To The Front Part 12

"SOUTH FORK, WHITE RIVER, "_October_ -- '90, 9 A.M.

"_Lieutenant H.H. Willard, Adjutant Detachment --th Cavalry._

"SIR,--I have to report that we have just intercepted a small party of Sioux driving off a four-horse wagon, which contains eleven Henry and Winchester rifles and at least ten thousand rounds of ball cartridges. This is probably the 'outfit' of the fugitives who reached bivouac this morning, reporting it burned and their comrades killed.

"One of the latter, at least, is alive, but we found him unconscious, although unharmed. He was driving the wagon. The Indians scattered, but are now a.s.sembling in the cotton-woods a mile distant. More seem coming to join them. If attacked, we will hold out; but I wish to push on and ascertain what befell the others. We cannot, however, leave the wagon, nor have I force enough to leave a guard.

"Very respectfully, "G.M. GRAHAM, "_Second Lieutenant --th Cavalry_, "_Commanding detachment_."

Then came a significant P.S., at sight of which, little over an hour later, Major Berry's eyes snapped, and so did his speech.

"Bring those two scoundrels here!" said he, and a hangdog-looking pair they were when presently lined up before the bearded commander, while no less a personage than Captain Garrett, at the head of forty troopers, was setting forth on the trail of his much-envied subaltern, to relieve him, if surrounded and attacked by the Sioux; to relieve him, in any event, of the care of the wagon, but under no circ.u.mstances to relieve him of his command or duties. Unless menaced by strong parties of the Sioux, Mr. Graham was to go ahead with a dozen additional men, carry out his orders, and Captain Garrett with the rest should bring that wagon to camp.

Then with Geordie's report and postscript in hand, the major stood glowering at the fugitives of the morning, now most ruefully yet furtively studying his face. They suspected something amiss when warned awhile before that they were not to try to ride off. They knew there was mischief to pay now.

"You two sku--specimens," began the major, ominously, "told me you were only accidentally on the Sioux reservation. You swore you were simply out hunting antelope."

"That's G.o.d's truth, major," whined the taller of the two, though the other seemed ready to parley and plead.

"That's an infernal lie!" was the answer. "You told me the Sioux 'jumped' your camp, killed your partner, and burned your wagon." And with menace in his burning eyes the veteran officer paused for a reply.

"'Fore G.o.d, major, that's how it looked to us. 'Course it was pitch-dark--"

"Pitch-dark--in bright moonlight! This is worse, and more of it.

You're a pair of black-hearted villains! You went there deliberately.

You went with a wagon-load of arms and ammunition to sell to Sioux Indians just bound for the war-path. You'd swing for that if there was any law in the land, but swing you shall--anyhow!"

"You da.s.sn't touch us!" burst in the leader, sudden spirit and defiance in his tone, well knowing how powerless were the military in face of civil law. "We're no poor devils of dog-robbers. We demand protection and a fair trial--a jury of our peers; that means no hide-bound gang of soldiers. You can't prove we sold so much as a shot, an' you know it, an' you're only trying to bluff."

"That's enough, _you_!" was the startling answer. "Sergeant of the guard, shoot these men like dogs if they attempt to escape. We sha'n't waste time trying to prove you sold arms. What we can prove, and will prove, and by your own man, too, and hang you high as Haman for it, is that Pete Gamble, deputy sheriff, caught you at your devilish work, and you shot him dead from ambus.h.!.+"

CHAPTER XVII

THE WAR-DANCE AND THE CHARGE

With two days' cooked rations in their saddle-bags now, with a line of hearty appreciation from Major Berry and renewed instructions to go ahead, with a dozen more men than he had at the start, and the best wishes of his temporary commander, Geordie Graham had pushed on again northeastward down the right bank of the Fork. Waiting until the party was fairly out of sight over the far-distant "divide," and watching meantime the movements of the still remaining Indians in the timber, Captain Garrett finally put his puny command in march for the Mini Chaduza, bringing the wagon and the now semi-restored charioteer along.

