Of one thing he was certain; the saddle was bound very soon to fall from the pony's back, and he must as surely go with it, possibly to be trampled to death under the hoofs of the Indians' horses.
He prepared himself for the inevitable fall, designing to fling himself off where there were no rocks to strike against, but only earth and sage grass.
First he made sure that the bridle rein was free, and that nothing would catch upon the saddle when he should drag it after him with his entangled foot.
The foremost Indian was but a couple of lengths behind him when he pulled at the left rein, threw the bridle forward, and flung himself bodily to the ground.
The pony swerved to the left in obedience, and Kiddie escaped its hind hoofs. He fell flat on his back, with his legs and feet in the air. The heavy saddle followed him, sliding down over the pony's hocks, and it was the saddle that got the worst of it when the Redskins galloped past.
Kiddie, indeed, received no injury from the madly pounding hoofs. But his back was badly bruised; he was not sure that one or two of his ribs were not broken; and his right ankle was certainly sprained.
It was evident that the Indians had not expected him to be thrown, for they raced past him, and several moments went by before they could swing round.
In those moments Kiddie rolled painfully over on to his knees and elbows. There was no time for him to cut the stirrup strap, or to attempt to get his hurt foot free. All that he could do was to be ready to defend the two precious satchels containing the mails.
Moving himself forward a few inches, so that he could stretch out his right leg and rest his weight on his left knee and elbow, he drew his revolver and levelled it.
He could not now see the Indians. They were hidden beyond a screen of trees and rock. But he heard them as they checked their wild onrush and turned to ride back and do their worst. He was quite ready for them; he had six bullets in his gun, and none should be wasted.
Suddenly amid the confused clatter of hoofs there came to him the sharp, unmistakable crackle of rifle and pistol shots. Then the Indians rushed into sight, galloping in hot haste.
Kiddie fired at two of them, and was shifting his aim to a third, when he realized that they were in flight—that they were being pursued by a horseman who had newly come upon the scene, and who was firing at them with his six-shooter.
Only now did Kiddie reflect that in the ordinary course of his eastward bound trip he would have met the westward going Express rider just at about this same place.
"Alf! Alf Kearney!" he shouted.
The Expressman pulled up short. He had already emptied his revolver, and the Redskins were continuing their flight.
"Frizzle me if it ain't Kiddie of the Camp!" cried Kearney, dismounting and standing with his hands on his knees, staring at the fallen Expressman. "Say, now, are you hurt bad, pardner? I seen your riderless pony hustlin' along with that crowd of yellin' Injuns at its heels. I guessed suthin' had sure happened t' yer, though it ain't a regulation Express pony. Where 're you hurt? You're in luck if you ain't killed right out."
"Frizzle me if it ain't Kiddie of the Camp!" cried Kearney.
"I'm in sure luck by your happening along," responded Kiddie, trying with difficulty to move. "Say, if you c'n rip open that boot and disentangle my sprained foot from that rotten saddle, I shall be obliged. Then I reckon I c'n lie here while you ride along the trail with your mails and send help, see?"
Alf Kearney demurred to the suggestion, but at once proceeded to liberate Kiddie's foot, first cutting the stirrup-strap and then ripping open the stout leather boot.
"Couldn't you manage ter mount behind me?" he questioned. "My pony's fit ter carry us both, I guess. Like as not, Broken Feather and his gang'll come back. You ain't anyways safe lyin' here, rain comin' on; an' the sooner a doctor sees you the better."
"Broken Feather?" Kiddie repeated. "If that's the rustler wearin' the war-bonnet and ridin' a piebald broncho, then he ain't liable ter come back—not with my bullet in him. I didn't catch sight of his face—didn't savee it was Broken Feather. No, Alf, thank you, I ain't able ter mount. Leave me right here, hustle along with the Express, and send help from your first relay station."
The long, weary night that followed was very dark, and the two men sent along the trail to give help searched in vain for Kiddie in the driving rain. They had brought a buckboard cart with them in which to carry him home to Sweetwater Bridge.
They searched for hours, but even when they discovered some rain-washed hoof prints it was too dark for them to follow the tracks. It was not until daybreak that they found Kiddie asleep under his blanket, with the saddle for a pillow and his arms, with their red shirt sleeves, folded over his chest.
