes broke ; there was one man and a bull still left in thirty seconds after that event. With a furious chargi, .lie monster scattered his tormentors, who fled in every direction, two over tli^j mils and a third just in time to fling himself flat on his face and roll out underneath the bottom bar, with those sharp horns, * straight as levelled lances,' only just behind him. When they had time to turn they saw a sight which, if it had not been so full of peril for a dear old comrade, must have ei cited peals of laughter. 'Bust me if you shall u.k us,' said Tony, grinding his teeth as he heard the straining thongs begin to give ; and when the bull charged the brave old fellow held on to his branding- iron and waited. Of course the flying forms of Tony's companions drew the bull's attention, and his great horned front plunged past the one foe who disdained flight without observing him. With a shattering crash the bull dashed against the corral-fence just too late to pound a man to pieces with his horns, and as he reeled back himself, half stunned by the tremendous collision with those un- K 2 f I n: 132 SNAP M yielding oaken bars, the bull was aware of a fresh indignity. Tony had him by the tail ! ! Yes, it's all very well to plunge and roar with rage, to swing the lithe, active foe clean off his feet, and dash him against the oak rails of your prison, gallant Texan bull ; but that foe, half Yankee as he is now, was bred in gallant Yorkshire, and, once he has his grip, will let go when a bull -dog does, that is, when he is dead ; just then and no sooner. And so the scrub-bull found. In vain he dashed about like a beast possessed, tore up the earth, and rent the air with furious bellowings. Tony had no idea of letting go ; his life depended on his holding on ; his muscles were like iron, and his nerves were English, hardened by a rough life in America. The absurd part of it was that at every breathing-time Tony made a fresh effort to brand his victim, for he had stuck to his iron with his one hand as tenaciously as to the bull with the other. The story takes long in the telling, but in the doing it did not take half as long. Before anyone could intervene to help the fool- hardy old man the end had come. In dashing round the ring in a cloud of dust (no one quite saw how it happened) the old man's head must have struck againct the post or against a railing. As the dust cleared, the horrified spectators saw Tony standing in the ring, liis head hanging, his eyes vacant, still clinging instinctively to his iron. For a moment the bull paused, almost crouching like a cat, then, with a roar of rage, hurled himself forward. The old man didn't move, didn't seem to understand, and it flashed through the minds of the helpless and horror- l.;i ■Hm'W^ a a « Li :4 o a Q O !;!i i 1 ^1 v; ii! -If ,1 BBANDING THE 'SCRUBBER' 133 stricken spectators that, though still standing, Tony was * all abroad,' his wits temporarily scattered by collision with the post. There was a muffled shock : the man was flung, like fosjn from the crest of a breaker, half across the corral. Three other men's forms were in the ring, a couple of revolver shots rang out, and then, side by side, Tony and the bull lay upon that sandy battlefield, reddened with the life-blood streaming slowly from each. As his companions closed round him Tony managed to struggle to his elbow, saying, with a smile which spoke volumes for his pluck : * Sorry you killed the scrubber, boys, he'd a been kinder like a monument for me, 'cos you see he has got the Kosebud brand now ; you bet, he's got the Rose- bud brand ' Poor Tony ! those were his last words, and as his comrades carried him off his last battlefield they felt that the best rough-rider and the gentlest, most kind- hearted giant amongst them had done his last day's work. A few days later, when the sun was setting on the prairie, making the whole sky crimson, and flooding the world with its last rays of light, they buried him by the river's edge, Nares reading the funeral service over him, who, though perhaps he had said less of religion than most men, had lived a life so close to Nature, and face to face with God and His works, that he must have learnt the great secret and loved the Creator, as he undoubtedly in his own rough way loved all His beautiful creation. Over Tony's grave the men set up a rough headstone, or cross, rather, of ill 1 4- 134 SNAF timber, and on it they nailed the bleached skull and bones of his dead enemy; while underneath Snap burned with a hot iron some words which he remem- bered from Bret Harte : — A roughish chap in his talk was he, And an awkward man in a row ; But he never funked, and he never lied, • I guess he never knowed how. nd ap tn- 135 i: 1 1 CHAPTEB XIII WINTER COMES WITH THE ' WAVIES ' The loss of Tony was a loss which the whole ranche felt. Had he died in the full swing of work, the machine must almost have broken down. But Tony never wanted his spell of rest except when there was nothing much to do, and he had chosen to take his * big spell of rest ' in the same way. Still, even in the winter season, his loss made a great deal of differ- ence to Snap. With Tony the ranche was full-handed, and the boy was really more or less superfluous. Now he had his hands full. There was a man's place to supply, and he worked hard and uncomplainingly to fill it. There are a thousand things to be done about a ranche in winter : cattle to feed and water, wood to hew, repairs about the ranche which want attending to, suppUes to be fetched from the nearest town. At all these things Snap took his turn. No one cares to turn out first in the morning with a bitter frost outside and make up the fire for the benefit of the rest. Even strong, hard men will lie watching to see if someone else won't volunteer, and hug themselves for their smartness when someone ejse turns out before them, so that they may get up in the glow of a fire which others have made. The !li 1, ! I' I . m 5','. ^ ! 11 :li i T 136 SNAP ' boys ' might well have insisted on Snap's doing this, but he was popular, and no one fagged him. They knew he was a good plucked one, so nobody bullied him. That being so. Snap set himself the work to do, and nine mornings out of ten it was Snap who raked up the ashes and blew the fire into a blaze, who woke the sleepers with a joke, and had coffee ready for the elder men. It was Snap, too, who sang the best song round the wood-fire at night ; and be sure there was nothing that went straighter to the hearts of the cowboys than his fresh young voice rattling out the well-remembered words of *The Hounds of the Meyneir or Whyte Melville's 'Place where the old Horse died.' Some of the boys had never been in England, and knew nothing of fox-hunting, but all loved a good horse and entered heartily into the spirit of the song. And so it was that in the early morning, and late in the fire-lit evening, Snap won his way to his com- panions' favour. Though gently bred, they recognised him as being not only game to the backbone, but ready and willing to do a man's work. That once understood, they were his friends through thick and thin, always ready to teach him anything, to make room for him in a hunting-party, or to chaff his head off if he made a hash of either work or play. By spring Snap was in a fair way to be a useful hand upon the ranche. And now winter was coming down upon Eosebud in real earnest. Tlie first ' cold snap,' as it is called, had caught our friends as they crossed the Eockies, and, intensified by the height at which they were travel- i ii T WINTER COMES WITH THE ' WAVIES ' 137 ii'il \ ling, had seemed very bitter indeed. After the cold snap, which only lasted from a week to ten days, came as it were an aftermath of summer, a second season of sunshine and delight, which the natives call the Indian summer. Snap began to think that the severities of a Canadian winter were all bunkum, invented as a background for all the terrible stories of the fur-traders of old days. This Indian summer was just the loveliest October weather which a healthy man could wish for, a little crisper and keener at night than our own Octobers, but in the day so bright, so clear, so sunny, that life (however hard the work) seemed to go to dance-music all day long. Later on, how- ever, there began to be signs of a change. One by one and in little groups all the cattle had come in of their own accord from the distant ranges. Some of them had been feeding above the foot-hills on the sweet grass of the mountain slopes, where in two months' time even the bighorn would not be able to exist. As Snap rode out to shoot for the pot, or on any work about the ranche, he would meet fresh companies of them, feeding slowly downhill towards the low land and the river bottoms. They were in no hurry, picking the tenderest * feed ' as they strolled along, and camping every night wherever they happened to find them- selves, but still pressing steadily on to the warmer lands below. As the beasts stopped and stared at the boy with great, solemn, brown eyes of inquiry, he used to wonder at them at least as much as they at him. How came it, he thought, that they knew the bitter white winter was coming, although the sun was still so bright, and the uplands flooded with golden light ? iti*ii, :,(; -.