by Zane Grey
Then they held him six feet off the ground, and all faces were turned upward—grim, leering, sweaty, bloody faces, hard as the frontier, yet laconic also in the contemplation of a just retribution.
“Damn your black-stone soul!” called one, breathing hoarsely.
“Now kick.”
Blackstone’s legs had been untied, as had those of all the other bandits, and there could have been only one interpretation to such action—the freighters wanted to see him kick. And they watched him kick. He was a very large, heavy man, exceedingly powerful, in the prime of life; and no matter what iron will and nerve he had when the spiritual man dominated, his muscular reaction was extraordinarily violent, grotesque, and hideous.
His bearded face, up to the sky, could not be seen, but it must have been too awful for even these avengers to behold. He kicked out with both legs at right angles, just the automatic kick of a jumping-jack. Then all ways, so monstrously that the branch of the tree bent and swung and his body swayed to and fro.
“Ho, men!” yelled Hatcher, from the trail, and his voice had a stirring ring. “Get out of this! Stevens is wavin’ from the rock! Shore as Gawd made little apples the Kiowas are comin’!”
Hatcher thudded down the trail, with the watching freighters suddenly breaking into action. The executioners tied the end of the lasso to a sapling, and leaping to their weapons, grunting and cursing, they stampeded out of the glade.
Clint laid a shaking hand on the lasso. It was tied securely and it would not break. Then he hurried to the trail. But he looked back. Blackstone’s writhing had lost energy. It was now a swelling ripple of body. His knees were drawn up. Beyond him hung seventeen dark, limp figures, long-necked and loose, suggestive in their horridness.
Wheeling, Clint ran down the trail after the men. When he got into the open he espied Stevens frantically waving from the top of the rock. The scout pointed to the north and his gesture inspired terror.
“Murdoch—an’ his—Kiowas!” gasped Clint, and flew over the sandy flat.
Half the hundred men were already across, shouting and calling. About a score were bringing the cannon. They ran with it, splashing, cursing, falling to their knees, plunging on. The men behind carried the rifles of those who were handling the cannon. And four rifles to one man made a burden. Those with the ammunition staggered along, yet made fast time.
Clint plunged into the shallow stream, making long bounds. Suddenly he halted, at the end of a jump. Hatcher, bareheaded, his white locks flying, stood on the bank, cupping his hands round his mouth.
“Come on, boys! Stick to thet cannon!”
Chapter Twenty
HATCHER held up all until the men with the cannon and ammunition reached the bank.
“Get your wind,” he ordered.
“What’s up?” queried Belmet.
“Reckon Bent an’ his Kiowas.—Buff, have you any plan?”
“That depends. If we don’t know an’ haven’t time, how can we plan?—Any shootin’ yet?”
“Haven’t heerd none. I reckon hostilities ain’t begun yet.”
“Ireland, is the cannon loaded?” asked Clint.
“Shure.”
“Lay hold, men—thirty to a rope,” ordered Clint. “Rest of you hang close.”
He led the way, and the straining freighters followed with the rumbling cannon. When they broke clear of the box-alder brush the going was easier. Clint headed round the left of the bluff, where the way was shorter and less rocky. He thought he heard shouting.
In a few moments Clint rounded the corner. Wagon-train and freighters seemed to burst into view. Three hundred yards out on the plain a strong force of Kiowas paraded to and fro. They were naked and painted, lean, wild young warriors, magnificently mounted and armed. Clint’s hawk eye roved to fasten on to a knot of riders gathered round a central figure, strikingly different from the others, even at that distance. The sunlight did not shine off his naked body, which was dark instead of red. His head was not shaven like that of the others.
“Wal, we got hyar first,” said Hatcher. “Mean-lookin’ outfit, Buff. An’ they ain’t actin’ like Indians. White brains runnin’ them Kiowas.”
“Charley Bent—or Lee Murdock, as I know him.”
“Ahuh, so I reckoned. Wal, shore as this evil day dawned it’ll see the end of thet half-breed,” returned Hatcher, in terrible passion.
The forty-odd freighters who had been left to guard the wagon-train whooped their welcome.
