“I left Miss Caldwell here a half-minute ago,” he observed to Alfred, “and I guess she’s given me the slip. Scold her good for me when she comes in—will you?” He grinned, with good-natured malice at the idea of Alfred’s scolding anyone.
Then Alfred surprised him.
The little man straightened suddenly in his saddle and uttered a fervent curse. After a brief circle about the prairie, he returned to the young man.
“You go back to th’ wagons, and wake up Billy Knapp, and tell him this—that I’ve gone scoutin’ some, and I want him to watch out. Understand? Watch out!”
“What?” began the Easterner, bewildered.
“I’m a-goin’ to find her,” said the little man, decidedly.
“You don’t think there’s any danger, do you?” asked the Easterner, in anxious tones. “Can’t I help you?”
“You do as I tell you,” replied the little man, shortly, and rode away.
He followed Miss Caldwell’s trail quite rapidly, for the trail was fresh. As long as he looked intently for hoof-marks, nothing was to be seen, the prairie was apparently virgin; but by glancing the eye forty or fifty yards ahead, a faint line was discernible through the grasses.
Alfred came upon Miss Caldwell seated quietly on her horse in the very centre of a prairie-dog town, and so, of course, in the midst of an area of comparatively desert character. She was amusing herself by watching the marmots as they barked, or watched, or peeped at her, according to their distance from her. The sight of Alfred was not welcome, for he frightened the marmots.
When he saw Miss Caldwell, Alfred grew bashful again. He sidled his horse up to her and blushed.
“I’ll show you th’ way back, miss,” he said, diffidently.
“Thank you,” replied Miss Caldwell, with a slight coldness, “I can find my own way back.”
“Yes, of course,” hastened Alfred, in an agony. “But don’t you think we ought to start back now? I’d like to go with you, miss, if you’d let me. You see the afternoon’s quite late.”
Miss Caldwell cast a quizzical eye at the sun.
“Why, it’s hours yet till dark!” she said, amusedly.
Then Alfred surprised Miss Caldwell.
His diffident manner suddenly left him. He jumped like lightning from his horse, threw the reins over the animal’s head so he would stand, and ran around to face Miss Caldwell.
“Here, jump down!” he commanded.
The soft Southern burr of his ordinary conversation had given place to a clear incisiveness. Miss Caldwell looked at him amazed.
Seeing that she did not at once obey, Alfred actually began to fumble hastily with the straps that held her riding-skirt in place. This was so unusual in the bashful Alfred that Miss Caldwell roused and slipped lightly to the ground.
“Now what?” she asked.
Alfred, without replying, drew the bit to within a few inches of the animal’s hoofs, and tied both fetlocks firmly together with the double-loop. This brought the pony’s nose down close to his shackled feet. Then he did the same thing with his own beast. Thus neither animal could so much as hobble one way or the other. They were securely moored.
Alfred stepped a few paces to the eastward. Miss Caldwell followed.
“Sit down,” said he.
Miss Caldwell obeyed with some nervousness. She did not understand at all, and that made her afraid. She began to have a dim fear lest Alfred might have gone crazy. His next move strengthened this suspicion. He walked away ten feet and raised his hand over his head, palm forward. She watched him so intently that for a moment she saw nothing else. Then she followed the direction of his gaze, and uttered a little sobbing cry.
Just below the sky-line of the first slope to eastward was silhouetted a figure on horseback. The figure on horseback sat motionless.
“We’re in for fight,” said Alfred, coming back after a moment. “He won’t answer my peace-sign, and he’s a Sioux. We can’t make a run for it through this dog-town. We’ve just got to stand ‘em off.”
He threw down and back the lever of his old 44 Winchester, and softly uncocked the arm. Then he sat down by Miss Caldwell.
From various directions, silently, warriors on horseback sprang into sight and moved dignifiedly toward the first-comer, forming at the last a band of perhaps thirty men. They talked together for a moment, and then one by one, at regular intervals, detached themselves and began circling at full speed to the left, throwing themselves behind their horses, and yelling shrill-voiced, but firing no shot as yet.
