And before anybody could thrust out a hand, he drew one of those pocket pistols, loaded to the muzzle, which frontier men often carry expressly to blow off the skull pan, in order to rend the scalp to shreds and remove the suicide from the tortures. He clapped the muzzle to his forehead, pulled the trigger, and fell headlong in the smoke, uttering one word:

"My country!"

Ridge and the youth recoiled, and even the Piegans were stupefied into inaction.

"Good notion, boys!" cried Captain Kidd in his sarcastic voice, "Let us save our topknots same fashion!"

Half a dozen pistol shots cracked, and as many of the bandits dropped to the earth. But what was the amazement, though only temporary, of the savages, on rushing forward, to find that the supposed suicides had crawled away in the smoke!

With marvellous presence of mind, Kidd, under pretence of imitating the Half-breed's heroism, had turned the act into a "dodge." They heard the laughing, taunting whoop of his little band of survivors as they raced down the slope and glided among the boulders.

Some of the reds took up the chase, and others remained, hewing and hacking the corpses with spite and pitiless malignity.

Ridge collected a few of his immediate followers and hastened after the fugitive gold robber. The whole of the bottomland rang with the yells of the pursuers, the red men delighting in the ruse of Kidd, whom now they believed a foeman worthy of their fiendish ingenuity at the torture stake.

CHAPTER XXXI
THE WOMEN'S CAMP

Filditch and his son, with the other whites, crossed the gorge and proceeded towards the bandits' camp, where some smoke was ascending in a mass.

Men on the frontier are kept in so nearly the same condition by the similitude of their habits, food, exercises, occupations, that when a race for life ensues, the fugitive, with a reasonable start beyond gunshot, is rarely overtaken. In this case, Kidd and his eight or ten companions rather gained than lost by the pursuers being forced, for prudence sake, not to rush on straight, but to circle each large stone and tree stump where the enemy might have halted to fire.

At the end of the canyon Kidd's party were not only well ahead, but they had even halted more than once to breathe freely. Two had fallen and been secured, for the Indians had set up a yell of delight.

"Cheer up!" cried the captain, "We are out of the valley, and the golden tract is only just beyond. The thing is fixed for our satisfaction after all if we only press on pretty stiff."

But the words were hardly out of his pale lips and beginning to inspirit his band as they emerged from the jaws of the long trough before cheers arose behind them. From the high points Ridge and a few Piegans saw a numerous corps of cavalry sweep round from the southeast, clear the spurs of the east bluff, and gallop through the mad root swamp to intercept the flying men.

Nevertheless, good cavaliers as were these Mexicans of Peralta, the treacherous morass soon hampered and terrified the horses, and the troop was thrown into disarray.

This sight warmed the frozen heart of Kidd once more.

"They are only 'greasers,'" cried he, scornfully. "And, after all, better to perish having our revenge on them than waiting for those murderous savages to come up. Who'll come on with me? Won't the fear of hellish torture make any backward spirit brave? For the golden land, right through the yallerfaces! Hurrah, boys!"

Whilst hesitating, two bullets of several shots whistled into the bodies of a pair of his companions. The pursuers had arrived within range. At this, more potent than the harangue, the gold grabbers ran at the heels of their leader, straight along the firm ground forming a natural bridge in the bog, firing at the floundering horsemen and yelling to increase the alarm of the steeds.

Five ran the gauntlet successfully, though each was wounded by the Mexicans' cutlasses, so close were the encounters. But Kidd seemed to bear a charmed life. He turned, his bosom swelling with exultation. All the foes were on the other side of him. The Yellowstone Region was at his foot. Surely in his bounding heart he had not a doubt that he was destined to conceal himself among the wonders in some enchanted cave, in some petrified forest, in some hollow under a waterfall and baffle the Yager of the Yellowstone himself.