“Buff, take command.” said Hatcher, darkly. How gloomy and strange the old frontiersman! “An’ don’t forget our agreement.”
“Jim, put fifty men up above the wagons among the rocks,” replied Clint. “Wait; maybe that’s too many. Say thirty. There’s cover enough for them.”
The freighters did not wait to be selected by Hatcher. With rifles in each hand a score or more rushed for the brushy, rocky slope. Those left free of the cannon dashed to the gate between the wagons. The sixty men at the cannon ropes came trampling after.
The double half-circle of wagons arched from the first rise of the rocky bluff on the west and extended to the sheer cliff wall on the other side, a little north of east. It appeared to be an impregnable defense against the ordinary tactics of plains Indians. Belmet stationed the cannon at the most commanding spot, which was just inside the gate. It could be moved, of course, from place to place. The freighters spread along the inside of the circle of wagons like a flock of quail, and in a few moments not one could be seen.
Ireland and Copsy stood beside their cannon, non-chalant and eager. Stevens mounted to the wheel of the nearest wagon and leveled the field-glass on the Kiowas. Hatcher, Henry Wells, Andy Morgan, and a negro, Jackson, surrounded Clint. Half of the big oval corral had been roped off for the animals, and they were crowded, restless, and hungry.
“Boss, we’re outnumbered two to one,” said Stevens, in reply to Clint’s query.
“Wal, we’re good for it,” remarked Wells.
“Buff, I don’t like the way this Bent outfit looks,” complained Hatcher.
“Come down, Stevens, an’ let me take a look,” said Clint.
“Men, we’re shore goin’ to learn how Charley Bent works a caravan,” rejoined Andy Morgan, wagging his sandy head.
“Wal, we’ll shore learn, but we may never tell,” growled Jim Hatcher, somberly.
They were the last words he was ever heard to utter.
Meanwhile Clint was watching through the glass. He could not make an accurate estimate of the restless Kiowas, but their number far exceeded two hundred. Clint tried to get the glass on the leader, but he was surrounded by his red lieutenants and somewhat hidden. The glass, however, enabled Clint to make a discovery Stevens had missed. These Kiowas were under the influence of rum. Kiowas were wicked enough when normal. But stimulated and maddened by rum—Clint felt his very marrow freeze.
“Men, these Kiowas are half drunk,” he announced, tragically.
The absolute silence with which this statement was received attested to its staggering purport. These fiends would have to become sober before they could be beaten.
It struck Clint presently that the Kiowas were riding farther to left and to right. The foremost ones did not wheel and prance their mustangs back. The whole band was spreading out in a long line. This did not mean the familiar circling of plains savages round a caravan. Clint grew anxiously puzzled. The riders spread until the line on the east passed out of Clint’s sight. Those going to the left rode in twos and threes, close together, until the line on that side reached clear round to the river, at a point almost even with the bluff.
“Wal, Buff, say somethin’,” burst out Henry Wells, who well knew that silence here was ominous.
“By Heaven!” muttered Clint, grinding his teeth. “So that’s your game, Lee Murdock!”
Then Clint leaped down.
“Jackson, run along between the wagons,” he ordered. “Tell all our men that the Kiowas have been fired by drink. Bent’s g
ame is to rush us.”
“The lousy half-breed!” ejaculated Andy Morgan.
The negro bounded away to dart between the wagons, from behind which his deep voice sounded.
“Bent has outfigured us,” said Clint. “In a close fight we can’t use the cannon. But he doesn’t know we have two rifles to a man an’ a wagon-load of ammunition.”
“Reckon we’d better hang by thet wagon,” suggested Wells.
“An’ the cannon. Because it’ll have to be hauled round,” added Morgan.
“Listen!” suddenly whispered Clint, bending low.
“They’re comin’!”
“By Gawd!”
“It’s the half-white in Charley Bent thet’ll do for us!”
A low, trampling, encircling roar of many hoofs augmented the excited shouts of freighters from the bluff. And suddenly it was drowned by an ear-splitting concatenated war whoop, pointed and sharp, yet prolonged and swelling to hideous proportions.