Five of Gunnison's pack-mules, sent on with the troop, had so lightened the wagon of its load that the lately abused horses, given a good feed of oats and a swallow of water, were able to trundle it lightly along.

With another day it was started under escort for Niobrara, its late owners, cursing their fate, unwilling pa.s.sengers inside.

It was late afternoon when the two halves of "F" Troop lost sight of each other, the captain going, grumbling, back to the main body with a much disappointed command; the subaltern riding swiftly away down the widening valley, with an exultant platoon at his back, all hands rejoicing that theirs was the first capture of the campaign. Parallel with them, afar across the stream, darting from cover to cover and keeping vigilant watch, rode half a dozen redskins. Most of their brethren, by this time, were far away toward Eagle's Nest, in quest of the main body. These few were charged with the duty of keeping track of the little troop, in order to be able to report exactly the direction in which it was going and that no pursuit was intended. This definitely settled, they, too, galloped away, and the valley, so far as Geordie could judge, was now free of red riders.

The sun was low in the west. The wagon-tracks still led on. The night was near at hand, and the troopers in advance had seen no sign of a camp. Ten miles, at least, had they marched, and, avoiding a deep westward bend of the stream, the trail now led them over a low ridge, from whose crest the scouts signalled, "Nothing in sight."

Yet, a few minutes later, Graham and Connell, dismounting there the better to scour the country with their gla.s.ses, were seen by the main body to spring to their feet and then to saddle, Graham facing toward them and with his hat signalling, "Change direction half left," whereat Sergeant Drum, riding steadily along perhaps four hundred yards behind his young commander, simply turned his horse's head in the direction indicated, left the wagon-track, and silently his comrades followed.

"They've found it," said Drum, and found it they had.

Though the wheel-marks still held to the northward, and the three troopers far in the lead had seen nothing as yet worthy of special report, the strong lenses of the signal-gla.s.s had told their own story.

"Look yonder, Connell, in that clump of cotton-woods beyond the low point," were Graham's words as he sprang to his feet. "See those black things in the timber? They're buzzards!"

Five minutes later the corporal, too, was signalling, he and his men at a halt. They, too, had made discoveries: the track, as it later developed, of two shod horses pursued by shoeless Indian ponies.

Southeastward this trail went up a long, shallow ravine, then veered round to the south. It told of fugitives and, for a time, of pursuers.

Ten minutes after the first discovery, down in the sandy bottom and close to the stream, the officers caught sight of a brace of prairie wolves, skulking away from the timber, among the branches of which some grewsome birds were flapping and fluttering, while two or three sailed slowly overhead. Presently the riders came in view of a little scooped-out shelter where the sand was all torn by hoofs, and herein lay the poor remains that served as confirmation of the driver's story--all that was left, as was soon determined, of poor Gamble, one of the most feared and fearless men of the Western frontier.

Shot twice, and from behind, he had managed to gallop a few hundred yards up-stream, and then, weak from loss of blood, had toppled out of saddle, crawled to this hollow, and presently died. Half a mile farther down-stream the camp site was found, hoof and moccasin tracks in myriads about it, camp-kettles and debris still scattered around, empty cans, sacks, and boxes flung at the edge of the stream. Here, evidently, the traders had spent two or three days, and here, there, and everywhere were fragments of pasteboard cartridge-cases. A thriving industry, this, until suddenly swooped upon by Gamble, who paid for his discovery with his life. Here, then, was closed one chapter of the hunters' tale. But what had become of their partner? What had broken up their camp and driven them, terror-stricken, from the reservation?

Not until the dawning of another day was this fully determined.

Meanwhile there came new complications--a strange and stirring adventure of their own.

