CHAPTER XIX THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

This was the program that had caused Lord Pelton to remain with Frank and Phil. The Englishman was, of course, familiar with Captain Ludington’s legend of the Kootenai Indians—Koos-ha-nax, and Husha the Black Ram. He had also heard Sam Skinner’s account of Old Indian Chief—or the Sioux Indian mythical mountain ram. When the boys repeated to him the story told by “Grizzly” Hosmer—the account of “Baldy’s Bench” and the great sheep that he had seen there—and realized that this table-land was not more than seventy-five or eighty miles from Smith’s ranch he eagerly entered into the boys’ project.

This was to be an attempt to discover “Baldy’s Bench” with the airship in the hope that some of “Grizzly” Hosmer’s sheep were yet there. The boys even dared to hope that “Old Baldy” himself might be alive. The tinkering on the airship was wholly in preparation for this event. Provisions, blankets, water, a camera and rifles were put aboard; extra gasoline was shipped and all was made ready for an early flight.

At seven o’clock the next morning the Loon was started on its unique voyage. In order that a sight of the monoplane in flight might not make Mr. Mackworth apprehensive, the course laid by Phil—who was at the wheel—did not follow the Goat Creek trail.

Sweeping directly north for a few miles and flying low, the airship was turned west when the hills north of Goat Creek rose high enough to conceal the voyagers.

“All we’ve got to do,” explained Frank to Lord Pelton, “is to go west now for thirty-five miles. When we’ve covered that distance we’ll be near two mountains, Norboe and Osborne. Then we turn north again and ‘Baldy’s Bench’ is forty-five miles away, a little east of north. Hosmer says we’ll know it because it stands all alone in a valley of jack-pines.”

“And you’re goin’ to land on top of it?” asked Lord Pelton.

“If we can.”

“Then what?”

“Then?” repeated Phil, “we’ll have to get off. It may be much easier to stop than to start.”

In a half hour the two mountain peaks were below the Loon, which was now nearly two thousand feet in the air. Then, as the ship was headed north again, Phil brought it rapidly down. The smaller mountains that flanked the Elk River now gave way to rougher and loftier ranges in the west. In the far northwest, snow clad peaks were already in sight. No streams cut the region beneath the flying airship, but jumbled hills—like the Hog Back Range—pressed into each other or opened in dark, rocky chasms and passes.

At eight o’clock, with eyes only for their rough chart or the horizon ahead, Phil shouted:

“Over there! ‘Grizzly’ told the truth. See! To the right.”

And, while his companions leaned forward eagerly, the Loon was brought into a direct course for a rocky point ahead about fifteen miles away. As it grew larger the hills below dwindled into a flat plain and then the pine wilderness basin took their place. It was “Baldy’s Bench” in its setting of green—a barren island of whitish brown rock in a sea of verdure.

“Bring her around the south side,” cried Frank. “Let’s see that shelf where the big goat killed the lions.”

“And if the sheep are there to-day,” exclaimed the Englishman, “we’ll have a jolly try at them.”

“Don’t shoot,” said Phil, “unless we find a place to land. We haven’t Skinner and Hosmer with us to find our game.”

Phil was now driving not over five hundred feet in the air and directly toward the southern exposure of the “Bench.” The lone peak was rising in the air as if suddenly expanding. When the Loon was almost beneath the Gibraltar-like pile of rock, its steep sides rose to make the highest peak the boys had yet seen. Later, they reckoned the pinnacle not less than 1500 feet above the forest below.

Awed by the glowing wonder of the mountain’s mass, Frank and Lord Pelton were bending their necks to follow its steep sides skyward when Phil called out again.

“Down there, look! That must be it—the flat shelf.”

There was scarcely time to make out a formation such as Hosmer had told about before the Loon had passed it. But, in all respects, it was such a place as the bear hunter had described. If sheep were there they were not seen.

