The Price of the Prairie Part 34

No, I had just stepped out after the spade.

"If he had been, I'd have shot him right then, no matter what come next.

But I don't want him shot. He's mine. Now tell every brave to leave him to me, the big one, nearly as big as Roman Nose, whiter than the others, because he's not been out here long. But he's no coward. The one with thick dark curly hair; it would make a beautiful scalp. But I want him."

"What will you do with him?" the man nearest to me queried.

"Round the bend below the gorge the Arickaree runs over a little strip of gravel with a ripple that sounds just like the Neosho above the Deep Hole. I'll stake him out there where he can hear it and think of home until he dies. And before I leave him I've got a letter to read to him.

It'll help to keep Springvale in his mind if the water fails. I've promised him what to expect when he comes into my country."

"Do it," the smallest of the three spoke up. "Do it. It'll pay him for setting Bud Anderson on me and nearly killing me in the alley back of the courthouse the night we were going to burn up Springvale. I was making for the courthouse to get the papers to burn sure. I'd got the key and could have got them easy--and there's some needed burning specially--when that lispin' tow-head caught my arm and gave my head such a cut that I'll always carry the scar, and twisted my wrist so I've never been able to lift anything heavier than an artillery bugle since.

n.o.body ever knew it back there but Mapleson and Conlow and Judson. Funny n.o.body ever guessed Judson's part in that thing except his wife, and she kept it to herself and broke her heart and died. Everybody else said he was water-bound away from home. He wasn't twenty feet from his own house when the Whately girl come out. He was helpin' Jean then. Thought her mother'd be killed, and Whately'd never get home alive--as he didn't--and he'd get the whole store; greediest man on earth for money.

He's got the store anyhow, now, and he's going to marry the girl he was helpin' Jean to take out of his way. That store never would have been burnt that night. I wish Jean had got her, though. Then I'd turned things against Tell Mapleson and run him out of town instead of his driving me from Springvale. Tell played a double game d.a.m.ned well. I'm outlawed and he's gettin' richer every day at home."

So spoke the Rev. Mr. Dodd, pastor of the Methodist Church South. It may be I needed the discipline of that day's fighting to hold me motionless and silent in the clump of gra.s.s beside these three men.

"Well, let's get up there and watch the fool women cry for their men."

It was none other than Father Le Claire's form before me, but this man's voice was never that soft French tone of the good man's--low and musical, matching his kindly eyes and sweet smile. As the three slipped away I did the only foolish act of mine in the whole campaign: I rose from my hiding place, shouldered that spade, and stalked straight down the bank, across the creek, and up to our works in the centre of the island as upright and free as if I were walking up Cliff Street to Judge Baronet's front door. Jean's words had put into me just what I needed--not acceptance of the inevitable, but a power of resistance, the indomitable spirit that overcomes.

History is stranger than fiction, and the story of the Kansas frontier is more tragical than all the Wild West yellow-backed novels ever turned off the press. To me this campaign of the Arickaree has always read like a piece of b.l.o.o.d.y drama, so terrible in its reality, it puts the imagination out of service.

We had only one chance for deliverance, we must get the tidings of our dreadful plight to Fort Wallace, a hundred miles away. Jack Stillwell and another brave scout were chosen for the dangerous task. At midnight they left us, moving cautiously away into the black blank s.p.a.ce toward the southwest, and making a wide detour from their real line of direction. The Indians were on the alert, and a man must walk as noiselessly as a panther to slip between their guards.

The scouts wore blankets to resemble the Indians more closely in the shadows of the night. They made moccasins out of boot tops, that their footprints might tell no story. In sandy places they even walked backward that they should leave no tell-tale trail out of the valley.

Dawn found them only three miles away from their starting place. A hollow bank overhung with long, dry gra.s.ses, and fronted with rank sunflowers, gave them a place of concealment through the daylight hours.

Again on the second night they hurried cautiously forward. The second morning they were near an Indian village. Their only retreat was in the tall growth of a low, marshy place. Here they crouched through another long day. The unsuspecting squaws, hunting fuel, tramped the gra.s.ses dangerously near to them, but a merciful Providence guarded their hiding-place.