“They’ll rush us,” speculated Alfred. “We’re too few to monkey with this way. This is a bluff.”
The circle about the two was now complete. After watching the whirl of figures a few minutes, and the motionless landscape beyond, the eye became dizzied and confused.
“They won’t have no picnic,” went on Alfred, with a little chuckle. “Dog-hole’s as bad fer them as fer us. They don’t know how to fight. If they was to come in on all sides, I couldn’t handle ‘em, but they always rush in a bunch, like damn fools!” and then Alfred became suffused with blushes, and commenced to apologise abjectly and profusely to a girl who had heard neither the word nor its atonement. The savages and the approaching fight were all she could think of.
Suddenly one of the Sioux threw himself forward under his horse’s neck and fired. The bullet went wild, of course, but it shrieked with the rising inflection of a wind-squall through bared boughs, seeming to come ever nearer. Miss Caldwell screamed and covered her face. The savages yelled in chorus.
The one shot seemed to be the signal for a spattering fire all along the line. Indians never clean their rifles, rarely get good ammunition, and are deficient in the philosophy of hind-sights. Besides this, it is not easy to shoot at long range in a constrained position from a running horse. Alfred watched them contemptuously in silence.
“If they keep that up long enough, the wagon-train may hear ‘em,” he said, finally. “Wisht we weren’t so far to nor-rard. There, it’s comin’!” he said, more excitedly.
The chief had paused, and, as the warriors came to him, they threw their ponies back on their haunches, and sat motionless. They turned, the ponies’ heads toward the two.
Alfred arose deliberately for a better look.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said to himself, “that’s old Lone Pine, sure thing. I reckon we-all’s got to make a good fight!”
The girl had sunk to the ground, and was shaking from head to foot. It is not nice to be shot at in the best of circumstances, but to be shot at by odds of thirty to one, and the thirty of an out-landish and terrifying species, is not nice at all. Miss Caldwell had gone to pieces badly, and Alfred looked grave. He thoughtfully drew from its holster his beautiful Colt’s with its ivory handle, and laid it on the grass. Then he blushed hot and cold, and looked at the girl doubtfully. A sudden movement in the group of savages, as the war-chief rode to the front, decided him.
“Miss Caldwell,” he said.
The girl shivered and moaned.
Alfred dropped to his knees and shook her shoulder roughly.
“Look up here,” he commanded. “We ain’t got but a minute.”
Composed a little by the firmness of his tone, she sat up. Her face had gone chalky, and her hair had partly fallen over her eyes.
“Now, listen to every word,” he said, rapidly. “Those Injins is goin’ to rush us in a minute. P’r’aps I can break them, but I don’t know. In that pistol there, I’ll always save two shots—understand?—it’s always loaded. If I see it’s all up, I’m a-goin’ to shoot you with one of ‘em, and myself with the other.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, her eyes opening wildly. She was paying close enough attention now.
“And if they kill me first”—he reached forward and seized her wrist impressively—“if they kill me first, you must take that pistol and shoot yourself. Understand? Shoot yourself—in the head—here!”
He ta
pped his forehead with a stubby forefinger.
The girl shrank back in horror. Alfred snapped his teeth together and went on grimly.
“If they get hold of you,” he said, with solemnity, “they’ll first take off every stitch of your clothes, and when you’re quite naked they’ll stretch you out on the ground with a raw-hide to each of your arms and legs. And then they’ll drive a stake through the middle of your body into the ground—and leave you there—to die—slowly!”
And the girl believed him, because, incongruously enough, even through her terror she noticed that at this, the most immodest speech of his life, Alfred did not blush. She looked at the pistol lying on the turf with horrified fascination.
The group of Indians, which had up to now remained fully a thousand yards away, suddenly screeched and broke into a run directly toward the dog-town.