-'i (/' li 138 SNAP Who told them ? or did they remember from the years before ? Nature, too, had put c«i her last robe but one. In a month, save for the dark green of the funereal pmes, it would be white everywhere, aow, just for a season, there was colour everywhere as bright as rain- bow tints, and as short-lived. The maples were clear gold or vivid crimson ; the sugar maples often show- ing both colours side by side in one gracefully pointed leaf. The hazels were red and gold, or, like the long oval leaves of the sumach-bush, had ali oady turned from brilliant lake to a dull, blackish purple. They were all ready to drop and die, but their death would be as beautiful and becoming as their birth in spring- time, when birds were mating and woods a tender green, or as their life among the flowers and cool, green shadows of the luxurious summer. As Snap lay awake at night he heard far up among the stars the clang, it seemed to him, of trumpets, as if an army passed by to battle ; or, again, a strange, solemn cry, not from quite such a height, smote his ear : ' honk, honk, ha, ha,' it seemed to say — a strange, unearthly call, from things passing and unseen. At morning, too, before dawn, he heard these cries, and a strange, swift, whistling sound would rush over the roof of the log-house. The sky seemed haunted in these late autumn days. One morning as the mists rose Snap got a glimpse of these passing armies of the air. Far away up in the clouds was a great V-shaped body of birds, the point of the V ^ single swan cleaving his way westward from his summer haunts in the Arctic Circle to the warmer regions of % WINTER COMES WITH THE 'WAVIES' 139 British Columbia and the mud -flats of the mouth of the Frazer lliver. On otlier days he saw Canada geese in thousands, and snow geese (or wavies) in hundreds of thousands, all passing on the same great high-road from Hudson Bay to the West. ' Snap,' said old Wharton one morning, * hurry up, I've just seen a gang of wavies go up the crik, flying pretty low down. I reckon they aren't going far, and young wavy is mighty good eating.' Snap was not long getting the big duck-gun down from its peg on the beam, nor long in loading it with a great charge of shot as big as small peas. * It ain't like shooting quail, you see,' said Wharton, ' these wavies want almost as much killing as a grizzly.' * What are you going to take, Dick ? ' asked Snap. ' Oh, I'll just take the Winchester,' replied his friend ; * you let me have the first cut at them with a ball, and then as they get up let 'em have both barrels of your blunderbuss right in the thick of them.' * All right, come along/ urged Snap. * No hurry, my boy ; they have come a longish way, those wavies, and I guess they'll take a goodish time lunching on them mud-flats and beaver meadows,' replied his less excitable companion, whose eyes nevertheless gleamed with all the excitement of a genuine wild-fowler. By-and-by, as the two hurried down the river-bed, they could hear a loud and excited gabbling, a thou- sand geese all talking at once. 'Talking like senators,' muttered old Dick; 'one would think they were paid for the job, but I expect 140 SNAP IN as they've seen some country to talk about in the last day or two, between this and Hudson.' ' Last two or three days ! why, how fast do they fly, Dick ? ' whispered Snap. * Wal,' replied he, * I guess I never travelled with them much, but I should say about sixty miles more or less an hour, and they'll keep it up too ; but dry up now, for the cunning varmint put out regular scouts, and they'll hear us talking a quarter of a mile off.' Round the mud- flats and hollows which the geese were on was a fringe of brush and reeds. Through this the two gunners forced their way. As they did BO the gabbling ceased as if by magic. ' Quick, quick,' whispered Wharton, pressing for- ward, and as they reached the edge Snap caught a glimpse of a huge bunch of geese, all drawn together on a little bare island in the stream, their long necks stretched ^o the utmost, their whole attitude one of suspicion and anxiety, and the wings of one or two of them half lifted for flight. Old Dick's rifle rang out the Bij^nal for them to go — all but two, that is to say — for the old man's bullet stopped the wanderings of two of them fo^* ever. As they rose in a cloud Snap clapped the big gun to his shoulder and let drive arjLLongst them. ' Not bad, my boy,' cried Wharton, * but why in thunder don't you shoot again ? Hulloa ! well, I am sugared, ha,, ha, ha ! ' laughed the old man as, turn- ing round, he saw Snap slowly picking himself up out of a mud-hole in which he had lately lain full length. * Why, does that gun kick,' continued Wharton, * or m WINTER COMES WITH THE 'WAVIES' 141 LSt ( what's the matter? How much had it in it, I wonder ? ' * Well,' replied Snap, * I put about three and a half drams of powder and a good lot of shot into it, but I've fired as big a charge before at home.' ' You put a charge in, did you ? ' asked Dick ; ' then that explains it, because I put one in too when you went back into the house for caps. I didn't know as you'd loaded her. No wonder she kicked ; the wonder is that she didn't bust.' Eemembering the charge which he had put in for the benefit of the geese, Snap quite agreed with his friend, and, rubbing his shoulder somewhat ruefully, proceeded to collect the dead. Five geese lay out- stretched on the mud island, one with his head cut clean off by Wharton's bullet, and another knocked into a cocked hat by the same missile. Three were Snap's birds, and three or four more ' winged ' ones were scattered about on the stream and river- bttnks. Having retrieved these, they turned home, well loaded and highly pleased with themselves. On the way back Snap noticed two more geese floating dov/n with the stream, close under the bank. In spite of the kick he had received from his gun at the last discharge. Snap could not resist the temptatior to bag another brace, and was creeping up for a s.iot when Wharton stopped him with : ' Hold hard, you've shot them birds once ; they are both winged birds, and if we can catrh 'em aliv'e they will be worth a lot to us.' It was soon evident that Wharton was right, for, though the geese saw their enemies and tric;i to hide ■ ii ' : ( JP 'i'il |;fi ■;-| |i 142 SNAP Siij I \'-:* I their heads under the opposite bank, they could not rise from the water. And then began a chase which wore out Dick's temper and Snap's wind before it was over. Although the men plunged into the water, and kept both siderf of the stream guarded, they couldn't for the life of them get hold of the wily ganders, who flapped p.nd swam, dodging cleverly, or hissing with outstretched necks and angry yellow eyes, unceasingly. When they had caught them at last it was late in the afternoon, and by the time they had gone back to fetch the dead geese which they had abandoned during the chase, and walked with them to the ranche, it was already getting dark. As they left the river a whistling sound overhead made them look up. ' More geese,' said Wharton ; * I guess they're making for them mud-flats too — please the pigs, we'll have a good time to-morrow evening.' And so they had for a good many evenings, the two winged geese being used as decoys, and Snap and Wharton (the latter now armed with a gun) being hidden carefully in reedy ambushes hard by. It was intensely exciting work, sitting there waiting until one of the many legions of birds which passed inces- santly overhead lowered to the water on which the decoy sat. At first Snap could make nothing of the shooting, and, to tell the truth, Wharton was not a bit better. He wasn't used, he said, * to these blessed scatter-guns,' which ' weren't of ro account alongside of a rifle.' If a single duck came along. Snap never hit it. If a long string passed over him, and he fired at the leading bird, sometimes nothing happened, but oftener the fourth or fifth bird, at an interval of m :i f 1 ' II j WINTER COMES WITH THE 'WAVIES' 143 several yards, came clown with a thump, gratifying to the pot-hunter, but not complimentary to the young gunner, who felt that he had missed his mark by as many yards as there were birds in front of the one which he bagged. After a good deal of practice he began to learn not only how far to shoot in front