CHAPTER II.

THE ARROW MESSAGE.

Percy Vere explained this mission to the old hunter. His father had been missing for years. He was an eccentric character, and professed spiritualism, astrology, ventriloquism, and kindred sciences, dabbling a little in magic and chemistry. In fact, he was a universal genius—a jack-of-all-trades, and not doing well with any.

Percy’s mother was a woman of ability and good sense, a first rate milliner, and her industry kept the wolf, which the father’s eccentricities brought to the door, away. In other words, she was obliged to support herself and son, and often furnish money to the genius, who could not make it for himself with all his diverse talents.

He did not appear to be able to concentrate his forces so as to produce any good from them. He was full of wild theories and startling speculations, but he failed signally whenever he attempted to put them to an application.

His wife expressed her opinion of him freely one day, and told him she could no longer expend her savings in his wild schemes. He replied that it was the fate of genius to be misunderstood, that he was destined to be a great man, and she would live to see it; and having uttered this ambiguous prophecy, left her.

He did not return the next day, or the next—a year passed away without bringing Guy Vere home. His wife became alarmed at his prolonged absence. She reproached herself with being too harsh with him and having driven him away from her. He was a handsome man, and she had cherished a warm affection for him, which his eccentricities had not destroyed. She feared that she had driven him to commit suicide. But no tidings came of his death.

She was obliged to keep her little millinery shop going for the support of herself and son, and her sister’s child, who being left an orphan, fell to her care. This was Percy Cute—who was just one year younger than his cousin, his mother having been so pleased with the name of her sister’s child, that she had bestowed it upon her own.

The little shop prospered, and the boys grew in years. Mrs. Vere could not drive the image of her husband from her mind. If she could have satisfied herself that he was dead, she would have been more content, but she could not do that.

The impression among Guy’s neighbors when he was at home, was that he was not in his right mind—“Luny,” they called him.

But many years passed away before she got any tidings of the missing man, and then it came in a very vague shape.

Percy Vere got an Omaha _Herald_ one day, which had been sent as an exchange to a St. Louis paper, and in it was the advertisement of an astrologer who called himself “Professor Guy.”

He took it home to his mother, and said to her, “That’s father!”

These words put her all in a flutter. She took the paper and scanned the advertisement eagerly.

“What makes you think so?” she asked.

“Father’s name was Guy, and he was a ‘professor’ of astrology!”

She smiled. “He was a professor of almost everything.”

“Suppose I go and see if it is my father,” he suggested.

She pondered over this.

“Would you know him, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, if the picture you have in your locket is any thing like him.”

“It was when it was taken.”

She took out the locket, which she wore constantly around her neck, sprung it open, and regarded the two portraits it contained earnestly, for it held her miniature likeness as well as his.

“I have not changed much,” she said, “and perhaps he has not, either. I should really like to know if he is alive. Suppose I was to write to this Professor Guy?”

Percy, who was a bright youth, shook his head dissentingly.

“If he is staying away of his own accord, it is no use to write to him to come back,” he replied.

She breathed a sigh. “I suppose not,” she said.

“But if I was to go after him and have a talk with him, I might prevail upon him to come back.”

Mrs. Vere was impressed by these words, but she answered: “How could I trust you so far away from home?”

He smiled, and drew himself proudly up.

“Don’t you think I am big enough to take care of myself?”

She surveyed his tall, graceful figure, with a mother’s pride, saying:

“Perhaps; but you are so young.”

“I’m seventeen, and I feel quite a man.”

“But I don’t like to trust you so far from home alone.”

“Oh! I needn’t go alone; Percy can go with me.”

Mrs. Vere laughed.

“A great protection he would be—another boy like yourself!” she cried. “There, there—let us not talk any more about it.”

But they did talk about it upon several occasions afterward, and Mrs. Vere’s desire to hear from her missing husband overcame all other considerations, and she consented to Percy’s request to go in search of him. She thought that the sight of his boy would induce him to return home.

Her business had proved prosperous, as I have said, and she was able to fit out the boys in good style. She hung the locket that contained her own and husband’s likeness around her son’s neck, and bade him a tearful “good speed.”

The boys took passage upon a steamboat bound for Omaha, and steamed up the Big Muddy, as the Missouri is called by the dwellers on its banks, and reached that ambitious city in due season.

Upon making inquiries, Percy Vere learned that Professor Guy had found Omaha dull for the exercise of his profession, and had joined a party of adventurers—a mixture of hunters and gold-seekers—and gone with them to Fort Benton.