There is an indescribable rush in a charge of savages. The little ponies make their feet go so fast, the feathers and trappings of the warriors stream behind so frantically, the whole attitude of horse and man is so eager, that one gets an impression of fearful speed and resistless power. The horizon seems full of Indians.
As if this were not sufficiently terrifying, the air is throbbing with sound. Each Indian pops away for general results as he comes jumping along, and yells shrilly to show what a big warrior he is, while underneath it all is the hurried monotone of hoof-beats becoming ever louder, as the roar of an increasing rainstorm on the roof. It does not seem possible that anything can stop them.
Yet there is one thing that can stop them, if skilfully taken advantage of, and that is their lack of discipline. An Indian will fight hard when cornered, or when heated by lively resistance, but he hates to go into it in cold blood. As he nears the opposing rifle, this feeling gets stronger. So often a man with nerve enough to hold his fire, can break a fierce charge merely by waiting until it is within fifty yards or so, and then suddenly raising the muzzle of his gun. If he had gone to shooting at once, the affair would have become a combat, and the Indians would have ridden him down. As it is, each has had time to think. By the time the white man is ready to shoot, the suspense has done its work. Each savage knows that but one will fall, but, cold-blooded, he does not want to be that one; and, since in such disciplined fighters it is each for himself, he promptly ducks behind his mount and circles away to the right or the left. The whole band swoops and divides, like a flock of swift-winged terns on a windy day.
This Alfred relied on in the approaching crisis.
The girl watched the wild sweep of the warriors with strained eyes. She had to grasp her wrist firmly to keep from fainting, and she seemed incapable of thought. Alfred sat motionless on a dog-mound, his rifle across his lap. He did not seem in the least disturbed.
“It’s good to fight again,” he murmured, gently fondling the stock of his rifle. “Come on, ye devils! Oho!” he cried as a warrior’s horse went down in a dog-hole, “I thought so!”
His eyes began to shine.
The ponies came skipping here and there, nimbly dodging in and out between the dog-holes. Their riders shot and yelled wildly, but none of the bullets went lower than ten feet. The circle of their advance looked somehow like the surge shoreward of a great wave, and the similarity was heightened by the nodding glimpses of the light eagles’ feathers in their hair.
The run across the honey-combed plain was hazardous—even to Indian ponies—and three went down kicking, one after the other. Two of the riders lay stunned. The third sat up and began to rub his knee. The pony belonging to Miss Caldwell, becoming frightened, threw itself and lay on its side, kicking out frantically with its hind legs.
At the proper moment Alfred cocked his rifle and rose swiftly to his knees. As he did so, the mound on which he had been kneeling caved into the hole beneath it, and threw him forward on his face. With a furious curse, he sprang to his feet and levelled his rifle at the thick of the press. The scheme worked. In a flash every savage disappeared behind his pony, and nothing was to be seen but an arm and a leg. The band divided on either hand as promptly as though the signal for such a drill had been given, and swept gracefully around in two long circles until it reined up motionless at nearly the exact point from which it had started on its imposing charge. Alfred had not fired a shot.
He turned to the girl with a short laugh.
She lay face upward on the ground, staring at the sky with wide-open, horror-stricken eyes. In her brow was a small blackened hole, and under her head, which lay strangely flat against the earth, the grasses had turned red. Near her hand lay the heavy Colt’s 44.
Alfred looked at her a minute without winking. Then he nodded his head.
“It was ‘cause I fell down that hole—she thought they’d got me!” he said aloud to himself. “Pore little gal! She hadn’t ought to have did it!”
He blushed deeply, and, turning his face away, pulled down her skirt until it covered her ankles. Then he picked up his Winchester and fired three shots. The first hit directly back of the ear one of the stunned Indians who had fallen with his horse. The second went through the other stunned Indian’s chest. The third caught the Indian with the broken leg between the shoulders just as he tried to get behind his struggling pony.
Shortly after, Billy Knapp and the wagon-train came along.