of the swift-flying birds, but how to swing with them, i.e. to keep his gun moving as he fired. Being younger than Wharton, and having shot a little at home, he soon learnt to beat the old man, who, if he could possibly help it, would not waste powder on a flying shot at all. "What most astonished Snap in this wonderful mi- gration was that all the birds killed in the first day or two were young birds. Later on, flocks of old ones began to arrive, but all the advance guard, as it were, of the bird army, whether wavies or brent, swans or duck, were birds of that season only ; birds who had never, could never, have travelled that road before. * It is wonderful enough,' thought Snap, ' to see the cattle all come wandering in with no one to drive them from the pastures, which will soon be all snow and ice ; it is wonderful that the birds should know that winter is coming, and be able to find their way from the bleak, frost-bound north to the more genial climates in which they winter ; but that the bird- babies, born this summer only, should lead the way, is most wonderful of all. They can't remember ! Who is it who leads them ? ' And, so thinking, the boy lay down to rest, and the loud clanging of the swans, and the call of the geese, and sharp whistling of the ducks' wings all told the same story, and if ' t ;t ';M i .H'l H ' iP.' i lit 144 SNAP ii •■\ i'l I R ll even a sparrow can't fall to the ground without His knowing, Snap thought he didn't fear the future so long as the One who guided the swans through the night and the darkness would guide him too. This migration, which took place in November, lasted only a week or ten days, though a few late detachments kept passing perhaps for a week after the main body had gone over. There were ten ' wavies,' or snow-geese, for every other bird which pa,ssed, and next to them in number were the Canadian geese and brent. The brent we know at home, or at least all dwellers by the shore know him, for he is the chief object of the punt- gunner's pursuit, and was at one time so common in England that up in Lancashire, where they thought he grew from the barnacles which cover ships' bottoms and breakwaters, a brace of brent were sold for three- pence. If he was as good then as a corn-fed Canada goose is now, I should like to have lived in those days, but I fancy he never was so dainty a bird as his Canadian cousin. The wavy, or snow-goose, is so numerous that the Canadian Acts of Parliament, which protect all other ducks and geese, leave this poor fellow unprotected ; but then the snow-goose is like the sands on the sea-shore for number, and most of the year he dwells either in the frozen North or on Siberian tundras where gunners can't get at him. He is a handsome bird, the snow-goose, and the older he gets the handsomer he is. As a youngster he is white all over, except his head and the tips of his wings, his head being yellowish-red and his wing-tips black. As he grows older his head grows whiter, until I ;i 1 h ' WINTER COMES WITH THE ' WAVIES ' 145 at last there is nothing to mark him out from the ice- bergs and snow amongst which his Hfe is passed, except those two or three black feathers in his wing. The Canada goose is almost as black as his fellow- traveller is white ; a dark, smart- looking, and jauntily moving bird, not much unlike a brent, with a neat white collar round his neck. These two species, together with swans of two sorts, * trumpeters ' and ' whistlers,' and half a dozen kinds of duck — wddgeon and shoveller, pochard, pintail, and wood-duck — kept Snap, gun and mind, busy for a fortnight, and if the bag was not always heavy the pleasure was great, for Snap was what every really good sportsman is, more a naturalist than a mere shooter, and loved to watch the birds, even though they never came within range. One evening the darkness came on without even a single wing to break the stillness. As he came down to the * hide,' as his ambuscade was called, he put up one of those quaintly-named little ducks, a * buflie- headed butter-ball,' but, disdaining to lire at this, he never fired a shot all night. It was the final warning that winter was coming at last. Next day the clouds were low and yellow. Towards evening the big Hakes came floating down. Next morning the world was white from river to mountain-top. The pines were snow-plumed, the rivers frost-bound ; a bitter cold seeiied to sting you as you put your face out of doors ; the whole five blankets and the rug were wanted above you at night. "Winter had come ! 1 jptv I i I i '.'t ! li*.' :•■ > I I -J ; ;! ' 1 146 SNAP t \l i^: CHAPTER XIV A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE rli Because in tais story of Snap's life there are so many adventures I don't want my boy readers to go away .with the idea that Hfe out West is all fun and frolicj for of course I know, as well as anyone, that, to a hot- blooded English boy, roughing it, and facing dangers which he just manages to overcome, are fun and frolic. In the summer, the cowboy has a pretty idle time of it. If he is a fisherman, and there are trout- streams handy, he may while away the hours with a rod, but the rivers of the plains on which he and his cattle live are oddly enough very destitute of iish. Up in the hills, in the tarns and mountain streams, there is plenty of loyely Scdino fontinalis,/or Canadian trout, strong and game fish, which take a fly as well as their English cousins, and make a really good fight before the angler manages to land them, bright bars of quivering purple and gold, on the grass' at his feet. There are, too, towns sometimes near enough to attract the ' boys,' who think nothing of a fifty-mile ride across the prairie, and in these a good deal of the money advanced by parents at home is apt to be spent on billiards (of a very poor quality), gambling, and worse. A NiGHT OF ADVENIUHE 147 Luckily the autuilfti * round-up "necessitates every- one's presence on the ranche, and from that time until summer there is constant, and occasionally severe, work to be done. Snap found the worst time was from Christmas, when the really hard weather set in, until March. Luckily, the Eosebud people had laid in a very large supply of hay for winter use. Nares's rule was, * Get in as much as can possibly be needed for the worst winter men ever saw, even though you may not want a quarter of it.' And it was well in Snap's first year that such ample provision had been made, for not only did the snow fall continuously for many days, but it packed, thus preventing the beasts from getting at the sun- dried, self-cured prairie hay below. In the bitterest weather Snap and the other men had to go out and feed ; had to visit the different bands sheltering in the coulees and hollows of the foot-hills ; look after the young and the feeble ; get the beasts out of the timber, where, if left alone, they would shiver and starve rather than face the bitter wind which drove them back from the feeding-ground on the bare lands below ; keep an eye on the coyotes and wolves ; and perform a hundred other duties which required strength and hardihood, and which were certain either ' to kill a boy or maJ^e a man,' as Wharton put it. Natiu'e must have meant Snap for a cowboy. His long, lean figure, broad shoulders, and red-brown skin made him look a typical cowboy, almost before he was one. Enduring as a wolf, he made up by staying- X.3 ' 1 1 i , ft i Mil ■ , V. i^ m ' '■'■ ^ T } 1 ; ) I W i'^ I'r r fi; w I! i ■} fj p 148 SNAP 4 m power what he lacked in muscles, and day by day these developed through constant use. The severe weather had brought down other beasts from the hills besides the patient oxen. Now and again, as Snap went his rounds, he saw in the snow a track into which both his own feet would go without destroying its outline. Sometimes, after following this track for a while, he would find patches of blood on the trail, and then a dead steer, torn by the huge claws and mangled by the teeth of * old Ephraim,' as the trappers used to call the grizzly. If the beast had been killed some time, there would be other tracks near — wolf and coyote — showing that others had finished what the fierce king of the forest had begun. A dose of arsenic hid in the flesh that was left would generally enable the cowboys to cry quits with the wol"'es, and go some way towards com2)ensating for the death of the steer by the acquisition of three or four handsome skins, but the grizzly himself never touched a * doctored carcase.' When Christmas came round it brought letters for Snap which kept his imagination busy all day. One was from the Admiral, another from the little mother, and a third from the guardian. The Admiral's accompanied a pair of field-glasses which had belonged to the dear old fellow for ages, and through which he had looked