Indeed, the trampling horses cut up the quaking morass; black water and yellow slime oozed up and covered the grass. Where the bandits had leaped along the mud rose, or the calamus root was sinking as if pulled down by the hands of elves. The subtle obstacle was mysterious. All the Indians paused on the solid ground, whilst Ridge and the trappers alone were cool enough to assist the Mexicans to where they stood.

To add to the horror, bodies of the Crows slain in the previous battle, till now submerged in the pitchy, sulfurous fen, slowly bubbled up, so besmeared as but dimly to suggest the shapes of men.

Kidd and his companions, among whom was Margottet, the only Half-breed, had impudently stopped, the swamp between. They were the more plainly discernible as at their back the steam from a water volcano formed a white veil.

Suddenly the wind died away. There was audible a mournful, tremendous sound in the haunted realm, like a giant's breathing; it was the pumping underground of the indescribable forces to extract and drive to the surface tons upon tons of water for the colossal hot water fountains, whose heat and moisture tempered the atmosphere even here.

Kidd made a contemptuous gesture, turned, and leisurely led the way over the few score yards between the swamp's edge and the lovely outskirts of an ever vernal wood. Already they caught glimpses of startled but unterrified wild animals under beautiful boughs, fruit laden, staring incredulously at the bloodstained, smoke blackened strangers.

All at once they felt an excessive rise in temperature. They began streaming with perspiration, and their wounds re-opened and bled profusely. At each step a hollow sound arose. Then one foot, heavier than another, sank as in a crust of snow in a calcareous soil. It was no sooner drawn forth than the other was worse embogged, and those who came to their comrade's help began to be mired. Kidd stopped; he looked round to order a change of route, when a scream of terror burst from his and every lip, frightening the animals into flight and curdling the blood of the observers at the canyon's mouth. Margottet, both feet entangled, had broken bodily through the unsafe surface, and where he had been sucked down a flaming dust had been belched up, exactly as when demons vanish down a trap on the stage.

With one accord, like men do instinctively upon thin ice, the wretches threw themselves flat on the ground. With the same impulse – an unaccountable one, stronger than mere interest in their disappeared comrade – all heads were turned to the gap where he had found a gateway to death. Blinded at first, their vision became accustomed to the radiance that emanated from within. It seemed to them that they peered into a chasm where a lake of pure glowing fire slowly moved in sullen upheaval. Meanwhile, the heat increased. They were like men who had crept into a limekiln for warmth, and by mischance were stupefied by the fumes and were being roasted. They rolled away hither and thither, only thinking to avoid contact, for the weight of two bodies concentrated on one space might cause the repetition of Margottet's fate. Their hair and beards were singed, their wounds were dried up now and cauterised. They shrieked for help and mercy and that they would surrender. Then unendurable anguish made them swoon. And helplessly they were dragged thence by the lassoes of the Mexicans, who ventured into the swamp to execute their deliverance this way.

"One of the wonders of the Yellowstone, gentlemen," said Jim Ridge. "I never try to enter the Park that road."

"A manifestation of the Spirit of Fire," said Red Knife. "Where the spirits of our fathers rove in enjoyment no such evil things could be allowed to enter."

All was ended here. Leaving the miserable bandits to be brought on at leisure, the chiefs retraced their steps to ascertain before nightfall how the detachment sent to attack or outwit the reserve of gold grabbers had executed their task. The column of smoke thence arising must have a meaning.

The women's camp was in a flutter. Not only had all seen white jets of smoke from the firearms on the opposite slope, amid patches of green, brown, and grey, but Joe had, in passing among the captives, acquainted Miss Maclan with the news that the final moment had come. Now or never the joined forces of mongrels and ruffians were to be crushed on the sill of the Yellowstone Region.

Suddenly Miss Maclan beckoned several of the more energetic women to her side. Ferreting in one of the wagons, she had discovered packages of weapons: there were cutlasses enough to arm all of them.

But hardly had she ranged the Amazons in defence before the war whoop of the Cherokee split all ears as he and his band clambered upon the plateau. It needed no more to start the ruffians into a rout, and those deliverers not gone in hot pursuit were being thanked by the tearful women.