He awoke when they whistled. They ran up to him, afterwards bringing along the buckboard, into which they tenderly lifted him. The jolting of the cart was painful to him, but when at length they arrived at Birkenshaw's camp he declared that he wasn't at all badly hurt.
"Just leave me alone, boys," he said, "I don't want you ter make any fuss over me. There's nothing serious the matter—a few bruises, a sprained ankle, a kinder gen'ral shakin' up; that's all. I shall be ready to go with the Express again before Jim Thurston, even now."
"No occasion ter worry any 'bout the Express, Kiddie," said Abe Harum, massaging the injured ankle with embrocation. "I'm notionin' ter take a spell at it myself fer a while, a kinder change for me, see?—good as a holiday. Besides, thar's two individuals I'm anxious ter meet. One of 'em's the rooster as palmed off that rotten saddle on you. The other's Broken Feather. You'd a legitimate chance of puttin' his light out, Kiddie. Nobody e'd have blamed you any if you'd aimed at a vital section of his anatomy; but you let him off with little more'n a scratch. And that ambush was all planned. Rube here's just hungerin' an' thirstin' ter tell you all about Broken Feather's friendly call along at your woodland cabin while he knew you was absent. Ain't that so, Rube?"
"Yes," Rube answered, coming forward to Kiddie's side.
Rube then told the whole story of Broken Feather's surreptitious visit to the forest clearing, of the discovery that it was he who shot the poisoned arrow and of his threat that Kiddie would never come back.
"So you see, Kiddie," supplemented Abe Harum, "the skunk meant ter do you in. When he quitted the clearin', 'fore the hound struck his trail, he went right away ter put his rascally plan into operation. He an' his braves lay in wait for you ter gallop along. As I remarked before, it's a pity you didn't plant that bullet of yours where it would sure be fatal. It's your way, I know. You'd sooner cripple than kill. You show mercy even to a Injun—even to your deadliest enemy. An' Broken Feather's your enemy. You're what's called hereditary enemies, if I knows the meaning of the term."
"That's so, Abe," said Kiddie. "His father, Eye-of-the-Moon, shot my mother dead. It was Eye-of-the-Moon who killed my father, Buckskin Jack, in the Custer fight. On the other hand, it was my maternal grandfather, Spotted Tail, who killed Eye-of-the-Moon in their duel on horseback that I've so often told you about. And now it seems Broken Feather and I are at enmity."
"Yes," put in Gideon Birkenshaw, "but I ain't figgerin' as Broken Feather's takin' heredity inter consideration; not a whole lot. He don't keer a brass button who his father killed, or who killed his father. 'Cordin' ter Redskin reckonin' they've all gone on the long trail to the Happy Huntin' Grounds, an' they're no longer objec's in the scen'ry. Broken Feather's got his own pussonal reasons fer enmity agin your lordship. He knows as you're a long sight cleverer'n he is as an all-round scout; he's some afraid o' your cleverness. He knows you're wealthy; he covets your wealth. He knows you're honest; an' the one pusson as a rogue most dislikes is the man who acts allus on the straight. Moreover, Kiddie, you've already got the better of Broken Feather on several occasions, an' he ain't liable ter forget it."
"Gee!" exclaimed Rube Carter. "Never know'd th' Old Man make sich a long an' logical oration in me life before!"
"You've got yer own remed
y, however," resumed Gideon. "It's agin th' law fer Injuns ter come outer their reservations, same as Broken Feather an' his braves have been doin' lately. The hull thing 'ld be stopped if you'd only appeal t' th' law fer pertection."
"But suppose I don't approve of the Indians being herded like sheep in fenced reservations?" Kiddie objected. "Suppose I'm of opinion that in a free land like this all men should be equally free, Redskin and Paleface alike? No, Gid, I ain't figuring to appeal to the law. If I need any protection against a man such as Broken Feather, I'll do the business on my own, and a gun, a fleet horse, and my own common sense are good enough for me, without the interference of the law."
CHAPTER IX
KIDDIE'S "SELFISHNESS"
Kiddie's fall had been violent, and might easily have been fatal; but it had been neither sudden nor unexpected, while his experience with bucking bronchos, and his great skill as a horseman, had helped him to avoid serious physical injury.
