Kitabı oku: «Golden Face: A Tale of the Wild West», sayfa 12
Chapter Twenty Eight
A Terrible Drama
The waggon train had just pulled out.
Winding along over the wide prairie came the string of great cumbrous vehicles, their white tilts gleaming in the morning sunshine, the monotonous creaking of their axles mingling with the cheery shout of the “bullwhackers” and the crack of whips. Here and there along the line rode horsemen in twos and threes, some leading spare horses, others giving a general eye to the progress of the train. Squads of children chattered and squabbled in the waggons, a shrill feminine voice now and again rising high in remonstration. Women sat placidly sewing or knitting – indulging too in gossip – of which perhaps Yseulte Santorex was the subject more frequently than she would have guessed or approved. All were in good spirits, for their journey was nearing its end. No room was there for apprehension either, for they had now reached the extreme limits of the Sioux range. So far from all minds was any thought of danger that even scouting precautions had been of late very much relaxed.
Thus they journeyed.
“There’s something moving away there on the bluff, Dave,” said Winthrop, suddenly, shading his eyes.
“D’you say so, Colonel?” answered the cowboy, who with his employer and mate was riding some little way ahead of the train. “Likely enough it’s Smokestack Bill coming back. He started off in that direction before daybreak to hunt.”
They were skirting a range of low round-topped bluffs, on one of which had appeared the object which attracted Winthrop’s attention.
“It’s gone now,” said the latter, still gazing intently. “I could have sworn it was somebody’s head.”
“Oh, thunder! Look!” said the cowboy, quickly reining in his horse with a jerk.
Well might even his stout heart – the heart of every soul in that company – die away. For the crest of the bluff was by magic alive with mounted figures. A great sheet of flame burst forth, and amid the deafening crash of the volley a storm of leaden missiles whizzed and hummed around the ears of the party. Oregon Dave had uttered his last words. He threw up his arms with a stiffening jerk, and toppled heavily from his saddle.
Then followed a scene of indescribable terror and confusion. Rending the air with their shrill, vibrating war-whoop, a vast crowd of painted horsemen swooped down in full charge upon the doomed and demoralised whites. Flinging themselves behind their trained steeds, the Sioux delivered their fire with deadly effect, then, recovering themselves in the saddle with cat-like agility, they rode in among their writhing, shrieking victims, spearing and tomahawking right and left. Perfectly mad with terror, the draught animals stampeded. Waggons were overturned, and their inmates flung screaming to the ground, or crushed and mangled beneath the wreckage.
The surprise was complete; the demoralisation perfect. Utterly panic-stricken, helpless with dismay, men allowed themselves to be cut down without offering a shadow of resistance. Apart from the terror inspired by the suddenness of the onslaught, there was literally not a minute of time wherein to mass together and strike a blow in defence. Even the privilege of selling their lives dearly was denied these doomed ones.
The waggon train, pulled out at its full length, offered an easy prey, and along this line, after the first and fatal charge, the warriors, breaking up into groups, urged their fleet ponies; shooting down the wretched emigrants with their revolvers, and ruthlessly spearing such few who, being wounded, instinctively tried to crawl away. Whooping, yelling, whistling, brandishing their weapons, they strove to increase the terror of the maddened teams, who, unable to break loose, upset the vehicles wholesale. They goaded the frenzied animals with their lance-points, laughing like fiends if the wheels passed over the bodies of any of the inmates thrown out or trying to escape; and once when a whole family, driven wild with terror, instinctively flung themselves from the creaking, swaying vehicle, which, upsetting at that moment, crushed mother and children alike in a horrible mangled heap beneath the splintering wreckage, the glee of the savages knew no bounds.
It was all over in a moment. Not a man was left standing – not a man with power in him to strike another blow. All had been slain or were lying wounded unto death. All? Stay! All save one.
Winthrop, alone out of all that outfit, was untouched. But he had better have been dead. His wife! Oh, good God! For her to fall into the power of these fiends!
There was the light horse waggon; but between himself and it already surged a crowd of skimming warriors. Many a piece was aimed at him – many a bullet sang about his ears, but still he went unscathed.
Spurring his horse, straight for the waggon he went – straight into the thick of the yelling, whirling crowd. Already, searing his ears like molten lead, rose the piercing shrieks of miserable women writhing beneath the scalping-knife, or struggling in the outraging grasp of the victorious barbarians. He sees a number of small bodies flung high into the air – even marks the piteous terror in the faces of the wretched little infants as they fall, to be caught dexterously on the bright lance-points extended to receive them, and the laughing yells of the painted fiends as the warm blood spurts forth and falls in jets upon their hands and persons. All this passes before his eyes and ears as a vision of hell, and more than one of those fierce and ruthless assailants deftly turns his horse away rather than face the awful fury of despair blazing from his livid countenance. One after another falls before his revolver. A moment more and he will reach his wife. Then they will both die together by his own hand.