A band of painted savages riding mustangs as wild as themselves closed in on the caravan. The cannon boomed; the rifles barked. But the sudden gap in the stream of riding demons closed as if by magic, and on they came, pouring in at the gate. Clint and his several companions met that onslaught with deadly fire. Then they dove under the wagons to keep from being run down.
Clint kept firing from behind the heavy wagon wheel, and he saw grimly to it that he did not miss. His keen eye sought among the supple, flitting, painted bodies one that was dark and not red. And at last he got a fleeting glimpse of Charley Bent—the center of a knot of riders, wonderfully swift and wild. Clint’s aim was like his superhuman leap of lightning passion. Then through the smoke the demons raced by. They trooped in at the gate, glued to the necks of running mustangs. The roar of conflict spread around the caravan, proving that the Kiowas had not only entered the gate, but were coming over and under the wagons.
An endless smoky hell engulfed Clint Belmet. The battle had been hand to hand for what seemed a bloody age. But it might have been only moments. The milling of terrified horses and oxen, stampeding round and round the corral, unable to get out in any numbers, gave the battle a terrible confusion, and probably saved the freighters from utter annihilation. On foot the nimble daring savages bounded here, there, everywhere; and when a freighter clubbed one down he succumbed to the tomahawk of another. Rifle shots were few and far between, or else unheard in the deafening din. The cannon had never bellowed but once. Wagons were burning. At the far end of the oval the savages pulled out wagons, opening the corral for the bellowing, shrieking stock to pour forth like a dark flood.
Clint plunged through smoke, swinging a broken rifle, trying in the terrific maze to find comrades and keep with them. Smoke blew from the wagons, denser and denser. A circle of fire surrounded the freighters. Here and there in the dim blue haze groups of freighters and savages were contending, shooting, beating, struggling, mad beasts in the grip of blood lust. Clint rushed up to brain a Kiowa that was scalping a white man. He beat down two screeching devils that had set fire to the ammunition wagon.
A score and more of freighters, bloody and unconquerable, with Belmet at their head, gathered for a last stand in the center of the corral. The tide of terrific battle had set in their favor. They stood back to back, shooting the last few of their shells. The smoke was lifting, black and yellow above the roaring flames. A stench of burning hides filled the air. No more shots came from the rocky bluff. The squad of freighters had left it or had been killed.
Near the gate only one wagon was burning and that held the kegs of powder for the cannon and the boxes of ammunition for the rifles. A remnant of Kiowas collected there, fascinated by the chance to fire the last considerable number of wagons. A number lighted torches at the cracking fire which was consuming the ammunition wagon. They danced in a mad circle, torches aloft, in the light of the burning wagon.
A terrific red burst of flame! Crashing thunder! The wagon blew up and a black canopy flew out over the corral.
When the pall of smoke from that blast lifted the remaining Kiowas were fleeing out over the plain to their horses.
Belmet had twenty-two men left, including himself, all of them wounded, but none admitting their wounds serious.
“Stick together an’ we’ll make a round of the corral,” ordered Clint, huskily.
They found Copsy dead under the cannon, and Ireland lying across the breech, fuse clenched in his stiff hand. Henry Wells and two other freighters lay lifeless inside a circle of dead Kiowas. Jim Hatcher was half under a wagon, stiff and cold. He had been one of the first to go. Clint covered the staring eyes, and then kept his promise to the old caravan leader. The money belt Hatcher had asked Clint to take was thick and heavy. Years of saving—for what!
The dead and wounded were thick on all sides, and significantly, the wounded were always Indians. Once discovered alive, their last moment was brief.
Andy Morgan and Stevens, a little in advance, pulled an Indian from under a wagon. He had called out hoarsely.
“My turn, Steve,” said the ironical Andy, with slow deliberation swinging his gory rifle stock aloft.
The Indian had a dark body. Not red! Only red where a bloody stream welled from a bullet hole in his breast! His eyes were terrible in piercing quality, but they were not black. His face bore a ghastly scar!
“Hold on, Andy!” yelled Clint, springing forward just in time to check that battering rifle.
“Belmet!” said the man, weakly, in English.
“Yes, I’m Belmet,” replied Clint, and dropped to one knee.
“You know me?”
“I do—Lee Murdock.”