He was bruised, he was shaken; but no bones were broken, and his worst injury was his sprained ankle. This gave him acute pain and inconvenience for many days, requiring care and rest.
Naturally he fretted under the forced inactivity; he became impatient, and when at length he could limp from his room to the veranda, he wanted to mount a horse and ride along to the forest clearing to superintend the building of his cabin.
"There's no need fer you ter go an' see things," Rube Carter insisted. "Jus' you have a good rest until you're quite well. Everything's goin' on famous. We've gotten the roof on, an' we're now fixin' up your bedroom, so's you kin occupy it while the rest of the shanty's bein' finished."
"Yes," pursued Kiddie. "But I want to be there right now. I'm hankerin' badly to see how it looks, ter judge what it'll be like when all the work's done and we've got the fixings in—the books and pictures and all that. I'm envying you terrible, Rube, being there every day and watching the thing grow. I'm envying you being able to see the wild critters while I'm kept a prisoner here on account of a fool saddle that was broken and mended with rotten string. I guess you've seen heaps of things this morning—new birds, new insects, new beasts, and wild flowers that you couldn't put a name to, eh?"
"Dunno 'bout that," said Rube. "Dunno as I saw anythin' as I hadn't seen before."
"Ah, you've got a heap to learn yet, Rube," Kiddie rejoined. "Why, when I'm out and about there's never a day, never an hour, hardly a minute, but I see something new, learn something fresh in woodcraft and scoutcraft. You don't go along with your eyes shut and your ears and nostrils closed, do you? What did you see early this mornin', for example, when you went across the grass patch, the dew still lying?"
"Say, now, how d'you know I saw anythin'?" Rube asked. "You was in bed."
"Yes, but I could see you from my pillow. You went aside from the straight trail."
"That's so," acknowledged Rube. "I was tryin' ter foller a track in the dew—some biggish animal, I guess; but thar wasn't no footmarks—not in the long grass—an' the track didn't lead to nothin'—only a root of dandelion with the leaves chewed off."
"Perhaps you went the wrong way," suggested Kiddie. "Was the track lighter than the rest of the grass, or darker?"
"Um! Now you puzzle me," demurred Rube. "I ain't just sure; but I guess it was darker. Yes, it was sure darker. Why? What's that gotter do with it?"
"Why? Well, a scout would sure know that grass blades bent towards him look dark; bent away from him, light. If the trail of your biggish animal this morning was darker than the grass, then you didn't follow him, you were going away from him all the time. He was probably a stoat on the track of a jack-rabbit. If you'd followed the other way, you might have seen where that stoat chased his victim into its burrow, and you might have seen where he came out again alone, after his feed underground. There's a heap of information in a track, Rube, altogether independent of plain footprints."
Rube rested his chin in his hands, listening.
"Suppose a bicycle or an automobile car had gone along a dusty or a muddy trail," continued Kiddie, "and you wanted to know which way it was travelling, what 'ld you do ter discover? You'd look at the rut the wheel had made. You'd see that the loose dust or the wet mud feathered out from it in the direction in which the wheel was going. No need ter search for footprints. It's the same with drops of blood from a wound, drops of water splashed from a jug or a bucket—any drippin' liquid; the drops splash forward in the direction in which the person splashing them was movin', the splashes being longer or shorter according to the person's pace. If you aim at being a capable scout—a good tracker—don't study the obvious things alone: look as well at the smaller signs, which often tell you more. And wherever you are, whatever you're doing, keep your senses busy—your sight, your hearing, your senses of smell and touch. At the present moment my senses tell me there's a mosquito in this yer veranda: I c'n hear the critter humming away back of me. I know that we're goin' to have bacon and eggs for dinner; I c'n smell them bein' fried. The kitchen's some warm; your mother has opened the window; I c'n feel the draught from it."
In the days of Kiddie's convalescence, Rube learnt many a lesson in scoutcraft; lessons which he hastened to put into practice. It was afterwards, however, when Kiddie was well, and they could go camping out together in the wilds, that he learnt most. In the meantime, there was the work of building the woodland cabin to attend to.
