Wilderness Double 13: The Lost Valley & Mountain Madness by David Robbins

Author:David Robbins
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WILDERNESS 24 MOUNTAIN MADNESS

I

They were going to die. They just knew it. Isaiah Tompkins and Rufus Stem staggered westward under the hot summer sun. On all sides a sea of grass rustled dryly, fanned by a sluggish breeze. The two men walked with their heads bowed, their shoulders slumped. Neither noticed when a pair of coyotes rose from hiding to study them and then padded noiselessly away. ‘We were fools,’ Isaiah declared bitterly. ‘We never should have left New York.’ He did not bring up the fact that the idea to get rich quick had been his. Which made him to blame if they died there in the middle of nowhere. He did not say it, but he thought it, and felt twice as bitter. Rufus licked his dry lips. His mouth and throat were painfully sore. He did not want to talk, but he knew if he did not say something, his friend would sink deeper into the depths of despair. ‘Others have done it and succeeded.’ ‘I don’t see how.’ They had both heard the stories of how scores of bold young men had ventured beyond the frontier. Across the wide Mississippi to the vast prairie some called the Great American Desert, then beyond, to the fabled Rocky Mountains. Where peaks that glistened white with snow the year round towered miles into the sky. Where humpbacked bears bigger than horses prowled in constant hunger. Where painted savages lurked, waiting to slit the throats of the unwary.

What had most interested Isaiah and Rufus, though, were the tales about the trappers. Hardy souls who braved daily perils to reap thousands of dollars in bounty for beaver skins. It was said that beaver were as abundant as rabbits. All a man had to do was walk along a stream and pluck them out of the water as a child might pluck daisies. Why, in a single trapping season, or so the accounts went, a man could earn upward of two thousand dollars. This, in a day when the average laborer was lucky if he earned four hundred a year. All it would take, Isaiah and Rufus had calculated, were five or six successful seasons and they could return to New York City with their pockets bulging with money. Their loved ones argued against it. ‘Think of the dangers!’ many had said. Parents, sisters, brothers, and others had all pointed out that there were plenty of good jobs to be had at home. Rufus’s father had even offered to take them into his clothing business. But Isaiah and Rufus would not be denied. Their heads swimming with visions of more money than either had ever seen in their entire lives, they combined their meager savings and bought what they felt they would need. ‘Westward! To the Rockies!’ Isaiah had cried on that fateful day they left. Now here they were many weeks later, stumbling wearily along, exhausted, starving, on the verge of collapse.

Gone were their mounts, their packhorses. All their supplies. Everything

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