*
II
BILLY’S TENDERFOOT
During one spring of the early seventies Billy Knapp ran a species of road-house and hotel at the crossing of the Deadwood and Big Horn trails through Custer Valley. Travellers changing from one to the other frequently stopped there over night. He sold accommodations for man and beast, the former comprising plenty of whiskey, the latter plenty of hay. That was the best anyone could say of it. The hotel was of logs, two-storied, with partitions of sheeting to insure a certain privacy of sight if not of sound; had three beds and a number of bunks; and boasted of a woman cook—one of the first in the Hills. Billy did not run it long. He was too restless. For the time being, however, he was interested and satisfied.
The personnel of the establishment consisted of Billy and the woman, already mentioned, and an ancient Pistol of the name of Charley. The latter wore many firearms, and had a good deal to say, but had never, as Billy expressed it, “made good.” This in the West could not be for lack of opportunity. His functions were those of general factotum.
One evening Billy sat chair-tilted against the walls of the hotel waiting for the stage. By and by it drew in. Charley hobbled out, carrying buckets of water for the horses. The driver flung the reins from him with the lordly insolence of his privileged class, descended slowly, and swaggered to the bar-room for his drink. Billy followed to serve it.
“Luck,” said the driver, and crooked his elbow.
“Anything new?” queried Billy.
“Nope.”
“Held up?”
“Nope. Black Hank’s over in th’ limestone.”
That exhausted the situation. The two men puffed silently for a moment at their pipes. In an instant the driver turned to go.
“I got you a tenderfoot,” he remarked then, casually; “I reckon he’s outside.”
“Guess I ambles forth and sees what fer a tenderfoot it is,” replied Billy, hastening from behind the bar.
The tenderfoot was seated on a small trunk just outside the door. As he held his hat in his hand, Billy could see his dome-like bald head. Beneath the dome was a little pink-and-white face, and below that narrow, sloping shoulders, a flat chest, and bandy legs. He wore a light check suit, and a flannel shirt whose collar was much too large for him. Billy took this all in while passing. As the driver climbed to the seat, the hotel-keeper commented.
“Say, Hen,” said he, “would you stuff it or put it under a glass case?”
“I’d serve it, a lay Tooloose,” replied the driver, briefly, and brought his long lash 8-shaped across the four startled backs of his horses.
Billy turned to the reinspection of
his guest, and met a deprecating smile.
“Can I get a room here fer to-night?” he inquired in a high, piping voice.
“You kin,” said Billy, shortly, and began to howl for Charley.
That patriarch appeared around the corner, as did likewise the cook, a black-eyed, red-cheeked creature, afterward counted by Billy as one of his eight matrimonial ventures.
“Snake this stranger’s war-bag into th’ shack,” commanded Billy, “and, Nell, jest nat’rally rustle a few grub.”
The stranger picked up a small hand-satchel and followed Charley into the building. When, a little later, he reappeared for supper, he carried the hand-bag with him, and placed it under the bench which flanked the table. Afterward he deposited it near his hand while enjoying a pipe outside. Naturally, all this did not escape Billy.
“Stranger,” said he, “yo’ seems mighty wedded to that thar satchel.”
“Yes, sir,” piped the stranger. Billy snorted at the title. “I has some personal belongin’s which is valuable to me.” He opened the bag and produced a cheap portrait of a rather cheap-looking woman. “My mother that was,” said he.
Billy snorted again and went inside. He hated sentiment of all kinds.
The two men sat opposite each other and ate supper, which was served by the red-cheeked girl. The stranger kept his eyes on his plate while she was in the room. He perched on the edge of the bench with his feet tucked under him and resting on the toes. When she approached, the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms grew rigid with embarrassment, causing strange awkward movements of the hands. He answered in monosyllables.
Billy ate expansively and earnestly. Toward the close of the meal Charley slipped into place beside him. Charley was out of humour, and found the meat cold.
“Damn yore soul, Nell,” he cried, “this yere ain’t fitten fer a hog to eat!”
The girl did not mind; nor did Billy. It was the country’s mode of speech. The stranger dropped his knife.
Blazed Trail Stories Page 8