He had at first intended that the cabin should be constructed by his own hands alone, of rough, unhewn timber; that it should contain only one room, and that of the simplest. It was to be merely a trapper's log hut in the forest, and he was to live as a simple trapper, quite alone, forgetting that he was a wealthy English nobleman.
But gradually his ideals had developed, and he had decided to make the place comfortable and convenient as well as simple and solitary—to make it, as it were, his headquarters, where he could store his trophies of the chase and keep his guns and books and pictures.
If he wished to go away on hunting trips, he could leave the cabin in safety, and take his pony and his tent and knapsack and live as a lone trapper in the woods, moving from place to place, always having a home to come back to if he wished. What he had always to fight against was an inclination towards luxury and labour-saving convenience. He had bought a patent camp cooking-stove in New York. It was capable of cooking anything, from a sirloin to a savoury. But when he unpacked it he saw how incongruous such a thing was with the domestic economy of a shanty in the forest.
"What does a plain trapper want with fancy fixings like this, anyway?" he asked himself. "If he's hankerin' after delicacies an' dainty cookery, he'd best quit right back to London. My food's goin' ter be frizzled over an open wood fire, and that dinky, high-class kitchen range is goin' right away to the bottom of Sweetwater Pond."
He allowed himself to stain the outer planks of the dwelling, but not to use any decorative paints which an ordinary trapper or an Indian could not procure. A garden, with flowers as well as vegetables, and creepers for the veranda, he considered necessaries, just as frames for pictures, shelves for his books, racks for his guns, and cupboards for his crockery were necessary.
There were three rooms in the cabin—a large living-room, which was also kitchen, a workroom, and a bedroom; and they were all three very simply furnished. Not far behind the cabin were the sheds and outhouses, the stables, cow-house, and barns; and down at the lakeside was a boathouse, in which to keep his canoes and fishing materials.
This was the secluded home which Lord St. Olave was making for himself, in preference to a grand house in London and a great mansion on his vast estate in Norfolk, with innumerable servants to wait upon him, and crowds of fashionable friends to enjoy his hospitality. He was realizing his wish to abandon the social whirl of London and to return to his native wilds. But he was not yet wholly satisfied with his choice.
He entered the living-room one afternoon looking weary and untidy, and flung himself into an easy-chair, giving a curt nod of greeting to Gideo
n Birkenshaw, who had strolled down from the homestead to have tea with him.
"Tired, Kiddie?" Gideon inquired. "Bin workin' too hard?"
"No," returned Kiddie, "I ain't tired. I'm never tired."
"Ankle still hurtin' you some, mebbe?" pursued Gideon.
"Ankle's gettin' along all right," Kiddie assured him. "Guess it'll soon be's well's ever. Shall we have tea? Rube'll get it ready."
Gideon did not respond to the invitation.
"Buildin's progressin' all s'rene," he observed. "I like this yer room. It's real homesome; and the view fr'm your front windows and the veranda's real elegant. Time you gets a collection o' choice flowers in your door-yard, you'll have 'bout the most desirable residence in the hull state of Wyoming. Ain't you satisfied? What's the matter?"
"I'm just some worr'ed, Gid," Kiddie answered, flinging a leg over the arm of his chair.
"My!" exclaimed Gideon. "What in creation 've you gotter worry about?"
"Just the cabin," Kiddie answered dreamily. "Just the cabin and my living in it all lonesome; enjoyin' it—enjoyin' it too much. It's just what I've wanted. Everything's all as I planned. But I've bin thinkin', Gideon; thinking hard."
"That ain't a new experience fer you, Kiddie," said Gid. "You was allus' a deep thinker. Guess it's the Injun blood in you assertin' itself. An' what's the matter wi' the cabin ter make you meditate an' worry?"
"Why," Kiddie responded slowly, keeping his Western manner of speech, as was usual with him when addressing Gideon Birkenshaw, "I've come to the conclusion as it ain't just right an' proper o' me ter live here with everything I most covet in the shape of personal comfort—a cosy home in beautiful scenery, with the perfumed pine trees all around, the woodland solitude, where I c'n study the wild critters, beasts an' birds an' insects; the creek an' the lake, where I c'n paddle an' fish; my time all my own, with no slavish duties, no tasks, no responsibilities. An' it's all selfish, Gid, real mean an' selfish."
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