On the third night they pushed forward more boldly, hoping that the next day they need not waste the precious hours in concealment. In the early morning they saw coming down over the prairie the first guard of a Cheyenne village moving southward across their path. The Plains were flat and covertless. No tall gra.s.s, nor friendly bank, nor bush, nor hollow of ground was there to cover them from their enemies. But out before them lay the rotting carca.s.s of an old buffalo. Its hide still hung about its bones. And inside the narrow shelter of this carca.s.s the two concealed themselves while a whole village pa.s.sed near them trailing off toward the south.

Insufficient food, lack of sleep, and poisonous water from the buffalo wallows brought nausea and weakness to the faithful men making their way across the hostile land to bring help to us in our dire extremity. It is all recorded in history how these two men fared in that hazardous undertaking. No hundred miles of sandy plain were ever more fraught with peril; and yet these two pressed on with that fearless and indomitable courage that has characterized the Saxon people on every field of conquest.

Meanwhile day crept over the eastern horizon, and the cold chill of the shadows gave place to the burning glare of the September sun. Hot and withering it beat down upon us and upon the unburied dead that lay all about us. The braves that had fallen in the strife strewed the island's edges. Their blood lay dark on the sandy shoals of the stream and stained to duller brown the trampled gra.s.ses. Daylight brought the renewal of the treacherous sharpshooting. The enemy closed in about us and from their points of vantage their deadly arrows and bullets were hurled upon our low wall of defence. And so the unequal struggle continued. Ours was henceforth an ambush fight. The redskins did not attack us in open charge again, and we durst not go out to meet them.

And so the thing became a game of endurance with us, a slow wearing away of ammunition and food, a growing fever from weakness and loss of blood, a festering of wounds, the ebbing out of strength and hope; while putrid mule meat and muddy water, the sickening stench from naked bloated bodies under the blazing heat of day, the long, long hours of watching for deliverance that came not, and the certainty of the fate awaiting us at last if rescue failed us--these things marked the hours and made them all alike. As to the Indians, the pa.s.sing of Roman Nose had broken their fighting spirit; and now it was a mere matter of letting us run to the end of our tether and then--well, Jean had hinted what would happen.

On the third night two more scouts left us. It seemed an eternity since Stillwell and his comrade had started from the camp. We felt sure that they must have fallen by the way, and the second attempt was doubly hazardous. The two who volunteered were quiet men. They knew what the task implied, and they bent to it like men who can pay on demand the price of sacrifice. Their names were Donovan and Pliley, recorded in the military roster as private scouts, but the t.i.tles they bear in the memory of every man who sat in that grim council on that night, has a grander sound than the written records declare.

"Boys," Forsyth said, lifting himself on his elbow where he lay in his sand bed, "this is the last chance. If you can get to the fort and send us help we can hold out a while. But it must come quickly. You know what it means for you to try, and for us, if you succeed."

The two men nodded a.s.sent, then girding on their equipments, they gave us their last messages to be repeated if deliverance ever came to us and they were never heard of again. We were getting accustomed to this now, for Death stalked beside us every hour. They said a brief good-bye and slipped out from us into the dangerous dark on their chosen task. Then the chill of the night, with its uncertainty and gloom, with its ominous silences broken only by the howl of the gray wolves, who closed in about us and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; and the heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled the long hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a few decayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkled them over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even in starvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, and the waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day too near our fold. We ate his flesh and boiled his bones for soup. And one day a daring soldier slipped out from our sand pit in search of food--anything--to eat in place of that rotting horseflesh. In the bushes at the end of the island, he found a few wild plums. Oh, food for the G.o.ds was that portion of stewed plums carefully doled out to each of us.

Six days went by. I do not know on which one the Sabbath fell, for G.o.d has no holy day in the Plains warfare. Six days, and no aid had come from Fort Wallace. That our scouts had failed, and our fate was decreed, was now the settled conclusion in every mind.

On the evening of this sixth day our leader called us about him. How gray and drawn his face looked in the shadowy gray light, but his eyes were clear and his voice steady.