“That’s not—my real name,” came the eager reply, tragic to see in a man mortally wounded. “I’m Charley Bent.”
Andy knelt to lift the man’s head.
“Have a drink?” he said, offering a black flask.
The renegade with slight gesture waved it aside. He had done with drink.
“Belmet, if you’ll do me—a favor—I’ll tell you—something.”
“I will, if I can,” replied Clint, and the awful strife of the last hours seemed to break, leaving him human again.
“My old father is alive—still,” whispered the dying man. “Henry Bent. He’s in Kansas City. . . . I heard from him a year ago. He believed I had quit—this life. I don’t want him ever to know—I hadn’t. . . Will you tell him—or send word ——”
“But it’d be a black lie!” exclaimed Clint.
“He’s very old—he won’t live long,” implored the renegade. “He cared—for me!”
“All right, I’ll do it,” returned Clint.
Intensity flashed out of the man. The tight hold he had on his breast fell limp and the blood welled out.
“May Bell—is in Las Cruces—well—the same. . . . She—believes—you—dead.”
Night fell duskily red and lonely. The coyotes began their hue and cry. Slowly the fires died down to smoldering heaps.
The freighters bound up their wounds. Several of them, searching among the rocks, found three wounded comrades, one of whom soon died. A few of the wagons under the bluff had escaped being fired. With food and blankets the last of the freighters repaired to the river bottom, where they ate and rested.
Clint and Andy Morgan, with two other men, went out to find horses. By midnight they rounded up thirty, most of them the saddled animals that had been left by Blackstone’s band. Blankets were tied on some, and several were packed with food.
Clint led this silent remnant of a great caravan westward on the trail to Fort Larned. He and Hatcher had failed to deliver the most valuable caravan ever dispatched toward the east. They rode until dawn, hid in a creek bottom by day, and when night came they went on again. Stoical and indomitable they upheld the spirit of the frontier; and with two comrades lost on the way and two dying, they toiled at last into Fort Larned.
Chapter Twenty-One
NEXT day Clint Belmet joined an army caravan headed for Sant
a Fé, but as a guest. He lay in an army wagon. He had been shot, stabbed, tomahawked and clubbed. But these injuries were as nothing. His mind could almost have performed a miracle.
The crossing of the Pecos was a circumstance which gave him supreme joy. Somewhere, way down in New Mexico, west of the Pecos, was the little town of Las Cruces.
In Santa Fé he heard that his old friend and advisor, Kit Carson, was dying at Taos. Hardened as Clint had become to the simplicity and inevitableness of death on the frontier this news struck him deeply.
He rode over to Taos, to learn that Carson had been taken to the nearby army post. Clint made all the haste his condition would permit to go there. It had been many years since he had visited Fort Lyon, but he remembered the country, the post and even the army doctor who had charge of Carson.
“I met Kit Carson when I was a boy many years ago,” explained Clint. “He took a shine to me, and advised me how to meet the frontier. I’d not be alive today but for his kindly influence. I’d like to see him—tell him.”
“Sure, Belmet,” replied the doctor. “Kit will be glad to see you. Everybody who comes along the old trail runs over to see Kit. He’s finding out how he is loved by all the West. It’s reward enough, he thinks, for his service. But I’m one who thinks otherwise. Come in.”
Clint was ushered into a house where Kit Carson lay on a bed of buffalo hides. What a vast change in a man once so virile, so strong! He looked slight, shrunken, and the havoc of the approaching end showed in his haggard face. But not in those eagle eyes!
Carson ceased talking. He sat up. His eyes flashed. The Indian chief beside his bed gazed somberly from him to Clint. The army officers present turned to see who had entered.
“Kit, here’s an old friend,” said the doctor. “Do you know him?”
“Buff Belmet!” he ejaculated. “Put her thar!”
It needed no more to show Carson’s keen remembrance and Clint Belmet’s status on the frontier.
Perhaps that warm greeting, as well as the tragedy so surely felt here, had much to do with Clint’s deep-set emotions. At any rate, seldom, if ever, had he responded to questions as he did to Carson’s. Clint told him much of his later experience, and especially of the terrible fight at Pawnee Rock, of Jim Blackstone’s doom.