over many a stormy sea and sunny land. Through them he had seen the edges of all the world, the ports of every country, the shattered, shot-torn rigging of the enemy's fleet, and perhaps the powdered faces of many a European prima donna. * Now,' he wrote, ' they are no good to me. Even these glasses ■^^ A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE 149 won't help you to see through a London fog, and it's hardly respectable for the Chairman of the ' Company associated for the Culture and Civilisation of Puffin Islands ' to be seen at a theatre. So, Snap, I send them to you. I wish I could look through them, my boy, and see you tending the cattle on a thousand hills.' So the old gentleman was the director of a com- pany, and Snap, knowing him well, thought that the shareholders in that company were luckier than their director, for, if downright honesty would insure the payment of a dividend by Puffin Islands, Puffin Islands, under the command of the Admiral, would pay. Poor old gentleman, it was a change to him, trudging into the City through sludge and fog to talk about guano and its prospects, instead of with gun and spaniel pottering about Fairbury coverts on the off chance of a * cock.' Then there was a letter from the ' mother,' con- cealing the miserable life she and her gallant old brother were leading in a dingy London back-street — a letter full of thanks to Snap for looking after her * other two boys ' on the way out, and regretting that the three could not be all together. She sent Snap what she imagined would be useful Christmas presents, and the tears came into his eyes as he thought of the weary hours which she must have spent stitch-stitch- ing in the gloom of a London parlour to make those useless white robes for him. For, indeed, they were useless. Two of them were night-shirts — linen night- shirts ! — to sleep in in a country where, if you touched an axe out of doors, the cold made it cling to your It; ::' i it III ■^i: ijll Mil I 'i 150 SNAP hand until either tlie skin came away on the axe or you put axe and hand together into hot water to thaw and dissolve partnership. He treated them very reverently at first, but, long after. Snap confessed that they had been very useful 'as overalls, with a pudding- bag used as an extempore night-cap, for stalking wild-foivl in the snow-time.'' Then here was a long letter from his guardian, reminding Snap that, * had he only been advised by him, he might now be occupying an honourable posi- tion in commerce or the law, and making his way to a fair competency in his maturer years.' ' Yes,' muttered Snap, * and supping on blue i^ills, with a breakfast of black draught, or (if very well) only Eno, to follow. No, thank you, my worthy rela- tive,' muttered the boy. ' I prefer these " Arctic solitudes and uncultured men," as you civilly call them, to a solicitor's office, any day.' Snap's guardian fell into a common error. Civi- lised himself, he cduldn't understand the beauties of barbarism. Snap could ; and of the two, barbarism and civilisation, thought barbarism the better horse. The odd thing that Christmas was that there was no letter from Frank or Towzer, to whom Snap had already written more than once. Later on. Snap got a letter, but, as we will ourselves visit the other boys shortly, it is unnecessary to refer further to that here. The Admiral's glasses nearly led Snap into a bad scrape, though the glasses were in no way to blame for it. As he stood trying them from the door of the ranche-house one morning, he "said to "Wharton, who was beside him ; ki! ~ A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE 151 * Dick, I believe I can see a band of cattle maldng up towards the line;.' * Like enough,' replied Dick, * for there is, maybe, some httle feed up that way ; but you had better turn them, if you can, we don't want to lose any that way.' ' What way, Dick ? ' ' Why, if they get on the line the train may catch them before we do, and the C. P. 11. won't stop for a beast or two ; the "cow-catcher" ' (a great iron fender in front of the engine) ' will just pick them up and chuck them off the rails in heaps.' * The deuce,' muttered Snap, ' then I'd better go ; the boys are out, and if the silly brutes go on as they are going now they'll just about get on to the Une by the time the passenger train comes along.' So saying. Snap threw his big Mexican saddle on his pony and started in pursuit, although it was already late in the day. It soon became evident that his guess had been a correct one. He had lost sight of the beasts for a while, it is true, as they had passed through a thin belt of timber which temporarily hid them from him, but their tracks led straight on for the line. Still, there was lots of time, and, after all, the cattle would not be such fools, lie thought, as to climb on to the line itself, where, of course, there could be no feed. But they did. When Snap next saw them there were about two dozen beasts wandering aimlessly up * the track ' itself, towards the great trestle-bridge which spans the canyon (or gully) of the * Elk Horn mI \l i/i f' i 1 h ' 1 1 : \ 1 I; ^ m \h 152 SNAP I f' if ^>-' Crik.' The line here runs along a cutthig in a hill- side, and Snap, leaving his pony below, climbed pain- fully up to the level of the line. Once up there, his work was only begun. Do all that he would, he could not get the beasts to leave their perilous pathway. They would not let him get up to them, but steadily jogged on in front of him towards the trestle-bridge. Plaving tried in vain to get round them, Snap looked at his watch. He had still nearly twenty minutes to spare before the train was due. If he could run the brutes up to the trestle- bridge they would never try to cross that, and he would be able to turn them down the bank, which, terribly steep as it was, was in places just practicable for the sure-footed, prairie-reared cattle. So he pressed on, driving the cattle against time, as the dark grew ever darker, and the train nearer and nearer to the bridge. At last he thought as he ran that he could hear it far away in the hills, a low, distant, rattling noise, heard plainly for a moment, and then lost again as some high ground was brought by a twist of the line between him and it. The trestle- bridge, however, was in sight, and in another minute he had the satisfaction of seeing the stupid beasts trot up to it, stop, and then, first one, then another, turned and scrambled in headlong fashion down the bank. All except one. One perverse brute, a tho- rough Texan, *all horns and tail,' w'ould not follow his companions, but elected to try the bridge. Perhaps my readers do not know what a trestle- bridge is. To understand the story, it is necessary that they should do so. A trestle-bridge, then, such A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE 153 as *ho one before Snap, is a bridpje of timber, the beams laid at right angles to the line, and each beam about two feet from its neighbour. Across the beams run the iron rails, and between the beams is nothing at all but emptiness. The whole bridge is supported on a huge scaffolding, which rises from the sides of the canyon crossed, and hi some cases these bridges are as much as 150 yards from end to end, and 250 feet above the stream which generally races along below. To walk over these bridges hy daylight requires a clear head and steady nerves, for, though it is easy enough to stride from beam to beam for a few yards, it becomes more difficult as you proceed : the light gleams off the water below, flickers through the open spaces and dazzles you, while the sight of the vast profound underneath, and the knowledge that one false step will send you whirhng between those beams to eternity, has not a steadying effect upon you. These bridges are, most of them, very narrow, and on the one in question there was but a single line, the shunting station immediately preceding the bridge, which was not considered equal to the weight of two trains at the same time. And on this bridge the black Texan steer had elected to ramble. Claver as a goat, it stepped from beam to beam ; then, as the light flickered up into its eyes, it grew nervous and stopped, afraid to come back, and afraid to go on. Again Snap heard the warning rattle of the com- ing train amongst the hills, a faint whistle, and then again silence. He had saved all the herd but one. Should he leave that one ? ' No, I'm bio wed if I will,' muttered the boy, setting rf jIi'. ' f 154 SNAP il f ^ '{f.0 ft. w i M' m ;,' il Wi i' u, / f ' T §■ ?