Finding fair gra.s.s on the "bench" a few rods farther down the stream, Geordie had chosen a site for the bivouac, and disposed his little force for the night. While there had been as yet no overt act of hostility on the part of the Sioux, and while all the Indians taking part in the affair of the morning had now, apparently, ridden off to join the renegade band, and were presumably far to the northwest, no chances could be taken. The horses, after two hours' grazing, were led into the timber and hoppled. The sentries were posted well out. The little camp-fires had been screened under the bank, and full half the command had rolled in their blankets and settled to sleep. When the moon came peering up over the distant eastward heights, Geordie and Connell, chatting in low tones under a sheltering cotton-wood, were suddenly summoned by a trooper coming in on the run from the outpost below, a mile at least from where they had buried poor Gamble.

"Indians, sir," said he, "and lots of 'em, coming up the valley on the other bank."

"Douse your fires, there!" was the first order. "Look well to your horses, sergeant. Stay here in charge. I'll send word what to do."

Then, with eager stride, Geordie hurried away after the messenger, Connell close at his heels. Two hundred yards they followed, winding along under the bank, and presently came to a sharp bend, beyond which and across the stream the prairie lay open and undulating for many a league, the only obstruction to the view being a little grove of cotton-woods on the opposite sh.o.r.e and possibly half a mile away, and that little grove and the level bench about it were alive with Indians and Indian ponies, the former at least in high state of excitement.

Kneeling behind the trunk of a fallen cotton-wood, two troopers were intently studying the situation. "They came riding down from over yonder to the northeast, sir," said one of them, a corporal, making room for his lieutenant. "There must have been as many as a hundred all told, with others trailing behind. There's going to be a pow-wow of some kind. They've unsaddled and turned the ponies out, and some feller's shoutin' and singin'--you can hear him now, sir."

Hear him! As he warmed up to his speech, incantation, or whatever it was, the speaker could have been heard distinctly a long mile away, and all the bivouac up-stream, not already sound asleep, sat up to listen.

War-chief or medicine-man, he had a voice that dinned upon the ear of night and dominated all other sounds, from guttural grunt of a.s.sent to frantic yell of applause, as the roar of Niagara in the Cave of the Winds drowns the futile babble of the guides. Once in early boyhood Geordie had heard an Indian orator of whom his father and fellow-officers spoke ever in honor and esteem--a chief whose people wellnigh wors.h.i.+pped him--"Rolling-Thunder-in-the-Mountains," they called him ("Hin-Mato-Iya-Latkit," in their weird dialect). And as George and Connell knelt here now, listening to this deep, reverberant voice, thundering from bluff to bluff across the mile-wide valley, the name and fame of old Chief Joseph, whom the whites had so misunderstood and wronged, came back to the young commander with redoubled force.

But no such chief as Joseph was this who, standing in the leaping firelight, high among the red warriors about him, was las.h.i.+ng them to frenzy with his resounding words. No interpreter crouched with the little party at the point; none was needed to tell them that he was preaching of battle, blood, and vengeance. From time to time the wail of women could be heard, wild as the scream of the panther, and, as one sign led to another, it dawned upon Geordie and the veteran trooper by his side that some brave of the band had recently been done to death by foul means or treachery, that now the tribe was being roused to a pitch of fury, to a mad thirst for vengeance; and even before the red orator had finished his harangue the war-drum began its fevered throb, the warriors, brandis.h.i.+ng knife, club, hatchet, or gun, sprang half stripped into the swift-moving circle, and with shrill yells and weird contortions started the shuffling, squirming, snake-like evolutions of the war-dance. Faster, wilder went the drumbeats; fiercer, madder went the dance; and, unable to resist the impulse, Graham and Connell, secure in the belief that the Indians were utterly engrossed, crept cautiously onward and outward, with the corporal at their back, determined to see what they could of this savage and appalling ceremony.

Half-way to the scene had they crept when the shrill wailing of the squaws gave way to shriller screams, to almost maniac laughter. The orator had ceased his incantations. The wild drummers stopped their pounding. The warriors, as though with one accord, cl.u.s.tered about the fire in fascination, and for the moment all save the squaws were stilled, and the crouching watchers, quarter of a mile away, looked blankly into each other's faces for explanation. "What on earth are they up to now?" whispered Connell.

