Kitabı oku: «Trumpeter Fred: A Story of the Plains», sayfa 5

CHAPTER XI.
HEMMED IN BY SAVAGE FOES

BACK at the cavalry camp there was no little subdued chat and wonderment among the troopers. Lounging in the shade of the trees along the stream, and puffing away at their pipes, playing cards, as soldiers will, and poking fun at one another in rough, good-natured ways, the men were yet full of the one absorbing theme – Fred Waller's most unaccountable disappearance and the loss of so much of their hard-earned money.

"I would have bet any amount," said Corporal Wright, "that when the old man" – the captain is always the "old man" to his troops – "got back he would ride over Sergeant Dawson roughshod for letting Waller slip away on his guard; but I listened to him this morning and he talked to him just like a Dutch uncle. I tell you Dawson felt a heap better after it was over. He said the captain never blamed him at all."

Noon came, so did an orderly telling Mr. Blunt that the captain wished to see him over at the telegraph office, and to order the horses fed at once. Forty-eight big portions of oats were poured from the sacks forthwith. Dawson and Donovan were not yet back.

"Leave theirs out," said Sergeant Graham, "they'll be back presently. This means business again, and no mistake. Where's the trouble now, I wonder?"

Shall we look and see? Far to the south, far beyond the bold bluffs of the White River, far beyond the swift waters of the Niobrara, – "L'Eau qui Court" of the old French trapper, – far across the swirling flood of the North Platte, and dotting the northward slopes, swarms of naked, brilliantly painted red warriors in their long, trailing war bonnets of eagle's feathers are darting about on nimble ponies, or, crouching prone along the ridges, are eagerly watching a dust-cloud coming northward on the Sidney road. Behind them, between them and the Platte, are the weltering mutilated bodies of half a dozen herders and teamsters, and the smoking ruins of their big freight-wagons. Like the tiger's taste of blood, the savage triumph in the death of their hapless foes has tempted them far beyond their accustomed limits. Knowing the cavalry to be scouting only north of the Platte, they have made a wide detour and swooped around to this danger-haunted road, eagerly watching for the coming of other white men, who, like the last, should be ignorant of their presence and too few in number to cope with such a foe. Here along the ridge north of the little "Branch" of the Platte, half a hundred young warriors crouch and wait. Farther back, equally vigilant, other bands are hiding among the breaks and ravines near the river, while their scouts keep vigilant watch for the coming of cavalry. Forrest's Grays and Wallace's Sorrels cannot be more than a day's ride away, and will be hurrying for the road the moment they know that the Indians have slipped around them. Wallace, up the Platte, has already heard.

It is three o'clock this hot, still Sunday afternoon, and they have been six hours out from Sidney, driving swiftly and steadily northward, when, as they reach the summit of a high ridge and stop to breathe their panting team, Colonel Gaines takes a long look through his field glass. Just in front is the shallow valley of the little stream now called the "Pumpkinseed" though pumpkins were unheard-of features in the landscape of fifteen years ago.

Off to their right front, several miles away, lie the low, broad bottom lands of the Platte. Across the Pumpkinseed, a mile distant, another ridge, like the one on which they halted, only not so high; to the westward a tumbling sea of prairie upland – all buttes, ridges, ravines, coulées – but not a living soul is anywhere in sight. Far as his practiced eye can sweep the horizon and the broad lowlands of the Platte not a sign of living, moving object can Colonel Gaines detect. Turning around, he trains his glass upon the tortuous road they had been following, and along which the dust is slowly settling in their wake. Something seems to attract his gaze, for he holds the binocle steadily toward the south. Naturally Captain Cross and the two soldiers follow with their eyes; the third infantryman has dismounted, and is readjusting the girths of his saddle.

"What is it?" asks Cross.

"I can't make out," is the reply, "Something is kicking up a dust there, some miles behind us. A horseman, I should say, though I've seen nobody. Wait a few minutes. He's down in a swale now, whoever it is."

Everybody turns to look and listen. Those were days when such a thing as a single horseman following in pursuit had a meaning that is lacking now.

Three, four minutes they wait in silence; then the colonel suddenly exclaims:

"I have him – a mere dot yet!"