■ %' ' i' ? ji ri§>ti ) ii 1 h <£' bis teeth and feeling just as stubborn as the steer in front of liim. ' That train won't be up for another quarter of an hour — you can hear it coming for miles on a frosty night like this,' he argued, and boldly enough ho started on to the bridge, .stepping freely from beam to ben.m. The steer, seeing him coming, moved slowly on, trembling in every limb, but still determined not to be lieaded. ' Confound the 'orute,' thought Snap, ' I shouldn't wonder if he means me to follow him across the Kockies. I will head him, though ! ' Just then the steer made a false step. One leg went just short of the beam on to which it had in- tended to step. It lurched forwfird, and for one moment Snap thought it iiad gone over into the abyss. J3ut it recovered itself somehow^ and stood trembling in every limb, and bellowing piteously in its fear. Tlien, unfortunately, Snap himself looked down through the ribs of that skelel^n bridge. It was getting t''.isk now, and he could not see very clearly; but below he could hear the roll of waters amongst the boulders, he could see the tops of trees far below him, and occasionally a white Hash of foam where the river dashed against a black rock. He didn't hke it, ' you bet,' as he said afterwards, ' he did not like it,' and the more he looked the less he liked it. For some reason, unexplained, his knees at this juncture acquired an unhappy knack of knocking together, and f:'XGW weak and uncertain. With a start he pulled himself together. This w^ould not do ® I ^P" A NIGUT OF ADVENTURE at any price, There was anotlior Inindred yards of bridf]je to traverse, and lie liardly thou.^ht, if the triiin Tvas ' on time,' that lie wouhl ])o al)lo to coax that si;eer across before the tr{iin readied t]ie hridf^e. At that moment a roar sounded behind Snap — the roar and rattle of a huf:;e engine, and then a piercing shriek from the steam-whistle — such a shriek, so shrill, so wailing, that it sounds among the lone peaks of the Piockies like the cry of some tortured spirit. Snap's heart turned to stone in that awful minute, as the red light rounded the bluff not a hundred yards from the head of the bridge, and rushed towards him. Then the blood came back to his cheek, and the strength to his arm. Death was staring him in the face. Unless he did souK'thing, he had not ten seconds to live. He would have raced for the other end of the bridge, but his brain was keener now than ever in his life before, and he knew human speed would avail him nothing in the time allowed him. In another few seconds the cow-catchers would sweep him off the track and hurl him down, down, rushing through the air over that narrow edge to the sharp, wet rocks below. The rails themselves were so near the edge of the bridge that a man could not stand outside the rails and escape. The foot-boarcl of the train would sweep him down, or the wind from the engine blov; him into space. There was only one thing to be done, and with a muttered prayer he did it. Dropping on his knees in the middle of the track, he seized a beam with both hands, lowered himself through the opening, and hung by his hands, dang- ling over the depth below. If he let go it meant ® !! Ill 1.1 7i 156 SNAP I r; 1 1' ;M- ;sr r death. His muscles were strong, his grip desperate, but could he hold on when the timbers rocked beneath the great mass of wood and iron which was even now upon them ? It was all like a horrible nightmare. He could see and hear everything so plainly, and think so clearly and so fast. Far down below he heard a great tree crack with the frost ; looking up, he could see the Texan steer stupefied with ter '". Then the bridge rocked and his hands almost lo^t cheir grip ; a blaze of lurid light flashed in his eyes and blinded him ; a breath as of a furnace licked his face for one moment and made him sick with horror ; two or three great, briglit sparks of fire dropped past him, down, down, into the darkness ; there was a dull thud, and a mass of broken limbs was shot out into the dark night to fall with a faint splash into the river below ; and then the train had passed, and Snap hung there still — saved from the very jaws of death. Then, and not till then, the full horror of the thing came upon him. Then, and not till then, pluck, and coolness, and strength deserted him. He had held firm to the beam when it shook like a leaf in the blast, now he tried to draw himself up and he could not. He, Snap Hales, to whom the horizontal bar in the gymnasium at school had been a favourite play- thing, could not, to save Ins life, draw himself up to his chin, and for a moment his fingers began to let go and he thought of dropping down, that he might have done with the struggle and be still. Then he tried again. He felt that if he failed this time he would never succeed afterwards ; his strength ® • A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE 157 w was all going fast, and inch by inch he dragged himself up with desperate efifort, lu.til at last he lay with a gasp half-fainting along the bars. A long blood-curdling howl from somewhere in the mist-filled gorge beneath brought him to himself. Was it possible, he thought, that they had smelt the fresh blood already ? Only five seconds more of in- decision — a little less strength to regain his position upon the bridge — and his own shattered body might have made a meal for those grim and hungry scavengers ! It was a horrible thought, and as he stepped clear of those dangerous timbers Snap looked up thankfully at the bright stars and beyond. It was now dark save for the starlight ; but that, reflected from the snow, was already bright enough to travel by. Later on, when the night was undis- puted mistress of the earth, it would be light enough to read a letter on the prairie. Unfortunately for Snap, he was likely to see a good deal of a Canadian winter night before he got home to the cheerful fire in the ranche-house. Mis- fortunes, they say, never come singly. In this instance the proverb was justified, for on looking for his pony Snap found it had broken away from the tree to which he had tied it, and had gone back towards home. Snap was not only disgusted, but puzzled. A tramp home after his recent experiences was not quite what he would have chosen, and that the old ' Cradle ' should have played him such a ' . ^k passed his understanding. Just then a cry which reverberate, amongst the ; , ::| 11 158 SNAP j Hi ill I M great pines, and seemed to fill the forest with horror, explained the mystery. It was the cry of the hungry mountain lion seeking his prv-^y by night. Snap glanced at the pine to which his horse had been tied. Yes, thank goodness, his rifle was there ! it hfid not been strapped to his saddle ; and as the boy got hold of his weapon confidence returned to him. If only he could get clear of the forest on to the open prairie he had no fear of the cowardly, sneaking brute behind him. He tried to sing as he walked, to show his con- fidence and scare the beast with tlie sound of the human voice. But it was no good, he could not sing in that forest. Its awful silence rebuked him : the cold stars looked down, it seemed to him, in stony scorn, and his voice seemed so little and inisignificant amongst all these mighty children of mother Nature. Now and again the ice upon some stream, or the frozen limbs of some great tree, cracked like a loud rifle-shot. All else was still, except now and again for the voice of the red beast sneaking behind the boy somewhere in the shadows, still following, still afraid to attack. The t-ilenee and lifclessness of a North American forest in winter is very impressi\e. The snow which covers the ground is lighter than swansdown, drier than sa)id. It fall« unheard, it gi\es place to the foot without a sound. The biixls are gone, or if not gone have hidden. The bear has made him a bed in some hoUcAV tree or cave, and sleeps silently In the silent wood. The squirrel chatters no longer; he, too, has retired to his liiile granary in some hollow trunk. If im^ m ^""Pf^^ A NIGHT OF ADVINTUKE i:)9 The rabbit and the weasel are still restleRsly wander- ing about as usual, but both have changed their coats, and assumed a white covering to match the snows amongst which they live. Almost everything sh^'ps : trees in their robes of snow, the bear in his cave, the streams in their bonds of ice ; even the winds are still. Nothing stirs. If you have ever made a long walk at night ])y yourself over some lonely road or moor you may know that feeling which grows upon you, that some one is following you, that you can hear other foot- steps than your own behind you. If this state of mind occurs to those who walk alone in England, where silence is really unknown and solitude impos- sible, where there are no mysteries (and very few, alas ! of the beauties) of nature left, you can imagine how anxiously Snap kept gazing in to> the forest round and behind him for the owner of that awful \oice, about which there could be no mistake, which was not the mere creation of any fancy. At last he