“Did you see it—the cliff where ‘Old Baldy’ stood when he threw himself down on the lion?” shouted Frank.

“Did I?” answered Phil. “If it wasn’t a hundred feet above the shelf it wasn’t a foot.”

In the next five minutes the Loon made a complete circle of “Baldy’s Bench.” All its faces resembled the southern exposure.

“Do you think a sheep could climb that hill?” asked Lord Pelton.

“You can’t tell,” said Frank. “Those flat cliffs are often pushed out enough to give a footing—for a sheep at least. ‘Grizzly’ says he has seen sheep scramble up sixty degree inclines. And sixty degrees to us looks like a perpendicular wall.”

“There’s one anyway,” yelled Phil again when the Loon had almost completed its circuit. As he pointed to what seemed an absolutely unscalable point several hundred feet above them, all clearly made out the dark brown, almost black, shape of a statue-like mountain sheep. With head lowered, its horns curved outward and backward and its long wool reaching far down over its short legs, it suggested a musk ox.

“If that ram can get there,” shouted Frank, “he can go all the way. Let’s get up higher. There may be a place on the top where they do their loafin’. If we don’t see anything better, we’ll come back and try for this boy.”

“Lift her,” shouted Frank. “Let’s get a look at the top of the hill.”

With a suddenness that almost threw Lord Pelton off the seat which he had not left for an hour and a half—for it was now eight thirty o’clock—Phil tilted the movable wings of the Loon upward and, like a train on a sudden grade, the propellers slowed up as they pushed the enlarged plane surfaces against the air. When the monoplane at last reached the top of the “Bench” it had passed around to the western side. The peak seemed to end in a rocky ridge.

“Over the top,” Frank suggested as Phil dropped his planes and the accelerated propellers shot the airship ahead once more. “Anyway,” he said without much spirit, “we’re six thousand feet in the air. I reckon the ‘Bench’ is about fifteen hundred feet above the valley. We—”

He did not finish. Just then the monoplane passed over the western edge of the summit and the ridge was seen to be only a wall extending around the western and northern sides of the top. A long whistle came from Phil, and Frank thrust his body out of the side window in an excited effort to see everything at once.

There was a half circle of descending, broken rock something like a ruined amphitheater; a wide stretch of still sloping but comparatively smooth surface, covered in places with peculiar heaps and mounds and, on the eastern and part of the southern sides, a clean and abrupt ending of the summit in sheer precipices. In the center of this cliff-like margin a break occurred as if some Cyclopean ax had been sunk sideways in the rock to form an opening leading to the lower heights.

Altogether, the broken top, or Hosmer’s “Baldy’s Bench,” was much larger than might have been expected. For the moment there was no sign of life. Both boys had made an instant survey to discover this. Then both gave all their thoughts to the possibility of landing. It seemed a desperate chance, but Frank and Phil had so long dreamed of reaching this spot in the Loon that the apparent absence of life did not deter them.

“Try it,” panted Frank. “If we can get down I guess we can get up.”

Phil, who had been circling in an ascending spiral, now dropped his planes and headed down.

“Beyond that middle thing,” he answered nodding toward a central heap on the smoother surface. And, while all held their breath, the young navigator slowly dropped the Loon on the rocks. For a moment the landing seemed perfect. Then, the left landing wheel running forward struck an elevation. There was a straining crack, but Frank had already dropped through the opening in the floor of the cabin and he stopped the advancing car. At the same moment there were three exclamations:

“How still it is!” said Lord Pelton.

“It’s the sleeve on the wheel standard,” called Frank.

“There they are,” shouted Phil.

Catching up his rifle, Phil and the Englishman leaped from the car and sprang across the rocks. From somewhere just beyond the center of the “Bench” a flock of sheep had appeared. A few had started for the cut on the edge of the cliff. The greater number, however, hung back and, at the instant Phil and Lord Pelton started for the chasmlike cut, the entire flock stopped stock still.