Presently he lowers his glasses, and dusts the lenses with his handkerchief. His face is graver.

"Whoever that is, he is riding for all he is worth," he says. "I half believe he wants to catch us."

Another long look. Utter silence in the party. A mule in the wheel team gives an impatient shake of his entire system, and chains, tugs, and swing-bars all rattle noisily.

"Quiet there, you fool!" growls the driver angrily, and with a threatening sweep of his long whip-lash. Then the silence becomes intense again, and every man strains his eyes over the prairie slopes shimmering in the heat of the July sun. Suddenly an exclamation bursts from two or three pairs of bearded lips. Far away, but in plain sight in that rare atmosphere, a speck of a horseman darts into view over a distant ridge, sweeps down the slope at full gallop, and plunges out of sight again in a low dip of the rolling surface.

"No man rides like that unless there is mischief abroad," mutters Cross, as he swings out of the wagon to the ground. "Give me my rifle, Murray."

Then, sudden as thunderclap from summer sky, with wild, shrill clamor, with thunder of hoofs, and sputter of rapid shots; with yell and taunt and hideous war cry, from the very ground itself, from behind every little ridge; up from the ravines, down from the prairie buttes; hurling upon them in mad, raging race, there flashes into sight of their startled eyes a horde of painted savages.

"The Sioux! The Sioux!" yells the driver, as he leaps from his box.

"Hang on to your mules!" shouts Cross. "Down with you, men! Fire slow! They'll veer when they get in closer. Now!"

Bang! goes Cross' piece. Bang! bang! the rifles of the nearest soldiers. The mules plunge wildly, and are tangled in an instant in the traces. Over goes the wagon with a crash. Bang goes Gaines' big Springfield as he coolly spreads himself on the ground. An Indian pony stumbles and hurls his rider on the turf, and Cross gives an exultant cheer. Yet all the same he knows full well that now it is life or death. The little party is hemmed in by a host of savage foes.

CHAPTER XII.
MYSTERIOUS HOOF-PRINTS

IT was Saturday night that, from far up the Platte, the news came to Captain Wallace of the dash made by the Sioux for the Sidney road. For two days previous he had been hunting Indians upstream toward the Rawhide, and had found a perfect network of pony tracks and had had some very distant glimpses of flitting warriors. His scouts had told him that the Sioux and Cheyennes were swarming over the country to the northwest of him, and that none had appeared to the east. It was his business, therefore, to move against them, and move he did, trusting that Forrest and the Grays would be alert along the southern verge of the reservations that no formidable parties could slip southward in his absence.

But this was simply part and parcel of the Indian scheme. Having lured him two days' march away from the Sidney crossing, these enterprising warriors kept him occupied, while their confederates, making a wide detour around Forrest, slipped across the Platte and swooped down upon the poor fellows with the freight wagons. Only one of their number managed to escape, and he, madly riding westward, came upon some herdsmen who promptly joined him in his flight. They had seen the cavalry going up the north bank a day or two before, and they never drew rein until they found them. Wallace at once sent couriers westward to Fort Laramie with the news, and at break of day started downstream with his whole troop. They had not marched five miles before they came upon the hoof-prints of a single horse, and just beyond the point where these hoofprints crossed their trail, the tracks of half a dozen Indian ponies met their eager eyes. One old sergeant, reining out of column to the right, followed the shod tracks over to the river bank, and a lieutenant spurred out and joined him when he signaled with his broad-brimmed scouting hat. The rest of the troop moved stolidly ahead.

Presently the young officer overtook the column and reined in beside his captain.

"Where did they go, Park?"

"Straight into the stream, sir, and evidently to the other side. Sergeant Brooks says 'twas a troop horse with a light rider, and that he had to swim across. The river is six feet deep out there, but it was his only way of escape. The Indians couldn't have been far behind, and yet they didn't follow. Their tracks turn down the bank on this side. Brooks is following them now."

"Who on earth could have come through here at such a time? Why, the country has been running over with Indians!"

"That's what puzzles me, sir, but Brooks says there is no mistake. It's the cavalry shoe, of course. It's just after pay day at Robinson. Could it have been a deserter?"