could see the edge of the open prairie, and, breaking into a run, he {gained it. It was not a wise thing to do, for if anything will encourage a wild beast to attack, it is the appearance of flight in a man. And so it was in this case. As Snap gained the open he looked back, and as he did so, saw the long snake-like figure of the mountain lion come in long bounds across the snow. As the boy faced about, the great reddish Ijrute paused for a moment, crouching, its belly almost on the snow, for the last rush ; its ears flattened back, its yellow eyes ablaze with niurder, and its white fangs 9 «> mfr tm ' ' * HMPBMMriPWMlM 160 SNIP 11 f< i !f ' III' gleaminj; in the starlight. But a foe in the open can always be tackled and fought outright, and the flash of the good Winchester was redder than the anger in the wild beast's eyes, and the sharp, clear ring of the little rifle was a more unerring presage of death than even the scream of the mountain lion. Over and over the great beast rolled, dyeing the snow with his blood, and Snap, standing beside him, guessed him at a good ten feet six inches from the tip of his snout to the tip of his tail. Having skinned the panther (for in the West this animal is called indifferently mountain lion, cata- mount, panther, and a good many more names), Snap once more plodded homewards, utterly worn out with fatigue and excitement. The sound of bis rifle had attracted the notice of old Wharton, who now rode towards him, leading a spare pony for his use. A.lthough there was much to tell, the two rode home almost in silence, for the spell of the niij;lit was upon them, and, besides, their whole minds were absorbed in the wonderful spectacle before them. Suddenly great lliimes of rosy red had risen from behind the distant mountains, and reached like the fingers of some great hand across tlie heavens. The whole sky was full of the rosy light, the stars had turno/3 white and pale. The great spokes of flame seemed to tremble with heat, like the hot air round a chimney on a day in June ; then gradually they grew paler and almost died out, only to flash out again directly in brighter glory. It was the Aurora Borealis ! ® 9 k ;i' m^ Q> IN TIIH AST: on ® r ^mm^^^m Lit „■■, !' ■■'lau.u i : i : I ® 161 CHAPTEE XV FOUNDING * BULL PINE ' FIRM I MUST ask my readers to akip nine months or so, during which time Snap's hands were full of the varied work and sport of ranche life. It was just before the autumn round-up, and he and Nares were riding round the home ranche together. For a moment or two Nares pulled up on a bluff from which you could see far afield, and, looking out over his lands, sighed. * I shall be sorry to leave it all,' he said, * but I must, Snap ! You did not know that I had sold the ranche ? ' ' Sold the ranche ! No, indeed ! But do you mean it ? ' replied Snap. ' Yes. This will be my last round-up, and I sup- pose I ought not to grumble. I've got to go home and look after the brewery at home. My brother's liealth has broken down, and I am the only other man lit for the work in the family. You know I learnt the game before I took to ranching, and, as I've made ranclnng pay, and sold the place and part of the herd well, I, as I said before, ought not to grumble. But,' he added after a while, ' I do. I shall leave my heart at Piosebud.' M am ® i 162 SNAP I W u 1 w I J m Then they touched their horses and rode on for a while. ' Do the boys know ? ' asked Snap. * No. I've told old Dick. He has known all along. I shall toll the boys, all of them, before the round-up, and of course I've made arrangements for them to stay on with the new boss if they like,' replied Nares. * What is Dick going to do ? ' was the next ques- tion. * Dick ! ' replied the cattle-baron ; ' oh, Dick's an old fool. He says he has had one boss, but he doesn't mean to have another. He goes when I do. I think if he had any capital he would set up in a small way for himself. You see, if he takes his pay in cows, as he very likely will do, he could start from here with a little band of nearly fifty. And you, Snap, will stop on, of course ? ' * I don't know. I don't think so,' rej^lied the boy. * I wonder ' * Wonder ! What do you wonder ? What is the conundrum ? ' asked Nares. * Well, just this : if Dick goes, would he take me along as a cowboy or junior partner, and would he want two more boys who would be glad to work for their grub ? ' * Two more boys ! ' cried Nares ; ' why, where are they coming from ? Are you and Dick going to take all the boys off the ranche ? ' * No,' answered Snap ; * but I was just going to show you this letter when you began about the sale of the ranche,' and as he said so the boy drew a very !• i ® ^i FOUNDING 'BULL PINK' FIRM 163 tor to sale ery bulky packet from his pocket. ' This,' he went on, ' I f^ot yesterday from the two Winthrops, the feliowa, you know, who came out with me and stopped at Wapiti.' * I remember,' repUed Nares ; * stopped with a premium-snatcher, didn't they? Well, 1 suppose they have got pretty well skinned ? ' ' Pretty well,' replied his companion ; ' but listen. I'll not read their letter, but skim it for you. Frank writes — he, you know, was the big one. He begins by "climbing down," says I was right about not paying a premium, and aU that sort of thing ; then he goes on to tell his story, says that Jonathan Brown's ranche was only 360 acres, all told, and his men — " foreman, cowboys, helps, labourers, &c." — all lived und('r one skin, and that a black one. One nigger did everything until the Winthrops came, and when they came they were expected to share the nigger's work, food, and bed.' * Oh, come ! ' cried the boss, * I call that playing the game pretty low down ! Did the Winthrops stand that ? ' * Well, you see. Brown had the dollars, so what could they do ? ' replied Snap. ' Of course they slept on the floor by themselves, l)ut they had to do the work. They learned to split rails and make a fence, because Brown wanted his land enclosed. They learned to '' do chores '' because there wa:: no one else to do them ; they helped to cut the corn, and were kept at work at hay harvest until 9.30 p.m. more than once. All this they bore unmurmuringly ; but it seems old Brown tells everyone that they are his M 2 ; > I 174 SNAP round about and sec if we can get any venison for dinner, whilst the others fix the camp. I'll do the camp-fixing myself, if you like. Who else will volunteer ? ' Of course everyone said that they would stop and fix the camp ; but eventually it was arranged that Wharton and the Judge should take one beat to the west of the camp, while Snap, with young Towzer under his wing, Fihould go towards the east ; the other two staying in camp. The youngest Winthrop begged so hard to go that Snap took compassion on him, although he would infinitely rather have gone out alone. The course which Snap and Towzer took led them along a fair-sized stream, which joined the main river not far from camp. Towzer had on his first pair of mocassins, and, as the forest was open and the boy light, he made very little noise as he went. Now and then, though, you might have seen him flinch and almost come down with an expression of agony upon his face. He had not yet learnt to feel with his feet, as it were, before putting them down, and had suddenly thrown all his weight on some sharp-pointed snag of dead wood, or merciless flint, which reminded him that an English shooting-boot, although noisy, has its advantages. Stooping down by the river, Snap looked long and fixedly at a track. 'The cattle have been along here, haven't thoy. Snap?' asked Towzer. 'Whose cattle would they be?' * Cattle don't eat fish, as a rule, Towzer,' replied BEAKS 175 Snap in a whisper, for some of the tracks were pretty fresh ; * and look here, the beasts which made these tracks picked these bones,' and, so saying, he held up the backbone of a hirge salmon, picked as clean as if it had been prepared as an aK,:tomical specimen. All along the l)ank of the stream a regular road was beaten down, one tr uk or. another, until at last all was so confused and level that Towzer's mistake was an easy one to make. But on one side of the main path Snap had been able to distinguish a few distinct and separate tracks, and it was as he looked up from one of these that he said : * No, these aren't cattle, young 'un ; these are bears, and a rare big gang of them, too.' Towzer's first expression of delight rather faded away as he looked behind and round him, where the great bull pines stood grey and silent on all sides, and the further you peered into them the darker looked the gloom of the forest. It was not a pleasant idea that the gloomy, quiet forest might be full of unseen grizzlies. ' Are they grizzlies, do you think. Snap ? ' asked the boy. * Can't say for certain,' replied that now expe- rienced hunter, * but I expect there are some of all sorts about. You see the river is full of salmon, which have run up to spawn, and the bears are down here for the fishing season.' Leaving the river, Snap and his friend crossed two or three deep dingles, or, as they would call them in America, little canyons, and in half an hour's time were creeping very cautiously along the brow of a ridge II I h M 1 4 (] l 1 < f »l "' » J« > tT'T»T «> »'' l I ■ ■" « J1*^ ' t*-«. 