| LELOO’S
father and mother were both of the great Lillooet tribe
of British Columbia Indians, splendid people of a stalwart
race of red men, who had named the boy Leloo because,
from the time he could toddle about on his little, brown,
bare feet, he had always listened with delight to the
wolves howling across the canyons and down the steeps
of the wonderful mountain country where he was born.
In the Chinook language Leloo means wolf, and before
the little fellow could talk he would stand nightly
at the lodge door and imitate the long, weird barking
and calling of his namesakes, while his father would
smile knowingly and say, “He will some day make
a great hunter, will our little Leloo,” and his
mother would answer proudly, “Yes, he has no fear
of wild things. No wolf in the mountains will be mighty
enough to scare him—our little Leloo.”
So he grew from babyhood into
boyhood with a love for the furry-coated wild creatures
that prowled along the timber line, and their voices
were to him the voices of friends who had sung him to
sleep ever since he could remember anything.
But the night of his famous
ride up the Cariboo Trail where it skirts the Bonaparte
Hills proved to him how wise a thing it was that he
had long ago made friends, instead of foes, of the wolves,
for if he had feared them, it would have been a ride
of terror instead of triumph, as it was his love for
them that helped him to do a great, heroic thing which
made the very name “Leloo” beloved by every
man, both white and Indian, in all the Lillooet country.
[Page 88]
It was one day early in the
autumn that Leloo’s father sent him down the trail
some ten or fifteen miles with a message to the “boss”
of the great railway construction camp that the Lillooet
Indians would supply fifty men to work on the Company’s
roadway. So the boy mounted his pet cayuse and started
off early, swinging down the mountain trails into the
canyons, then climbing again across the summit, with
its dense growth of timber. His little legs were almost
too short to grip his horse’s middle as his father
could have done, so he went more slowly and carefully
over the dangerous places, marking every one in his
mind, in case he was late in returning. When he reached
the camp the “boss” was absent, and, Indian-like,
he would deliver his message to no one else except the
man it was intended for, and when the “boss”
returned at supper time from far down the grade, he
insisted upon Leloo sharing his pork and beans and drinking
great quantities of tea.
“Better stay all night,
youngster,” said the boss kindly. “It’s
a long ride back, and it’s going to be dark.”
“No stay to-night,”
answered Leloo. “Maybe some time I stay, but no
to-night.”
“Well, you know best,
kid,” replied the boss. “There’s one
thing—no harm will ever come to an Indian boy
on a mountain trail. But be careful; the canyons are
deep, and the trail is bad in spots.”
“Me know, me careful,”
smiled Leloo, and mounting his cayuse, trotted off gayly,
just as the sun was lost behind a grim, rocky peak in
the west. But the “boss” was right: night
comes quickly in the mountains, and this night was unusually
dark. Leloo had to ride very slowly, for the narrow
trail was a mere ledge carved out from the perpendicular
walls of the cliffs, which arose on the left, a sheer
precipice hundreds of feet above him, and fell away
to the right in a yawning chasm, black, and deep and
unexplored. But the sure-footed cayuse stepped gingerly
and knowingly, neither halting nor stumbling, and his
[Page 89] wise little rider let the
animal pick its own way, knowing well that a horse’s
senses in the dark are more acute than a human’s.
Presently from far across the canyon arose a weird,
prolonged howl. Then from the heights above came an
answering one.
“Ah, my brothers!”
called Leloo aloud. “You have come to greet me
through the night,” and his eyes lighted like
twin black fires, for he loved these wolves that made
their dens and lairs along the Cariboo Trail, and to-night
they were to serve him in the oddest fashion that a
wild animal was ever called upon to do. As he rode on,
he would—just for company’s sake—call
back to the wolves, answering their cries with such
a perfect imitation of their wild voices that they would
reply to him, from far below, then again from far above,
and Leloo would smile to himself and say, “That
is right, O great and fierce Leloos; answer me, for
you are my kin and my cousins.”
But the trail was growing steeper,
narrower every moment, and after a time Leloo forgot
to reply to his forest friends, and just rode on, peering
through the shadows to avoid the dangers on all sides.