"No man in his senses would have dared such a thing," is the impatient answer. "It may be some other infernal trick to get us away from our legitimate business. What we've got to do is reach that Sidney road by sunset. By Jove! if I'm court-martialed for this business, it won't surprise me." And the captain's horse evidently felt the sudden grip of the knees, for he took a sudden spurt and set most of the troop at the nerve-wearing jog-trot. Mr. Park said nothing more, but for the life of him he could not help thinking of those lone hoofprints and of that solitary rider. Who could he be?

It is time we got back to him. Only one man or boy, known to us at least, could have come that way. It was Trumpeter Fred.

Daybreak Friday had found him a few miles south of the Niobrara, and close to the Laramie road. At noon Friday he had halted at the Rawhide to rest his horse and take a bite of luncheon, but all his young soul was athrill with eagerness; every faculty was alert. Warned of the recent presence of Indians on every side, he was yet seeking to gain the Platte before nightfall; cross to the south bank, where there was comparative safety; ride southeastward until his horse was exhausted, picket him where grass and water were near at hand, sleep till dawn again, and then push on. He must reach the Sidney road before Sunday morning and strike it far below the river.

But here, as he neared the valley, a sight had met his eyes which made his young heart leap. The banks of the Rawhide were dotted here and there by fresh pony tracks, and, coming from the distant ridges to the east, they had gone in as though to water, and then turned down toward the Platte, the very way he wanted to go. An hour, with his horse hidden behind him in a shallow ravine, Fred Waller was lying prone upon the ground, and peering over a ridge into the low, level wastes stretching far to the southeast, bordering the Platte to the very horizon. What most attracted his gaze was a little dust cloud, miles away downstream, into which tiny black dots were moving, with other little dots scurrying about at some distance from the main cluster. No need to tell him they were Indians.

It was some minutes before he could determine which way they were really going, but when he finally saw that they were bound down the valley, the boy's heart beat high with hope. He could venture down to the Platte as soon as they had passed entirely out of sight, and find some place to cross well to the west of them. An hour he waited and still they were in view. Then they seemed to disappear in a little clump of timber. He waited fifteen to twenty minutes, and they were still there. Then it suddenly dawned upon him that the whole band were resting in the shade while their scouts searched the neighborhood. He was five or six miles from the river, and every inch of ground in front was open. He knew well that their eyes were keener than his, and should he make a dash for it they would certainly see and give chase. What he could not detect, and did not dream of, was that miles still further away down the Platte another dust cloud was slowly advancing – Wallace's troop coming upstream – and their scouts were watching that.

At last, after another hour of anxiety, he determined to slip away westward, go up the Rawhide a few miles until he could gain the shelter of some low-lying ridges, crossing the stream, and making a wide circuit, sweep around to the Platte. He might still reach it before dark and find a ford, or at least a place to swim across; he could trust "Big Jim" for that. But even as he would have put this plan in execution, he saw to his dismay a new move among the warriors. Four little dots came riding from the timber and pushing back up the valley. These were only the advance. In half an hour the whole band came jogging leisurely out of the shadows, and little dots farther east came streaking across the flats to join them. Fred saw that the whole war party was now retracing its steps and coming back upstream, and that now, if he waited, he might pursue his original intention of crossing at the shallows, ten miles below the mouth of the Rawhide. And so, patiently and pluckily, he kept his ground, – "Big Jim" contentedly filling himself with buffalo grass the while, – and not until the sun was low in the west did Fred realize their real intent. Just as the scouts, far in advance of the main party, reached the winding banks of the Rawhide, they seemed to hold brief consultation; one of them plunged through to the western side, the other three turned and came straight toward the watching boy.

Great Heavens! It meant that the whole party was coming up the Rawhide, and before dark would find and follow his track. Fred's first impulse was to mount, and giving Jim the spurs, ride on the wings of the wind back to the north – back to the Niobrara, where he had left the troop in bivouac. There at least was safety, for they could not trail him in the dark. But the second thought covered him with shame. Go back – go back now! Never, so long as he had a chance for life and hope. Away from here, and instantly, he must speed on his mission, and in another moment his girth was tightened, and "Big Jim," astonished, was racing away eastward, but keeping the sheltered ridge between him and the Platte.