The Watchers of the Plains

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  “Yes,” replied Dan of the “diamond P’s.” “He bought up the ’flying S’ stock. He’s holding ’em up for rebrandin’. Say, Nevil,” the cowpuncher went on, turning to the wood-cutter of White River, “you oughter know how them red devils is doin’. Did you hear or see anything?”

  Nevil turned with a slight flush tingeing his cheeks. He didn’t like the other’s tone.

  “I don’t know why I should know or see anything,” he said shortly.

  “Wal, you’re kind o’ livin’ ad-jacent, as the sayin’ is,” observed Dan, with a shadowy smile.

  The other men on the verandah had come around, and they smiled more broadly than the cowpuncher. It was easy to see that they were not particularly favorable toward Nevil Steyne. It was as Dan had said; he lived near the Reservation, and, well, these men were frontiersmen who knew the ways of the country in which they lived.

  Nevil saw the smiling faces and checked his anger. He laughed instead.

  “Well,” he said, “since you set such store by my opinions I confess I had no reason to suspect any disturbance, and, to illustrate my faith in the Indians’ peaceful condition, I am going home at noon, and to-morrow intend to cut a load or two of wood on the river.”

  Dan had no more to say. He could have said something but refrained, and the rest of the men turned to watch the white smoke in the distance. Decidedly Steyne had scored a point and should have been content; but he wasn’t.

  “I suppose you fellows think a white man can’t live near Indians without ‘taking the blanket,’” he pursued with a sneer.

  There was a brief silence. Then Dan answered him slowly.

  “Jest depends on the man, I guess.”

  There was a nasty tone in the cowpuncher’s voice and trouble seemed imminent, but it was fortunately nipped in the bud by Jack McCabe.

  “Hello!” the butcher exclaimed excitedly, “there’s a feller pushin’ his plug as tho’ them Injuns was on his heels. Say, it’s Seth o’ White River Farm, and by the gait he’s travelin’, I’d gamble, Nevil, you don’t cut that wood to-morrow. Seth don’t usually ride hard.”

  The whole attention on the verandah was centred on Seth, who was riding toward the hotel from across the track as hard as his horse could lay foot to the ground.

  In a few moments he drew up at the tie-post and flung off his horse. And a chorus of inquiry greeted him from the bystanders.

  The newcomer raised an undisturbed face to them, and his words came without any of the excitement that the pace he had ridden in at had suggested.

  “The Injuns are out,” he said, and bent down to feel his horse’s legs. They seemed to be of most interest to him at the moment.

  Curiously enough his words were accepted by the men on the verandah without question. That is, by all except Steyne. No doubt he was irritated by what had gone before, but even so, it hardly warranted, in face of the fires in the south, his obstinate refusal to believe that the Indians were out on the war-path. Besides, he resented the quiet assurance of the newcomer. He resented the manner in which the others accepted his statement, disliking it as much as he disliked the man who had made it. Nor was the reason of this hatred far to seek. Seth was a loyal white man who took his life in his own hands and fought strenuously in a savage land for his existence, a bold, fearless frontiersman; while he, Nevil, knew in his secret heart that he had lost that caste, had thrown away that right—that birthright. He had, as these men also knew, “taken the blanket.” He had become a white Indian. He lived by the clemency of that people, in their manner, their life. He was one of them, while yet his skin was white. He was regarded by his own race as an outcast. He was a degenerate. So he hated—hated them all. But Seth he hated most of all because he saw more of him, he lived near him. He knew that Seth knew him, knew him down to his heart’s core. This was sufficient in a nature like his to set him hating, but he hated him for yet another reason. Seth was as strong, brave, honest as he was the reverse. He belonged to an underworld which nothing could ever drag a nature such as Seth’s down to.

  He knocked his pipe out aggressively on the wooden floor of the verandah.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said loudly, in an offensive way.