Presently a sound that belonged to neither crag nor
canyon fell across his quick, Indian ears. It was a
man’s voice, hushed, subdued, speaking very low,
and speaking in English. It said:
“I hear a horse coming.”
“Shut up! Don’t
talk so loud,” replied another voice.
“I tell you I hear horses,”
answered the first voice irritably. “It must be
the stage coming. Get ready!”
“You’re clean crazy,”
said the other voice. “The stage makes more noise
than that, and I know for sure there’s no horseman
up the trail to-night. It’s some wild animal you
hear.”
Leloo pulled his cayuse stock
still. He did not understand English readily, he was
not versed in the ways of the white man, but his wonderful
native wit and instinct told him at once that there
was something wrong—the [Page 90]
wrong things that white men were sent to jail for sometimes.
He asked himself, “Why should they hide and whisper?”
Only hunters hid and refused to speak aloud. Then he
remembered—the stage.
How often his father had talked
of the great lumps of gold the white men were digging
up, two hundred miles north, up the Frozen River—“Cariboo
gold,” his father had called it, and said that
it was sent down in numberless bags to “the front,”
and the stage brought it. And his father would always
finish the tale with, “The white men will risk
their lives and kill each other for this gold.”
Leloo could never understand
it, for he would much rather have a soft wolf skin to
lie on, a string of blue Hudson’s Bay beads around
his dark throat, and fine, beaded moccasins, than all
the gold in the world. But while he sat stock still,
the voices continued:
“There, it’s stopped.
I knew it was an animal. The stage won’t be along
for an hour yet.”
“They are white men, but
the gold does not belong to them,” Leloo told
himself. “It belongs to the white men on the stage,
or up in the Barkerville gold ledges. These white men
here are ‘bad medicine.’ They shall not
find that stage.”
But even as he thought it out,
the voices began afresh.
“There’s something
wrong with my gun,” said one, “it won’t
work.”
“There’s nothing
wrong with mine,” came the sneering reply.
“Mine will work all right. I’m
going to have that gold.”
“How much did Jim Orton
say there was a-coming down on the stage?” whispered
the other.
“Some twenty thousand
dollars’ worth of nuggets,” was the answer.
“And you’ll use your gun, too, to get it,
if you don’t turn coward.”
Then there was silence. So his
father was right. These white men would kill each other
for gold—god that belonged to another, to the
men who were working day and [Page 91]
night for it up at the ledges, two hundred miles north.
Instantly Leloo’s plan was formed. He would save
the gold for the men who owned it; save the good stage
driver from the bullets of these hiding, whispering
sneaks and robbers. But how was he to do it? How could
he dare to move a step unless to turn backward? Twenty
yards ahead of him the two men crouched. Even by their
lowered voices he could locate them as hiding behind
a giant boulder, some ten feet above the trail. If he
was to advance to meet the stage and warn the driver,
he needs must pass under their very feet. Was it quite
impossible to daringly gallop under their guns and be
lost in the darkness before they could recover from
their surprise? Leloo could trust his cayuse, he knew.
The honest little creature was at this moment standing
still as the silence about them. Then acutely across
that silence cut the long wail of a lonely wolf wandering
across the heights. A very inspiration seized Leloo.
In a second he had flung back his head, and from his
thin, Indian boyish lips there issued a weird, prolonged
howl. He was answering the wolf in his own language.