"Boys, we've got to the end of our rope, now. Over there," pointing to the low hills, "the Indian wolves are waiting for us. It's the hazard of war; that's all. But we needn't all be sacrificed. You, who aren't wounded, can't help us who are. You have nothing here to make our suffering less. To stay here means--you all know what. Now the men who can go must leave us to what's coming. I feel sure now that you can get through together somehow, for the tribes are scattering. It is only the remnant left over there to burn us out at last. There is no reason why you should stay here and die. Make your dash for escape together to-night, and save your lives if you can. And"--his voice was brave and full of cheer--"I believe you can."

Then a silence fell. There were two dozen of us gaunt, hungry men, haggard from lack of sleep and the fearful tax on mind and body that tested human endurance to the limit--two dozen, to whom escape was not impossible now, though every foot of the way was dangerous. Life is sweet, and hope is imperishable. We looked into one another's face grimly, for the crisis of a lifetime was upon us. Beside me lay Morton.

The handkerchief he had bound about his head in the first hour of battle had not once been removed. There was no other handkerchief to take its place.

"Go, Baronet," he said to me. "Tell your father, if you see him again, that I remembered Whately and how he went down at Chattanooga."

His voice was low and firm and yet he knew what was awaiting him. Oh!

men walked on red-hot ploughshares in the days of the winning of the West.

Sharp Grover was sitting beside Forsyth. In the silence of the council the guide turned his eyes toward each of us. Then, clenching his gaunt, knotted hands with a grip of steel, he said in a low, measured voice:

"It's no use asking us, General. We have fought together, and, by Heaven, we'll die together."

In the great crises of life the only joy is the joy of self-sacrifice.

Every man of us breathed freer, and we were happier now than we had been at any time since the conflict began. And so another twenty-four hours, and still another twenty-four went by.

The sun came up and the sun went down, And day and night were the same as one.

And any evil chance seemed better than this slow dragging out of misery-laden time.

"Nature meant me to defend the weak and helpless. The West needs me," I had said to my father. And now I had given it my best. A slow fever was creeping upon me, and weariness of body was greater than pain and hunger. Death would be a welcome thing now that hope seemed dead. I thought of O'mie, bound hand and foot in the Hermit's Cave, and like him, I wished that I might go quickly if I must go. For back of my stolid mental state was a frenzied desire to outwit Jean Pahusca, who was biding his time, and keeping a surer watch on our poor battle-wrecked, starving force than any other Indian in the horde that kept us imprisoned.

The sunrise of the twenty-fifth of September was a dream of beauty on the Colorado Plains. I sat with my face to the eastward and saw the whole pageantry of morning sweep up in a splendor of color through stretches of far limitless distances. Oh! it was gorgeous, with a glory fresh from the hand of the Infinite G.o.d, whose is the earth and the seas. Mechanically I thought of the sunrise beyond the Neosho Valley, but nothing there could be half so magnificent as this. And as I looked, the thought grew firmer that this sublimity had been poured out for me for the last time, and I gazed at the face of the morning as we look at the face awaiting the coffin lid.

And even as the thought clinched itself upon me came the sentinel's cry of "Indians! Indians!"

We grasped our weapons at the shrill warning. It was the death-grip now.

We knew as surely as we stood there that we could not resist this last attack. The redskins must have saved themselves for this final blow, when resistance on our part was a feeble mockery. The hills to the northward were black with the approaching force, but we were determined to make our last stand heroically, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible. As with a grim last measure of courage we waited, Sharp Grover, who stood motionless, alert, with arms ready, suddenly threw his rifle high in air, and with a shout that rose to heaven, he cried in an ecstasy of joy:

"By the G.o.d above us, it's an ambulance!"

To us for whom the frenzied shrieks of the squaws, the fiendish yells of the savage warriors, and the weird, unearthly wailing for the dead were the only cries that had resounded above the Plains these many days, this shout from Grover was like the music of heaven. A darkness came before me, and my strength seemed momentarily to go from me. It was but a moment, and then I opened my eyes to the sublimest sight it is given to the Anglo-American to look upon.