The answer came within the minute: a sound sweeter to savage ears than love-lay of the maidens, than war-song of the braves, than even the wild, triumphant chorus of the scalp-dance; a sound that suddenly rose for a moment above the clamor of the squaws, and then was answered and overwhelmed and drowned in mad, exultant, even fiendish, yells of delight--it was the scream of a strong man in awful agony.

"My G.o.d!" cried the corporal. "They've got some poor devil there, torturing, burning him to death!"

"To the horses! Come on, Con!" was the instant answer. And the three went bounding back along the bank, pursued and spurred by the savage shouting from below, but, as G.o.d so willed it, without so much as a glance. Over the lair of the picket they flew, with only the orders "Come on!" Away over the elastic "bench" they dashed, hot-foot for the bivouac, and Drum, the veteran, saw them coming like the wind, and read their tale and the instant need. "Saddle up!" he shouted, while the group was still afar. "Jump for it, men! There's not a second to lose!"

Up from their blankets sprang the few sleepers. In from their stations scurried the outlying sentries. Rattle went the bits between the teeth of the excited chargers. Slap went the saddles on the broad, glossy backs. There was hurry and rush and swift leaping for arms, the snap of cinchas, the snorting of steeds, yet not a word was spoken until the low order to lead into line; and straightway old Drum marshalled his men, silent, yet with hearts beating like hammers, and then down their front rode their youthful lieutenant, a stranger to all but a month agone, yet now they lived on his slightest word. Oh, what thoughts--what thoughts of mother and home, and the brave old days of boyhood and the Point, had been winging through his brain during the long hours of the day! But now--now there was no time for thought!

There was time only for action; for a fellow-man lay in deadly peril, in dreadful torment, only a short mile away.

"Not a sound--not a shot, men," he ordered, as the quivering line reined up before him. "Follow our lead, stampede the ponies, and charge through the crowd; then rally quick as you can."

Splas.h.!.+ drove the leaders into the shallows. Breast deep, foaming, they spurred through the stream, the troop plunging after, with carbines slung over their shoulders. Out on the opposite bank and up to the "bench" they swarmed, then veered away northward over the resounding level, Geordie and Connell, cla.s.smates and chums, bounding away in advance. No danger of Indian eyes or ears, no dread of hindering shot or ambush. When the pale-face writhes at the torture stake, even Indian vedette forgets his trade for the l.u.s.t of such luxury as witnessing that. Up into line with the leading four galloped the chargers in rear.

On toward the leaping flames in the grove led those lithe young riders ahead. Mad with excitement, some nervous new horses s.n.a.t.c.hed at their bits and burst from the line, and Geordie, glancing back, saw them gaining in spite of restraining hand. What mattered it, anyhow?

Every second was precious. The ground was open, the herded ponies less than half a mile forward, and already alarmed. "Let 'em go!" he shouted, with a wave of the revolver over his head. "Straight through the herd, men. _Ch-a-a-a-rge!_"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HERD, MEN.

_CH-A-A-A-RGE!_'"]

Then up went a cheer that rang over the valley, shrill above the thunder of hoofs, the shriek and scream of terrified squaws, the shouts of astonished braves. Away like the wind went the streaming swarm of ponies, in mad flight for the north! Away like scatter-brained rabbits, darting hither and thither in the firelight, rus.h.i.+ng madly to shelter, leaping from the "bench" to the sandy bottom below, scurrying in wild panic anywhere, everywhere, went warriors, women, and children; for, close on the heels of the vanis.h.i.+ng herd came unknown numbers of blue-coated, brave--hearted, tumultuous riders, tearing through camp like a human tornado, turning the scene of the late revel into a turmoil of woe. Vain the few shots aimed in haste and excitement. Vain the rallying cry of a fighting chief. A blow from the b.u.t.t of Ned Connell's revolver sprawled him headlong over a prostrate form--a white man "staked out" in front of the fire, swooning from mingled misery, weakness, and joy.