  Seth dropped his broncho’s hoof, which he had been examining carefully, and turned round. It would be impossible to describe the significance of his movement. It suggested the sudden rousing of a real fighting dog that had been disturbed in some peaceful pursuit. He was not noisy, he did not even look angry. He was just ready.

  “I guess you ought to know, Nevil Steyne,” he said with emphasis. Then he turned his head and looked away down the street, as the clatter of hoofs and rattle of wheels reached the hotel. And for the second time within a few minutes, trouble, such as only Western men fully understand, was staved off by a more important interruption.

  A team and buckboard dashed up to the hotel. Dan Somers, the sheriff, and Lal Price, the Land Agent, were in the conveyance, and as they drew up, one of the horses dropped to the ground in its harness. The men, watching these two plainsmen scrambling from the vehicle, knew that life and death alone could have sent them into town at a pace sufficient to kill one of their horses.

  “Boys!” cried the sheriff at once. “Who’s for it? Those durned Injuns are out; they’re gittin’ round Jason’s place. I’m not sure but the woods are fired a’ready. They’ve come from the south, I guess. They’re Rosebuds. Ther’s old man Jason and his missis; and ther’s the gals—three of ’em. We can’t let ’em——”

  Seth interrupted him.

  “And we ain’t going to,” he observed. He knew, they all knew, what the sheriff would have said.

  Seth’s interruption was the cue for suggestions. And they came with a rush, which is the way with men such as these, all eager and ready to help in the rescue of a white family from the hands of a common foe. There was no hesitation, for they were most of them old hands in this Indian business, and, in the back recesses of their brains, each man held recollections of past atrocities, too hideous to be contemplated calmly.

  Those who were later with their breakfast now swelled the crowd on the verandah. The news seemed to have percolated through to the rest of the town, for men were gathering on all sides, just as men gather in civilized cities on receipt of news of national importance. They came at once to the central public place. The excitement had leapt with the suddenness of a conflagration, and, like a conflagration, there would be considerable destruction before it died down. The Indians in their savage temerity might strike Beacon Crossing. Once the Indians were loose it was like the breaking of a tidal wave on a low shore.

  The sheriff was the man they all looked to, and, veteran warrior that he was, he quickly got a grip on things. One hard-riding scout, a man as wily as the Indian himself, he despatched to warn all outlying settlers. He could spare no more than one. Then he sent telegraphic messages for the military, whose fort a progressive and humane government had located some two hundred miles away. Then he divided his volunteers, equipped with their own arms, and all the better for that, and detailed one party for the town’s defence, and the other to join him in the work of rescue.

  These things arranged, then came the first check. It was discovered that the driver of the only locomotive in the place was sick. The engine itself, a rusty looking ancient machine, was standing coldly idle in the yards.

  A deputation waited upon the sick man, while others went and coupled up some empty trucks and fired the engine. Seth was among the latter. The deputation returned. It was fever; and the man could not come. Being ready campaigners, their thoughts turned on their horses.

  The sheriff was a blank man for the moment. It was a question of time, he knew. He was standing beside the locomotive which had already begun to snort, and which looked, at that moment, in the eyes of those gathered round it, despite its rustiness, a truly magnificent proposition. He was about to call for volunteers to replace the driver, when Seth, who all the time had been working in the cab,
and who had heard the news of the trouble, leant over the rail that protected the foot-plate.

  “Say, Dan,” he said. “If none of the boys are scared to ride behind me, and I don’t figger they are, I’ll pump the old kettle along. Guess I’ve fired a traction once. I don’t calc’late she’ll have time to bust up in forty miles. I’ll take the chances if they will.”

  The sheriff looked up at the thoughtful face above him. He grinned, and others grinned with him. But their amusement was quite lost on Seth. He was trying to estimate the possible result of putting the “kettle,” as he called the locomotive, at full steam ahead, disregarding every other tap and gauge on the driving plate, and devoting himself to heaping up the furnace. These things interested him, not as a source of danger, but only in the matter of speed.

