The Ferguson Rifle

Surprisingly, we could hear well. Their boots grated on the rock, they threshed in the brush, and then somebody spoke again, farther away, the voice coming faintly. "Nobody come this way.

He's hidin' in the bresh somewheres." Their footsteps receded, and I looked slowly around. The cave in which I sat was about twenty feet across, but longer, and growing narrower as it led away from the basin. Evidently the water had spilled through the crack, swirled around in here, then found its way out by a passage widened by years of erosion.

The floor of the cave was sandy with rock underneath.

There was a little driftwood lying about, and on a shelf an old pack rat's nest.

The old man stood up. In his day he must have been a man of enormous strength. Even now his wrists were thick and strong. His shoulders were slightly stooped, like those of a gorilla. He turned from me and picked up his rifle, which he had leaned against a wall. At the same time he extended mine to me. "I was afeared you might be skeered an' take a shot at me, grabbin' you like I done." "Thank you," I said. "You probably saved my life." "Figured on it." He turned toward the passage. "Let's mosey out'n here. Ain't no place to talk, this here. When a sudden rain comes, this place fills up mighty rapid.

Seen it a time or two." He led the way into the passage. It was completely dark there and I had no liking for it, but he walked along fearlessly so I judged he not only knew the place well but also that there were no obstacles.

"Weren't always like this. I cleaned it up. Never know when a body might have to git out an' git, an' when I take to ru

Several openings left the cave.

"Seen you from above." He indicated with a lift of his head the mountain above us. "Seen them folks a-huntin' you. Seen you turn down the crick bed yonder, figured to help." "Thanks again. That's a bad lot." "I seen him before. Two, three years ago he came up here, poked around all over the country. I seen a Injun he got holt of.

... That's a mighty mean man yonder." His buckskins were worn and dirty, and his hands showed him to be old, but there was no age in his eyes.

"Are you a trapper?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Time to time. I'm a hunter, too, time to time. I'm whatever it needs to get what I want." "My name is Ronan Chantry. I joined up with some others to trap the western mountains but we ran into a girl in trouble, and we've been helping her." "Girl?" He snorted. "They're mostly in trouble, an' when they ain't, they're gettin' other folks into x." He loaded his pipe. "Who's with you?" "Solomon Talley, Degory Kemble, Davy Shanagan--was "Huh! I know Talley. Good man. An' that crazy Irishman... I know him, too. The others?" "Bob Sandy, Cusbe Ebitt, Isaac Heath, and there's a Mexican lad with us named Ulibarri." "I knowed some Ulibarris down Sonora way. Good folks. Sandy, he's that Injun hunter. I never cottoned to him much. I always get along with the Injuns. The Blackfeet.

well, they're hard folks to get to like, although I expect a body could. The Sioux... they're huntin' me all the while.

"Take pleasure in it, I reckon, but they can't find me." His eyes glinted with humor.

"Good folks, them Sioux! I wouldn't be without 'em. They come a-huntin' for my hair an' they keep me on my toes.

"Can't find me, nohow. This here mountain is limestone. Don't look it, because she's topped off with other rock, but this here"--he waved a hand about--"is limestone. This whole mountain is caves... must be hundreds of miles of them.

I got me a hideout here with twenty-five or thirty entrances.

"I don't hunt trouble with no Injun, but when they hunt me, I give 'em a-plenty. Ever' time I kill a Sioux I post a stick alongside the body with another notch in it.

nine, last count." "And you?" "They got lead into me oncet, arrers a couple of times, but I got more holes'n a passel o' prairie dogs, an' I always crawl into one of them an' get away. One time I ducked into a hole I didn't know an' it taken me three days to find my way to caves I knowed.

"Got 'em downright puzzled. They got no idea what to make of me. Last winter after an' almighty awful blizzard I found the ol' chief's squaw, his daughter, an' her two young uns down an' nigh froze to death.

"Well, sir, I got a f'ar a-goin', built a wickiup, an' fetched 'em meat. I fed 'em broth and cared for them until the weather tapered off some. I fetched fuel an' meat to keep 'em alive, an' then when I spotted some Injuns comin', I cut a stick with nine notches, then a space, an' I added four crosses to stand for them I took care of. Then I taken to the hills." "You're a strange man, my friend, but an interesting one. Mind telling me your name?" "Van Runkle. Ripley Van Runkle.

You jest set tight, now, an' in awhile I'll show you a way out of here. Your folks are holed up yonder. You say you got womenfolk along?" "A girl... Lucinda Falvey." "Kin to Rafen?" "She's his niece, but he's a thoroughly bad one, and trying to get what rightly belongs to her." "Hmm, now what might that be?" His blue eyes were shrewd. "What's this country have for a young girl?" At that point, I hesitated. Dare I tell him anything? He knew this country better than any of us would ever know it, and given the proper clues could find such a treasure much sooner than we could. Yet if we were to find it, we must stay around and search... sooner or later he must know.

So I told him the story from the begi

"Figured as much," he said at last. He knocked out his pipe, tucking it away in his pocket. "Won't surprise you to know that's why I come here.

"I had the story from a Shoshoni. I heard it again from a Kansa. Never paid it much mind until I found myself a clue, an' that set me to huntin'." "A clue?" "Uh-huh. I found a strange cross cut into a rock. Looked like nothin' any Injun would make, so I set to figurin' on it." "You've found the treasure?" "No, sir. I surely ain't.

Same time I figure I'm almighty close.

It was huntin' about here that set me to findin' caves, an' I surely figured it would be hid away in one o' them. I found nothing no white man left. Bones, an' sech. I found enough of them." "If we find it, it's for the girl. You understand?" "That there gold belongs to who finds it, mister.

It might be me. I hunted nigh onto ten year ... off an' on." "If you found it," I said, "you couldn't use it here. That would mean leaving all this. Leaving it behind forever." He grunted, but said no more. More than an hour had passed while we talked, and I was wondering if my pursuers had moved along, but I said nothing.

We had been seated on rocks, talking.

Restlessness was on me. While I sat here in relative comfort, my friends might be fighting for their lives.

"All right," he said, when I mentioned them, "we'll go see." He led the way into a branch cave that inclined steeply up. He had cut crude steps into the limestone to make the climb easier. Suddenly the cave split and he led the way into the narrower passage of the two. We were climbing in a rough circle now, climbing what had evidently been a place where water had found a crack or weakness in the rock and had run almost straight down.