In three days the victors had reposed from the strife, and the red men feasted. In that period, too, the strange force from the north arrived, being a band of Mormon "destroying angels," or police, in search of the slayer of Gideon Kidd. Their captain was added to the tribunal formed to try Kidd and Steelder, Jim's prisoner, sole survivors of the gold grabbers' corps.

Both denied the charge that they were allies, forgers, horse thieves, vendors of whisky to the Indians, and that they detained the women, except to preserve them from the savages. But at the appearance of the Carcajieu in the witness stand Kidd trembled and turned pale, muttering, "I am a lost man!"

"Starr, detective," muttered Dave Steelder, only less disconcerted. "Just so. John E. Starr, Chief of the U.S. Detective Police of Louisiana," said the ex-Carcajieu, forcibly. "I have been hanging close on you a long while, marking down everything you said and did. If you will allow me, Judge, I'll valet for these rogues."

Without giving time for anybody's opposition, he sprang upon the two stupefied prisoners, tore off the false hair that muffled their features, and rubbed their faces with his handkerchief, dipped in some antigrease liquid. The "cleaning up process," as a miner would say, resulted in a transformation even more remarkable than that of the Government official from the bandit's lieutenant.

The judges immediately pronounced the pair worthy of death; only they decreed that Kidd, or Hank Brown, or Mathias Corvino, should be the Indians' prize for torture, and Steelder, or Don Miguel Tadeo, simply hanged. At this, whilst Don Miguel smiled feebly, the rage of his accomplice burst forth:

"Give me over to those red fiends!" he roared. "You must think me the bigger villain, and I am not. I'll leave it to Bill Williams here. Is any man so base as he who tracked a harmless old man up in the Lonely Passes, and assassinated him, not for any grudge, but to possess the secret lure by which beavers are decoyed into traps. Yes, gentlemen, Don Miguel Tadeo, over thirty years ago, was plain 'Spanish Mike,' the hanger-on at the Kansas trading forts. It was he who stole, upon old Bill Williams and murdered him. Look in the deerskin shirt he wears, and in the crescent piece at the armpit, which is double, you will find the very recipe for mixing the beaver medicine, taken from the old trapper's warm body. Now, am I to be torn to pieces for an Injin holiday, and this cowardly slayer to be let off with a clean, easy, smoothly greased rope? Come, Judge Lynch, fair play!"

All eyes turned towards Bill Williams, whose features were strongly convulsed. By that moment of inattention the wretched Don Miguel endeavoured to profit. He burst away from the guards, and bounded thence in the only direction open. Alas, it led to the brink of the abyss, for the tribunal was held at the Medicine Rock.

With a savage yell, the trapper's son leaped after him. The Californian halted on the giddy verge. During that wavering the avenger reached him, stabbed him, removed his scalp, lashed him in the face with it, so that the blood blinded him, and, at the dagger point, goaded him on, on!

"Without pity for that old man, expect none now!" hissed the chief. "Over! And be the sandworm's pickings!"

The unfortunate man walked into the air, and fell with a prolonged scream.

Bill sat down on a projecting crag, muffled, his face in his blanket, and seemed to sob convulsively. The white men regarded the mute figure with awe and surprise. Taking advantage of this emotion, a dozen Blackfeet rushed upon Corvino at a sign from Red Knife, and overpowering him, despite a fierce resistance, bore him away to an unspeakable fate.

EPILOGUE. – Sir Ranald and Ulla Maclan returned to the old country to wed. But the memory of their American adventures does not fade, and cannot perish and the parting words of the old hunter haunt them.

"The men with the felling axes and the railroad spike drivers are tracking me up but I have not turned cold round the heart yet. I'll name a big, bold mountain peak after you, sir, and a pure and pretty lake after you, lady, and send you the newspaper with particulars. I've nicked my rifle to that effect."

Leon, or Lewis, and his sister accompanied their father and Don Gregorio to the latter's farms in Lower California, and dwell happily there.