  “Good for you, Seth,” cried Dan Somers. “Now, boys, all aboard!”

  And Seth turned to the driving plate and sounded a preliminary whistle.

  * * *

  CHAPTER IV

  ROSEBUD

  It is nearly midday, and the Indians round the blazing woods on the southern spur of the Black Hills are in full retreat. Another desperate battle, such as crowd the unwritten history of the United States, has been fought and won. The history of the frontiersman’s life would fill a record which any soldier might envy. It is to the devotion of such men that colonial empires owe their being, for without their aid, no military force could bring peace and prosperity to a land. The power of the sword may conquer and hold, but there its mission ends. It is left to the frontiersman to do the rest.

  The battle-field is strewn with dead and dying; but there are no white faces staring blankly up at the heavens, only the painted, seared features of the red man. Their opponents are under cover. If they have any dead or dying they are with the living. These men fight in the manner of the Indian, but with a superior intelligence.

  But though the white men have won the battle their end is defeated. For the blazing woods have swept across the homestead of “old man” Jason, for years a landmark in the country, and now it is no more. A mere charred skeleton remains; smoking, smouldering, a witness to the white man’s daring in a savage country.

  The blazing woods are approachable only on the windward side, and even here the heat is blistering. It is still impossible to reach the ruins of the homestead, for the wake of the fire is like a superheated oven. And so the men who came to succor have done the only thing left for them. They have fought and driven off the horde of Indians, who first sacked the ranch and then fired it. But the inmates; and amongst them four women. What of them? These rough plainsmen asked themselves this question as they approached the conflagration; then they shut their teeth hard and meted out a terrible chastisement before pushing their inquiries further. It was the only way.

  A narrow river skirts the foot of the hills, cutting the homestead off from the plains. And along its bank, on the prairie side, is a scattered brush such as is to be found adjacent to most woods. The fire has left it untouched except that the foliage is much scorched, and it is here that the victors of an unrecorded battle lie hidden in the cover. Though the enemy is in full retreat, and the rearmost horsemen are fast diminishing against the horizon, not a man has left his shelter. They are men well learned in the craft of the Indians.

  Dan Somers and Seth are sharing the same cover. The sheriff is watching the last of the braves as they desperately hasten out of range. At last he moves and starts to rise from his prone position. But Seth’s strong hand checks him and pulls him down again.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Why?”

  But the sheriff yielded nevertheless. In spite of his fledgling twenty-two years, Seth was an experienced Indian fighter, and Dan Somers knew it; no one better. Seth’s father and mother had paid the life penalty seventeen years ago at the hands of the Cheyennes. It was jokingly said that Seth was a white Indian. By which those who said it meant well but put it badly. He certainly had remarkable native instincts.

  “This heat is hellish!” Somers protested presently, as Seth remained silent, gazing hard at a rather large bluff on the river bank, some three hundred yards ahead. Then he added bitterly, “But it ain’t no use. We’re too late. The fire’s finished everything. Maybe we’ll find their bodies. I guess their scalps are elsewhere.”

  Seth turned. He began to move out of his cover in Indian fashion, wriggling through the grass like some great lizard.

  “I’ll be back in a whiles,” he said, as he went. “Stay right here.”

  He was back in a few minutes. No Indian could have been more silent in his movements.

  “Well?” questioned the sheriff.

  Seth smiled in his own gradual manner. “We’re going to draw ’em, I guess,” he said. “Fill up.”

  And the two men recharged the magazines of their Winchesters.

  Presently Seth pointed silently at the big bluff on the river bank. The next moment he had fired into it, and his shot was followed at once by a perfect hail of lead from the rest of the hidden white men. The object of his recent going was demonstrated.

  For nearly two minutes the fusilade continued, then Seth’s words were proved. There was a rush and scrambling and breaking of brush. Thirty mounted braves dashed out of the hiding and charged the white men’s cover. It was only to face a decimating fire. Half the number were unhorsed, and the riderless ponies fled in panic in the direction of those who had gone before.