3» » m mhtM'y.^jSBrsiamf 176 SNAP L f through the big trees, on which the Hght of the sun gleamed redly. That sun was now low in the skies, and every moment Snap expected to catch sight of a stately stag tossing his head and leading his hinds in single file from the timber to the feeding-grounds. ' Halloo,' whispered he, suddenly holding up his hand as a sign for silence to Towzer, ' what is the matter with the robber-birds ? ' Towzer listened. A lot of birds just over the ridge were chattering noisily, like jays in an English covert when the beaters are coming through. Snap signed to the boy to follow, and both crept cautiously to the top of the ridge. On the very top was a kind of table-land, and, looking through the trees with their backs to the sun, neither of our friends could see anything. Creeping back again, Snap ran along the hill and came up to the top of the ridge again in such a position as to have the noisy jays between himself and the sinking sun. For a moment he could still see nothing. Then a stick cracked under his companion's foot, and the quick movement of a dark mass in amongst the pines caught and arrested his attention. He had never seen a grizzly before, but he needed no one to tell him what the great brute was before him, with its whole body on the alert to detect the source of the sound it had heard. The sun threw- a red glow on the scene, which looked like blood about the body of the deer on which the grizzly was feeding. The brute had his claws on his victim's shoulder, from which he was tearing strips of flesh as he lay muttering and growling by 1 •5M**«^,^ ue^T -- :;1S jy BEARS 177 its side. As the twig cracked he rose and sat looking over his shoulder in the direction from which the sound came. Snap remembered old "Wharton's words as he looked at the bear : * Thet's about his favourite position when he once glimpses you, and don't know whether to come or go ; but don't you shoot then, there's nothing to hit but his jaw or his shoulder, and you won't kill him quick enough to be safe that way.' Remembering these words. Snap kept his hand off his rifle and waited until the bear should give him a better chance; but before this happened there wa3 a report, which deafened our hero, right by his ear ; the bear spun round with a roar, and then stood tearing at the ground and tossing the earth in the air in a paroxysm of rage. Snap hardly dared to breathe, but if his words were inaudible his lips seemed to say to the reckless youngster beside him, ' Keep still for your life, he may not see you.' Neither of the boys was well hidden — in fact. Snap was not hidden at ail ; but by remaining rigid, as if be was cut out of stone, the short-sighted beast did not distinguish him from the pines around him. Luckily, jOO, he did not notice the smoke curling from Towzer's rifle. To the boys the bear was plain enough with his back to the sunlight ; but they themselves were in shadow. ' Good heavens, there's another ! ' cried Towzer, in a whisper so audible that the huge, sliaggy beast which the unfortunate boy had wounded dropped on ;^f ;ls 11 i'l «ii .! t 1 178 SNAP all fours and came a dozen yards towards them, stopping again with his sharp, fierce snout in the air, trying to catch the wind of his unseen enemies. At that moment Snap gave all up as lost, for not only had he seen the bear which had drawn the exclamation from Towzer, but he had seen two other great grey forms amongst the timber on his right. Gripping the boy's arm with nervous hand, he drew him down beside him : * Towzer, is there any tree on you •: left that you could get up in less than ten seconds to save your life ? ' Snap's white-drawn face showed that he was in earnest, and 'a.owzer looked desperately roimd. Like Snap, he had spent many a half-holiday at Fernhall birds'-nesting, and with climbing-irons to help him there were very few trees which he could not have climbed in time ; but to climb a tree in ten seconds for your life is quite another matter. ' There, there's the best,' cried Snap out loud, pointing to a young bull pine with a lot of short stumps of branches not far from the ground. Of course, they might break off, and then it would be only a bare pole to swarm ; but it was the smallest tree, and the best chance, for all that. ' Now run,' shouted Snap, ' run for your life, and don't look back,' and as he spoke he pushed the boy from him and jumped up. With a roar that sounded like a curse, it was so human in its rage, the bear saw both boys, and half turned towards the running figure. In that moment Snap's rifle rang out and the bear rolled over. He knew, without looking, that the others had seen ^^ pi ,:a_.,.-'.;vi — ^'v.:--;. BEABS 179 him ; and one was charging straight at him, while with low, angry growls the other two had trotted into the open. A glance showed him Towzer halfway up hia tree. And yet ail this was seen at once without an effort, whilst all his strength and attention was devoted to pumping up another cartridge into his Winchester repeater. There is only one fault in these excellent weapons, and that is a terrible one. In some of the old-fashioned commoner rifles of this sort the cartridges occasion- ally get jammed. This had happened now to Snap. His rifle had jammed, the empty cartridge would not come out, and there he stood defenceless with a charg- ing bear almost on the top of him. Grasping the barrel with both hands, he had just time to hurl the useless weapon with all his strength at the head of the grizzly and spring to one side. He had a glimpse of a devilish head, with ears laid back, and fiery eyes, and long white fangs gleaming from a shaggy mass of grey fur, going over him at railroad speed. Instinctively he had rolled away as he fell, as a rider rolls from a fallen horse, and the pace of the bear's charge and the downward slope of the ground had taken the heavy beast past the prostrate boy. In a moment Snap was on his legs again, and, dodging behind the first tree he came to, he scrambled up it. * Hurry, Snap, hurry ! ' shrieked Towzer in a voice of agony, and just as our hero drew up his foot he heard a snort almost against his heel, and a tear- ing sound as a great flake of bark was torn from the stem of the pine by the claws of the bear. a 2 I ' ii 1 M \l' ^^mi 180 SNAP * I ii \\ v\ '4 It WEB a sight to make any man's flesh creep which met the boy's eyes when he looked down from a point of safety some twenty feet up the pine, lieared on end, his huge claws stretching upwards, his red jaws open, muttering and moaning after the prey which had escaped him, one of the bears leaned against the pine to which Snap clung. Two others, growling from time to time, prowled round and round the foot of the tree, and in the middle of the little plateau the wounded bear kept up a succession of moans and gr( wis as it struggled to its feet and fell back again time after time, dying, but bent on ven- geance still. Towzer was safe in his tree. Snap's rifle lay broken on the ground, and Towzer's with a dozen undischarged cartridges in it lay not far from the wounded bear. * Ah ! ' Snap thought, * if I only had that here ! ' Towzer, of course, in his desperate flight had thrown away his arms. Even had he had a sling to his rifle it would hardly have been possible to climb with it, and without a sling, and with a grizzly's teeth and claws behind, Towzer did well to drop his weapon and trust to speed and Snap's self- devotion. * Snap,' Towzer called from his tree, * I don't think much of this. I can't hold on very long. Are those brutes likely to wait long ? ' * All night, I should think,' replied Snap. This seemed too much for Winthrop, and a silence ensued ; the boys clinging desperately to their uncom- fortable perches, and the bears prowling up and down like sentries on their beat. W i«p BEARS 181 This went on for nearly an hour, and there waa no change, and seemed likely to be none. The sun's last red glow was on the forest floor ; the uncertain light made the great grey forms which went so silently backwards and forwards look even more horrible and monstrous to the eyes of their hapless victims, but two at any rate of the three were still on guard. * Let's try a shout for help,' said Towzer ; ' all together. Snap ! ' ' Coo-ey ! coo-ey ! ' cried the boys, and as they cried the great grey forms paused