Gustave Aimard - The Red River Half-Breed - A Tale of the Wild North-West

"Heaven preserve us!" ejaculated the guest, recoiling. "'Tis the Bottomless Pit!"

"Pretty nigh," answered the mountaineer, laughing; "that's fallen five thousand feet. This is not a precipice sheer down, but a peak hollowed out – a cut-off, we say; the Injins say a devil's jump. Stranger, on this side, we shall not be invaded. Now for your tale! Stir up the fire brightly, Bill."

"Yes, for it is a dark and horrid story, gentlemen."

"Gentlemen," began the enforced guest of Jim Ridge and the half-breed, "I was born in an Atlantic State, and my earliest memories relate to home events of so little moment now, that I have almost forgotten them. I remember, however, that a number of our young men formed a party and went West, and that the reading of some of their letters home, reflected into my boyish ears, fed the natural longings of one who lived sufficiently remote from the crowded town to know what a lake and the woods are like. Besides, an uncle of mine was said to have gone to the same marvellous backwoods, and I used to be promised a real wild Indian's bow-and-arrows at the least when he should return. All this is common enough in the East. About the year 1850 my mother died, and my father, as much to distract himself in his profound grief as to quench a thirst for fortune which he shared with New Englanders, departed with me, a stripling, around the Cape to California. Our ship was rather better than those rotten tubs which unscrupulous men fitted out as 'superb clippers,' and we outstripped many vessels that had anticipated our start. You must recall something of the sensation due to the startling discovery of gold in the extreme West. Even the fables of old whalers who visited the Pacific Coast, and who really had been blind, were outdone by reality. With indescribable furious madness, people flocked from the world's confines towards a tract hardly laid down in charts. They seemed to have become monsters in human form, as the playbooks say, with no impulse but avarice. We stepped ashore into a field of carnage, though lately a peaceable grazing ground; men sought to remove each other with steel and lead, whilst the few females, the vilest of their sex, freely employed poison. Luckily, these demons slew one another, and left no aftercrop of fiends and furies to blight the Golden State."

"Father and I had no experience in gold seeking, and he saw that money enough awaited an active, acute man, in supplying the returned miners with table delicacies. He was used to fishing, trapping, and gunning, and so we set to killing bears – any quantity on the Sierra Nevada 'spurs' then – and fishing in the Sacramento and San Joaquín. We built a ranche on the banks of the former stream, in a lonely spot, and only went to town to sell game and procure ammunition and other stores."

"One Saturday my father went on this duty, whilst I amused myself with tracking a young grizzly, with the hope of securing him alive, as a hotel keeper wanted a 'native attraction' for his barroom. Unfortunately, a huge grizzly intercepted my course, and wounded me in a scuffle, out of which I thought myself happy to escape so easily; and almost made me lose my prize. However, as this wound stung me in pride as well as flesh – for I daresay, gentlemen, you know how a grizzly's claws leave a smart!" (the two hunters nodded animatedly) – "I pressed on, after a circuit, at the tail of my first 'meat.' I overtook it at dark, had to kill it – it was so stubborn – dressed it, and carried away the paws and choice meat in the hide. The sun was down, and my load was too heavy for me to show much speed, though I believed my father would be impatiently awaiting me."

"It was nine o'clock when I sighted the ranche. The squally wind presaged a tempest. As no light shone at the window, I concluded my father, who must have got back, had gone to bed, weary of waiting. I pulled up the latch, entered, flung down the game, and was making for the hearth, to get a flare-up, when I heard a faint voice close by falter – "

"'Is that you, Sam?' My father's voice! The tone sent a shiver all over me till the blood ran cold from my heart."

"'Oh, that you had come an hour sooner!' he sighed."

"In an instant I had a blaze on the hearth with a handful of bears' grease upon the embers."

"There lay the old man, having tried to crawl to his couch. His face was livid; two wounds were on his breast – one of a firearm, one of a knife; and he was scalped as well. The blood from these neglected wounds painted him thickly and hideously. I fell on my knees beside him, and tried, though vainly, to staunch those dreadful hurts."

"'It's no use, boy,' said he; 'nothing can fence off death. I thank Heaven I was allowed to linger till you came. Now, dash away your tears, and listen to me like a man. In half an hour I shall be no more; but that will do if you mean to see justice done me.'"

"He had started for San Francisco at one, so as to be home early enough to have a good meal against my return if I were out. He soon got through his business, and was going to leave, when he met a native Californian acquaintance – a gambusino , or confirmed gold hunter – a man he liked very well. To have a friendly glass at leisure, they dropped into the nearest public resort, the gamblers' and revellers' hotel, called the 'Polka' saloon. The place was crammed with drinkers taking their morning 'eye-openers,' or desperadoes relating their night's exploits, or miscreants hatching fresh schemes. Several kept 'cruising' round my father and his friend."

"Both were objects of more general interest than either, perhaps, believed; the Californian was suspected to have found more than one gold vein worth tapping; and my father, as a hunter, was likewise thought to have blundered upon the natural treasuries of the mountains in his pursuit of b'ar. To both, schemes had been proposed by blacklegs, and both had repulsed them – the Spaniard with pride, and my father with some cutting jest or pure carelessness. Both had made enemies thereby."

"Three of these enemies now buzzed round their table. One was a Frenchman, known as 'Lottery Paul,' because he had drawn the passenger's ticket of a Parisian 'draw,' to enable the chosen subscriber to go free to San Francisco. He was a little bilious wretch, low and sneering, a sort of lynx and fox in combination. His partners were a huge English convict from Gibraltar, and called 'Quarry Dick,' and a Mexican, who had committed so many homicides, that he was glorified as 'Matamas the slayer.'"

"Perhaps it was too soon in the day for these debauched dogs to have shipped enough spirit to fall foul of two men well armed. In any case, they let my father and his friend leave the saloon unimpeded. The three scoundrels hovered about them; but, finally, seemed to be disgusted at their remaining on the alert, and left them."

"The two friends separated, and my father got home before dark without alarm. He had hardly stepped indoors, however, than three men fell on him, all in the dark. They were dressed like Indians; but, as they threatened to kill him unless he revealed where he knew gold was waiting for the digger, it was clear that was but a disguise 'for the road.' My father had been doubled as a man by his mountain life, and he gave them a serious half hour's diversion; twice he got free, and laid about him with a long knife. At last, one shot and another stabbed him; and, either from rage at having been baffled, or to carry out their assumption of the Indian character, they scalped him. He had the fortitude to pretend to be dead as he suffered this outrage. In the encounter he had snatched away the scapulary worn by one ruffian, laid open the cheek of another, and wounded a third in the side. The latter might escape me; but I had a clue to the others. Then, urging me to bring these murderers to justice, my father expired, the storm overwhelming his latest prayer and blessing."