Down from the low bluffs there poured a broad surge of cavalry, in perfect order, riding like the wind, the swift, steady hoof-beats of their horses marking a rhythmic measure that trembled along the ground in musical vibration, while overhead--oh, the grandeur of G.o.d's gracious dawn fell never on a thing more beautiful--swept out by the free winds of heaven to its full length, and gleaming in the sunlight, Old Glory rose and fell in rippling waves of splendor.

On they came, the approaching force, in a mad rush to reach us. And we who had waited for the superb charge of Roman Nose and his savage warriors, as we wait for death, saw now this coming in of life, and the regiment of the unconquerable people.

We threw restraint to the winds and shouted and danced and hugged each other, while we laughed and cried in a very transport of joy.

It was Colonel Carpenter and his colored cavalry who had made a dash across the country rus.h.i.+ng to our rescue. Beside the Colonel at their head, rode Donovan the scout, whom we had accounted as dead. It was his unerring eye that had guided this command, never varying from the straight line toward our danger-girt entrenchment on the Arickaree.

Before Carpenter's approaching cavalry the Indians fled for their lives, and they who a few hours hence would have been swinging b.l.o.o.d.y tomahawks above our heads were now scurrying to their hiding-places far away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Like the pa.s.sing of a hurricane, horses, mules, men, all dashed toward the place]

Never tenderer hands cared for the wounded, and never were bath and bandage and food and drink more welcome. Our command was s.h.i.+fted to a clean spot where no stench of putrid flesh could reach us. Rest and care, such as a camp on the Plains can offer, was ours luxuriously; and hardtack and coffee, food for the angels, we had that day, to our intense satisfaction. Life was ours once more, and hope, and home, and civilization. Oh, could it be true, we asked ourselves, so long had we stood face to face with Death.

The import of this struggle on the Arickaree was far greater than we dreamed of then. We had gone out to meet a few foemen. What we really had to battle with was the fighting strength of the northern Cheyenne and Sioux tribes. Long afterwards it came to us what this victory meant.

The broad trail we had eagerly followed up the Arickaree fork of the Republican River had been made by bands on bands of Plains Indians mobilizing only a little to the westward, gathering for a deadly purpose. At the full of the moon the whole fighting force, two thousand strong, was to make a terrible raid, spreading out on either side of the Republican River, reaching southward as far as the Saline Valley and northward to the Platte, and pus.h.i.+ng eastward till the older settlements turned them back. They were determined to leave nothing behind them but death and desolation. Their numbers and leaders.h.i.+p, with the defenceless condition of the Plains settlers, give broad suggestion of what that raid would have done for Kansas. Our victory on the Arickaree broke up that combination of Indian forces, for all future time. It was for such an unknown purpose, and against such unguessed odds, that fifty of us led by the G.o.d of all battle lines, had gone out to fight. We had met and vanquished a foe two hundred times our number, aye, crippled its power for all future years. We were lifting the fetters from the frontier; we were planting the standards westward, westward. In the history of the Plains warfare this fight on the Arickaree, though not the last stroke, was one of the decisive struggles in breaking the savage sovereignty, a sovereignty whose wilderness demesne to-day is a land of fruit and meadow and waving grain, of peaceful homes and wealth and honor.

It was impossible for our wounded comrades to begin the journey to Fort Wallace on that day. When evening came, the camp settled down to quiet and security: the horses fed at their rope tethers, the fires smouldered away to gray ashes, the sun swung down behind the horizon bar, the gold and scarlet of evening changed to deeper hues and the long, purple twilight was on the silent Colorado Plains. Over by the Arickaree the cavalry men lounged lazily in groups. As the shades of evening gathered, the soldiers began to sing. Softly at first, but richer, fuller, sweeter their voices rose and fell with that cadence and melody only the negro voice can compa.s.s. And their song, pulsing out across the undulating valley wrapped in the twilight peace, made a harmony so wonderfully tender that we who had dared danger for days unflinchingly now turned our faces to the shadows to hide our tears.

We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground.

Give us a song to cheer Our weary hearts, a song of home And friends we love so dear.