in their silent walk, and sent a chorus of hollow growls to swell the sound. Other growls from the forest shadows, too, told the boys that, though they could only see the wounded bear and another, the others were not far off. By-and-by the moon rose, and a silver light showed the scene in new and horrible distinctness. The one bear was dead. Stark and stiff he lay b^'^ his last victim, and silver light and ebon shadow were distributed evenly over the bodies of bear and stag, murderer and murdered. A breaking bough and a quick scraping sound broke the silence. * By Jove, that was a shave ! ' panted Towzer's young voice. * What are you at, you little idiot ? ' cried Snap. ' Jolly nearly fell out of this tree,' replied the boy. ' Went to sleep, I suppose ? ' said Snap in a tone of disgust. ' I don't know about that,' said Towzer, in a piteous tone, * but I cannot hold on to these clothes- pegs much longer.' m h '■ n . II '■* I n ^^v "▼ 182 SNAP The clothes-pegs were the short stumps of boughs to which th(3 boy had been clinging. ' Snap, couldn't we make a fight of it ? I want my supper,' added Towzer, ' and there's only one bear now ' * How are we to fight ? I've got no rifle, and with- out that you are more likely to satisfy the bear's appetite than your own,' replied Snap. * Well, I'll tell you what,' said the reckless young- ster, ' I can't stay up here all night if you can, and, if you are game to come down and try for that rifle, I am.' ' How do you mean ? The bear would get you before you could get to it. Look at him watching you now. Nice, pleasant face for a photograph, hasn't he ? * added Snap. In spite of the danger and the eeriness of the whole thing, Towzer laughed as he saw the great brute sitting half upright on its hams, its ears cocked sharply up to listen. * I don't suppose the old brute will understand English,' said Towzer, ' so look here ! My tree is an easy one to get up. I can almost swing myself out of a bear's reach from the ground. If you will be ready I'll come down and draw the brute after me. Whilst he hunts me to my tree you dash in and get my rifle. If you are quick and lucky you'll get back before he twigs you. Why, it will be just like prisoner's base, when we were first-form boys at the Dame's school. ' Yes,' muttered Snap, ' with our lives for forfeit if we are caught ! Well, all right, Towzer,' he cried aloud, ' are you sure you can get back safely ? * ■"^ 1 BEARS 183 * Yes, never mind me,' sang out Towzer ; ' look here ! ' And, sliding down, the boy just touched the ground, and as the bear rose swung himself back again, chuckling, * Don't you wish you may get it ? ' * All right, then, if you have made up your mind let us do it now ; give me a moment to slide down close to the ground,' shouted Snap ; * keep the bear looking at you for a moment.' * All right,' answered the young 'un, ratthng about amongst the bushes with his leg as he hung from the lowest bough of his tree. The bear was up, and coming slowly towards Towzer, growling horribly. The boy's blood ran cold, but he had given his word to Snap, and he did not mean to go back. * Now ! ' shouted Snap. At the cry the bear turned round towards Snap, and as he did so Towzer dropped to the ground and ran forward into the open with a shout. For a moment the bear hesitated, then, with a roar that shook the pines, dashed at him. Towzer turned, and never in all his life, not even when he made his celebrated * run-in ' for the school-house with the football under h^'s arm, did he go so fast or dodge so nimbly as he did that night. As Towzer turned, Snap's lithe figure slipped noiselessly through the moonlight, and, not daring to look at anything else, dashed straight at the rifle. Did the dead bear move, or was it only fancy ? Fancy, surely ! And now he had his hand on the rifle and turned to see a ghastly sight. Towzer lu ir< ^^Sx I I '-Jl ■1:^1 184 SNA1> .! stretched up at his bough and missed it. The bear was just behind, there was no time for another effort, and the boy was driven past his one chance of safety. Catching at the trunk of a big bull pine, Towzer swung round it, dodged the bear, and once more tried for his tree. This time he reached the bough, but even then, blown as he was, the bear must have reached and pulled him down, had not a ball from Snap's rifle broken the brute's spine as he reared up on end to make his attack. Utterly spent, Towzer dropped back beside the bear and staggered across to where Snap still hy, his rifle resting on the body of the first bear, from behind which he had just fired. Together the boys sat and looked at one another, too shaken and tired to speak. At last, Towzer, looking anxiously round, said, * Those others won't come back, will they ? ' ' I don't know ; if they do, I hope they will put us out of our misery quickly. I didn't know that I had any nerves before, but they are jumping like peas in a frying-pan to-night. Let's go.' And very cautiously they went, creeping through the dim aisles of the forest, starting at every sound, and far more frightened at the meeting than was even the big stag which met them face to face just before they got clear of the timber. They never even thought of firing at him, although he was so fair a shot, and his great sides shook with inches of fat, until the camp-fire shone through the trees, and then it was too late to remember that they had gone out for venison and come back without any. * Well, Towzer, I suppose we must put up with w. BEARS 185 beans and bacon again to-night— unless.' with a grin, * you'd care to go down and catch us a sahnon, or fetch a steak from the dead stag up there,' said Snap, pointing back over his shoulder. But Towzer had had enough sport for one day, and did not volunteer ; and, indeed, it was not neces- sary, for the others had killed a hind, and the boys told their story in short, broken sentences, with a savoury rib in one hand and a pannikin of tea in the other. They almost thought bear-shooting good sport by the time they had finished supper. ■! i i i i'l 186 SNAP i I CHAPTER XVII IN THE BJlthE That was a very beautiful camp and a merry night, that last night with the cowboys from Eosebud. The fire they had made was what they called a nor'-wester. Timber was plentiful — to be hud, indeed, for the felling — and the men left in camp had found it better fun to swing an axe than to do nothing. So whole trees lay across the fire, and huge tongues of flame kept leaping out and shooting into the darkness. Every now and then a log broke, and the ends fell in with a crash, the flames roared more fiercely than ever, and a shower of red sparks went away on the wind. The men left in camp, being in a luxurious mood and having lots of time on their hands, had run up a shelter of boughs— two great props and a crosspiece, with a lot of underbrush sloping from this ridge-pole to the ground. Under this, with their feet to the fire, lay the men smoking. * Wal, Dick,' said the Judge, * I reckon I don't owe you no grudge. You've been a good pal to us, and I hope, mate, you'll strike it rich where you're a-goin'.' * Them's my sentiments to a dot,* said Texan, * and if those boys of yourn don't get their har raised IN THE BRtrLE 187 by grizzly or Injun before they're six months older, I shouldn't be much surprised if you made cowboys of them.' * Thank you, Texan, old chap,' laughed Snap. * If you don't do any more mining amongst those gopher- boles before I come back, I'll bet you my best saddle that the Cradle and I lick your head off at any distance you like on old " Springheels." ' The laugh, for a moment, went against Texan, for in the round-up just over it was commonly stated as a fact that, whilst riding at full pace down a hill after cattle, his pony had put its foot in one gopher- hole and shot its owner into another, from wliich, five minutes later, he was extracted by a comrade, who said that he had found Texan * growing anyhow, just planted root up'ards in a gopher-hole ! ' ' There's one thing agin you "^ick, and that's the weather,' remarked the Judge ; * for all it's so fine now, I don't half like that fringe round the moon.' * No, it does look watery, doesn't it ? ' said old Dick, looking up; \but, hang it all, don't let us croak. Hand me another of those fish, Snap, if you can spare one. Bust me ! if you don't eat half-pound trout as if they was shrimps,' he added. * There's summat I'm thinking,' said Texan after a pause, * that's worse nor weather. I don't want to croak, Dick, but air you sure about them Injuns ? I kem acrost their fishing-camp to-day, and there isn't a soul in it. Do you calculate as they're on the war- path ? ' * Not they ! ' replied Dick ; * a Crow won't face a Blackfoot nowadays, and, unless they're stealing hi I t t til H, '' i- \\ 188 SNAP p I liorses or killing cattle, they