“Would you believe it?” whispered Frank.

“See ‘Old Baldy’?” was Phil’s only reply.

“No,” said Frank, as the three hunters made a quick examination in all directions. “But I can see where they’ll all head for in about a minute,” and he pointed to the opening in the precipice which was apparently the only entrance to and egress from the summit.

Phil started for this point on a run. Before Lord Pelton could follow Frank stopped him.

“Come back,” yelled Frank as he sprang after his chum. “I can stop that gap with the automatic. You and Lord Pelton get busy and pick out a good ram apiece. If a big enough one comes my way, I’ll put him by for myself.”

As Phil hesitated, the sheep in advance did as predicted—attempted to escape down the cliff. They seemed to be ewes and lambs, but the rest of the flock had now also begun to move forward and both boys renewed the attempt to reach the cut, not ahead of the ewes but in advance of the rams coming more slowly behind.

Three sheep had reached the opening and disappeared within it when Frank attempted to stop the fourth one, a young ram. His bullet may have hit the mark but the sheep did not stop. As Frank shot, Phil excitedly dropped to one knee and sent a rifle bullet after the next animal. He apparently missed and the ram, alarmed by the sight of the boys or the sound of the shooting, whirled and headed into the flock close behind him. At that all turned and fled to the rough rocks on the other side of the plateau.

“We’ve got ’em caged now,” exclaimed Frank out of breath as Phil signaled to Lord Pelton to join them and the two boys reached the cut. “So long as one of us blocks their escape we can take our time and pick out the big fellows.”

“This is the way they get here, anyway,” panted Phil pointing to the cut. In it a narrow and worn pathway dropped precipitately through the cut and then, where one side of the narrow defile widened back, cave-like into the rocky sides of the mountain, the trail disappeared on a narrow ledge around the corner of the opening.

“Not on your life,” exclaimed Frank as Phil started down the path. “That may do for goats but not for you.”

“I just want to see where it goes,” argued Phil.

“Well, you may crawl up to the edge of the precipice and look over,” exclaimed Frank. “But you’re not going down there.”

And yet a few minutes later they discovered that, at some time, on that perilously narrow ledge from which a fall might mean a drop of a thousand feet or more, a human being had made his way to the top of the mountain.

The boys and the Englishman now took time for a more careful survey of the summit. It was mainly circular and, they estimated, as much as an eighth of a mile in its longest diameter. Of this surface, over half was covered by a chaos of broken rock on the western and northern sides.

“This must have been a pointed peak at one time,” suggested Lord Pelton, “which some volcanic action has broken off. I’ve seen similar formations in the lower Alps.”

Not far from the wall-like rock heaps and about the center of the more level surface was a second line of fragments. A more careful view of it showed that the north end of this fencelike heap was practically joined to the ruggeder heaps beyond it. Out of the rocks Nature had fashioned a sort of pen or enclosed space from which the frightened sheep, they now saw, had emerged and into which some of them were now disappearing.

“Come on,” exclaimed Phil, “let’s follow ’em. If we can’t get a few big ones now we deserve to lose ’em.”

Frank was inclined to stay at the cut to head off possible fugitives, but finally he succumbed to the arguments of his friends.

“Mr. Mackworth wouldn’t do it,” urged Phil.

“It is a bit like potting a trapped beast,” added Lord Pelton.

Half running, they reached the open end of the enclosure. As they did so, and before they could see within, it was plain that the place was a sheep refuge. The odor was pungent even in the cool, clean air. As the three hunters sprang into the opening and caught sight of its interior, curiosity turned to speechless amazement. A narrow shelf of rock surrounded a depression in which there were a few inches of stagnant water. On the far side of the enclosure and on the widest part of the shelf stood, massed together, perhaps thirty sheep. A foot above them, in a half cave, lay a monster ram; gaunt and gray but with his head erect. On his face, beneath a sweep of worn and corrugated horns, were the outlines of a black cross.