  But while others headed these howling, painted fiends Seth’s rifle remained silent. He knew that this wild rush was part of a deliberate plan, and he waited for the further development. It came. His gun leapt to his shoulder as a horse and rider darted out of the brush. The man made eastward, attempting escape under cover of his staunch warriors’ desperate feint. Seth had him marked down. He was the man of all whom he had looked for. But the aim had to be careful, for he was carrying a something that looked like woman’s clothes in his arms, and, besides, this man must not go free. Seth was very deliberate at all times; now he was particularly so. And when the puff of smoke passed from the muzzle of his rifle it was to be seen that the would-be fugitive had fallen, and his horse had gone on riderless.

  Now the few remaining braves broke and fled, but there was no escape for them. They had defeated their own purpose by approaching too close. Not one was left to join the retreating band. It was a desperate slaughter.

  The fight was done. Seth left his cover, and, followed by the sheriff, went across to where the former’s victim had fallen.

  “Good,” exclaimed Somers, as they came up. “It is Big Wolf—— What?” He broke off and dropped to his knees.

  But Seth was before him. The latter had dragged the body of the great chief to one side, and revealed, to the sheriff’s astonished eyes, the dainty clothing, and what looked like the dead form of a white girl child. They both held the same thought, but Somers was the first to put it into words.

  “Tain’t Jason’s. They’re all grown up,” he said.

  Seth was looking down at the child’s beautiful pale face. His eyes took in the thick, fair ringlets of flowing hair all matted with blood. He noted even the texture of the clothes. And, suddenly stooping, he gathered her into his arms.

  “She’s mine now,” he said. Then his thoughtful, dark eyes took on their slow smile again. “And she ain’t dead, though pretty nigh, I’m thinking.”

  “How’d you know?” asked Somers curiously.

  “Can’t say. I’ve jest a notion that aways.”

  The others came up, but not another word passed Seth’s lips. He walked off in the direction of the track where the engine was standing at the head of its trucks. And by the time he reached his destination he was quite weighted down, for this prize of his was no infant but a girl of some years. He laid her tenderly in the cab of the engine, and quickly discovered a nasty scalp wound on the back of her head. Just for a moment he conceived it to be the result of his own shot, then he realized that the injury was not of such rec
ent infliction. Nevertheless it was the work of a bullet; which discovery brought forth a flow of scathing invective upon the head of the author of the outrage.

  With that care which was so characteristic of this thoughtful plainsman, he fetched water from the tank of the locomotive, tore off a large portion of his own flannel shirt, and proceeded to wash the wound as tenderly as might any devoted mother. He was used to a rough treatment of wounds, and, by the time he had bandaged the pretty head, he found that his supply of shirt was nearly exhausted. But this in no way disturbed him.

  With great resource he went back to the prairie and tore out great handfuls of the rank grass, and so contrived a comparatively luxurious couch for his foundling on the foot-plate of the engine.

  By this time the men were returning from their search for the bodies at the ruins of the ranch. The story was quickly told. The remains had been found, as might have been expected, charred cinders of bone.

  There was no more to be done here, and Somers, on his return to the track, sounded the true note of their necessity.

  “We must git back. Them durned Injuns ’ll make tracks fer Beacon Crossing, or I’m a Dago.”

  Then he looked into the cab where the still form of the prairie waif lay shaded by a piece of tarpaulin which Seth had found on the engine. He observed the bandage and the grass bed, and he looked at the figure bending to the task of firing.

  “What are you goin’ to do with her?” he asked.

  Seth worked on steadily.

  “Guess I’ll hand her over to Ma Sampson,” he said, without turning.

  “Maybe she has folks. Maybe ther’s the law.”

  Seth turned now.

  “She’s mine now,” he cried over his shoulder. Then he viciously aimed a shovelful of coal at the open furnace door.