“Great guns!” ejaculated
one of the highwaymen, “that wolf’s right
under our feet. There he goes now. I hear him prowling
past.” For with the howl, Leloo had started his
cayuse gently, and the wise creature was slipping beneath
the dreaded boulder almost noiselessly. The boy fairly
held his breath. Suppose they should peer through the
dark, and see that it was a horse and rider, and no
wild animal padding up the trail? Then his wolf friend
from the heights answered him, and Leloo once more lifted
his head, and the strange half-barking, half-sobbing
cry again broke the silence. He was well past the boulder
now, ten, twenty, thirty yards, when his innocent little
cayuse gave that peculiar snort which a horse always
gives when some sudden fear or danger threatens. The
animal’s instinct had evidently detected the presence
of enemies. [Page 92]
“It’s a horseman,
not a wolf,” fairly yelled a voice behind him;
but Leloo had already struck the cayuse a smart blow
on the flank, at which the animal bunched its four hoofs
together, shivered, snorted again, then plunged, galloping
like mad down the trail, down, blindly down into the
darkness ahead. One, two, three sharp revolver shots
rang out behind him, the bullets falling wide of their
mark in the blackness of the night, rapidly running
feet that seemed to gain upon him, the crash of a falling
man, then terrible language—all rang in his ears
in quick succession, but the boy never drew rein, never
halted. On plunged the horse, heedlessly, wildly, but
Leloo stuck to his back, scorning the fear of a horrible
death in the canyon below, thinking only of the danger
of the treasure-laden stage and of the safety of Big
Bill, the driver, whom his father loved, and whom every
Indian of the Lilloet tribe respected.
The stones were now rattling
from the rush of his horse’s hoofs, and once or
twice the boy held his breath, as they swung round a
boulder in the dark, and the sturdy animal almost lost
its balance. Sometimes he heard the robbers scrambling
down the trail far above him, the trail he had already
covered, and twice they fired on him; but the kindly
darkness saved him. He was nearing the foot of the mountain
now, and the cayuse was beginning to heave badly, but
Leloo still struck the sweating flanks, and the creature
still plunged on, until, finally, in fear and exhaustion,
it stumbled. Instantly it recovered itself, but Leloo
knew that this was the first sign of the coming end.
Then only did he stop. In his mad ride Leloo had been
so intently listening for sounds from behind that he
never once thought of sounds ahead, and in this pause
of the rattling hoofs and flying stones his ears caught
the rumble of wheels coming towards him, the gentle
beat of six horses trotting slowly, and the cheery whistle
of the big Canadian who drove the Cariboo stage. As
Leloo came [Page 93] slowly upon them,
the big driver called, “Who’s there—ahead
in the trail? Who’s shooting around here?”
“Go back, you!”
cried the boy. “Two bad men’s up trail.
They shoot you. They get gold.”
“Gee whiz!” yelled
Big Bill, bringing his six-in-hand to a standstill.
“Holdup, eh? I declare, but that’s a narrow
escape. I guess Big Bill won’t cross the divide
to-night.”
“No, you go back,”
reiterated the boy.
“Well, I’ll be blowed
if it isn’t just a kid!” exclaimed the driver,
as Leloo rode up close beside him. “And look at
the horse of him, clean played out. I say, boy, no wonder
you rode hard, with all that gunning behind you. I’m
rather handy with a gun myself, and I never drive the
‘gold’ stage without these two here,”
tapping the revolvers in his big belt, “but if
our friends up there had got the drop on me first, there’d
have been a dead driver, and no gold for the boys in
the bank, I’m thinking. What is your name, anyway,
boy?”
“Me? I’m Leloo,”
the little Indian replied. “My father, he Chief
Buckskin, Lillooet tribe.”
“Whew!” gasped Big
Bill. “Old Buckskin’s son, eh? Then you’re
all right, for Buckskin is ‘white’—all
but his skin. You climb up beside me here, and give
that poor, busted horse of yours a rest. This outfit
is a-goin’ to turn back, and we’ll all sleep
at Pete’s place to-night. But how did you get
past those sneaking gunners up there? That’s what
I want to know.”
And later when Leloo, safely
seated beside the big driver, related how he had tricked
the scoundrels, Big Bill was as proud as if he had been
the boy’s father. “The whole Cariboo trail
from end to end shall know of this,” he declared,
“know just how you saved me and the miners’
gold.”
“Me no save,” said
Leloo, shaking his head with denial. “Not me save,
just save by big wolf-brother. He [Page 94]
teach me to make his cry, he answer me when I talk his
talk to him.”
And it must have been this speech
that the big driver told far and wide, for at the next
great “potlatch” (feast) given by the Lillooets,
the entire tribe conferred the great honor of a new
name upon Leloo, the name he had won for himself—“Wolf-Brother.”
[Page 95]
|