The very eccentricity of this proceeding was a convincing proof to Percy that this Professor Guy was indeed his father So he wrote to his mother, and then he and Percy Cute sailed up the river in one of the light-draught steamboats.

They reached Fort Benton without misadventure, but here, instead of being at the end of their journey, they found it was just the starting-point. The party to which the Professor had attached himself had taken the trail that led into the wilderness, and it was necessary to follow it, or abandon the search.

Percy Vere chose the former alternative, for he could never think of the latter, and Percy Cute was always of his way of thinking—in fact, thinking was irksome to his sluggish nature.

“I just tumble to any thing you say,” he told his cousin. “Follow your leader—that’s my maxim. You lead and I’ll follow. Say! we might have some high old fun among the Injuns, and bears, and things. Let’s invest in a revolver and bowie-knife, and travel on our muscle!”

So Percy Vere, filled with a true spirit of boyish adventure, wrote his intentions to his mother, and he and Cute made their preparations for a journey into the wilderness.

At this juncture of affairs they made the acquaintance of the old hunter, Gummery Glyndon. They told him their story, (or rather young Vere did, for he was the spokesman on all occasions) and he promised to aid them, and fulfilled his promise by attaching them to the surveying party, though in the capacity of chain bearers; but the boys did not mind that.

Such an opportunity to penetrate into the Indian country was not to be neglected, and the first Percy, who was treasurer, wished to husband their means, for there was no telling how long their search might last, or whither it would lead them.

They made rapid journeys at first, as a portion of the “Northern Pacific Railroad” had already been surveyed, and they were to take it up at, or near, that point, where it was to connect in a south-easterly direction with the “Union Pacific.”

As they passed the different Government forts their escort was changed, until they were joined by Lieutenant Gardiner and his squad, from Fort Walla Walla. He was to remain with them until they were through the Yakima country.

Hitherto their journey had led through the land of the Nez Perces, who were a friendly tribe, and they had been undisturbed; but when they made this new camp Gummery Glyndon told them they might now expect trouble from the Indians.

“There’s three tribes through here,” he said, “and there ain’t much choice between ’em. There’s the _Cayuses_, the _Yakimas_, and the _Umatillas_—a pesky set of murdering thieves the lot of ’em. They all belong to the great Snake Nation, I believe—red sarpints, every mother’s son of ’em.”

When he returned from his hunt he told them that he had seen “Indian sign.”

“There’s Injuns watching us, and we shall hear from them,” he said. “We’ll have to keep a sharp watch to-night, or they’ll stampede our animals.”

The lieutenant and the surveyors did not neglect this warning. They had great confidence in the old hunter’s judgment.

When the supper was disposed of the camp was placed in as good a condition of defense as the locality would permit. The ground had been well selected; it was a little grove on the river’s bank, a kind of oasis among the cliffs, which rose beetling upon either side, precipitously, and, apparently, inaccessible. These cliffs were some distance—a long rifle-shot—from the little grove, and a kind of rocky valley lay between them, devoid of vegetation in many places, where the hard rocks cropped up. Through this valley must the foe come, or else risk their necks, or a plunge into the river, by attempting to skirt the cliffs.

The horses belonging to the party were secured in the grove. In the center of the grove, in a kind of natural fireplace formed by the rocks, the fire had been built, and its red embers were still glowing. Two sentinels were posted at either extremity of the camp. Around the fire the hunter, the surveyors, and the lieutenant were stretched in easy attitudes, enjoying their pipes of tobacco—the great luxury of the wilderness.

A short distance from them the two boys reclined upon a mossy bowlder, listening to their conversation.

The sun had sunk, and the glorious twilight of that western land was upon them. The scene was of calm tranquillity. But that tranquillity was broken in a singular manner.

There came a hurtling sound in the air, and an arrow descended, apparently from the heavens, and stuck quivering in the turf at Lieutenant Gardiner’s head.

All started and grasped their weapons, instinctively, for the trusty rifles were close at hand.

“An attack?” cried Gardiner.

“No—a message. See, there’s a scroll upon the arrow,” answered Gummery. “Read it.”

He threw some brush upon the coals which speedily burst into a flame. Lieutenant Gardiner undid the scroll of bark from the arrow, and spread it open. It contained characters which he had no difficulty in deciphering, for they were written in English.

“White men, begone! If you advance further into the land of the Yakimas, certain destruction awaits you.

“Smoholler, the Prophet.”