The crowd of whirling centaurs seems to give way before him, and with his eye upon his goal he spurs between their ranks. But a roar of mocking laughter greets his ears.
The canvas curtains of the waggon-tilt part, and a great savage, hideously painted, springs forth, uttering an exultant whoop as he brandishes something in the air. It is a scalp – the blood trickling freely down the long, shining, silky tress.
The whoop dies in the Indian’s throat. Winthrop’s ball has sped true. His wife’s slayer falls heavily, still grasping in the locked grip of death the relic of the murdered victim. Yet, grim as it may seem, the murderer really deserves the gratitude of both. Then a thumping blow on the arm sends his pistol flying out of his hand.
“How! white Colonel,” says a gruff voice at his side. “How! Crow-Scalper big chief. White scalp damn better nor ‘chuck.’ How?”
Grinning with delight, the gigantic warrior extended his hand in the most friendly fashion; with difficulty curbing the plunges of his excited steed. He felt sure of his prey now.
Not yet.
Quick as thought, Winthrop had whipped out another pistol – a Derringer.
But for a timely swerve, Crow-Scalper would have been sent straight to his fathers. Then thinking things had gone far enough, the chief pointed his revolver and shot the unfortunate Englishman dead.
It was all over in a moment – the firing and the din, the shrieks of tortured women, the dying groans of mortally-wounded men – over in an infinitely shorter time than it takes to narrate. Not a man was left alive; and already many a corpse lay where it had fallen, stripped and gory, a hideous mangled object in the barbarous mutilation which it had undergone. Some of the Indians were busy looting the waggons. Others, scattered far and wide over the plain, were in pursuit of the fleeing animals, which had stampeded in every direction. All were in the wildest degree of excitement and exultation. They had mastered the outfit at a stroke, with the loss of only three warriors. They had wiped out their former defeat, and had reaped a rich harvest of scalps. They accordingly set to work to make merry over their plunder.
Over the worst of what followed we will draw a veil. There were females in that doomed waggon train. Where these are concerned the red man, in his hour of victory, is the most brutal, the most ungovernable fiend in the world.
Singing, dancing, feasting, whooping, the barbarians kept up their hideous orgie. Then in furtherance of a new amusement a number of them began to pile together the beams and planks of the wrecked waggons until a huge heap was formed, in shape something like a rough kiln. Up to this structure were dragged about a dozen bodies.
Dead bodies? No; living.
Men wounded unto helplessness and death, yet still with just the spark of life in them. Women, two or three, too elderly or unattractive to fulfil the terrible fate invariably befalling the female captive of the ruthless red man. Some of the elder children who had not been speared were also there. All these, bound and helpless, were first deliberately scalped, then flung inside the improvised kiln. Fire was applied.
Drowning the appalling shrieks of their miserable victims in shrill peals of laughter, the whole array of painted and feathered fiends danced and circled around the blazing pyre in an ecstasy of glee. For upwards of an hour this frightful scene continued. Then when the anguish of the tortured victims had sunk in death, the savages gathered up their spoils and departed, refraining from setting fire to any more of the wreckage lest the too conspicuous sign of their bloody work should by its volume be visible at a greater distance than they desired.
One more tragedy of the wild and blood-stained West. A pack of coyotes, snapping and snarling over their meal of mangled and defaced corpses, whose scalpless skulls shone red and clotted in the sunlight. A cloud of wheeling, soaring vultures, a few piles of charred and shattered wreckage, and many an oozy, shining pool of gore. One more frightful massacre. One more complete and ruthless holocaust to the unquenchable vendetta ever burning between the unsparing red man and his hated and despised foe, the invading white.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Thermopylae
“The camp is attacked,” said Yseulte, not even pausing to brush off the dust which had gathered upon her clothing during her passage into and out of the “dug-out.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Both stood eagerly listening. Again came the long, crackling roll, this time more dropping and desultory, also more distinct than when they first heard it underground.
“How will it end?” she asked.
Their glances met. In the grave and serious expression of her companion’s face Yseulte read the worst.
“We must hope for the best. Meanwhile, my first care must be for your safety, so we must leave this spot at once. See what comes of allowing oneself to get careless. As a matter of fact, we are off the Sioux range, and reckoning on that we haven’t been scouting so carefully as we ought.”
“When can we return to the camp?”
“Not a moment before dark,” he replied, wondering if she knew that the chances were a hundred to one against there being any camp to return to. For to his experienced mind the situation was patent. That sudden and heavy fusillade meant a numerous war-party. It also meant a surprise. Further, and worst of all, he realised that at the time it took place the waggon train would have pulled out, in which event the Indians would not allow it time to corral. Again, the firing had completely ceased, which meant that one of two things had happened. Either the assailants had been beaten off; which was hardly likely within such a short space of time. Or they had carried the whole outfit at the first surprise; and this he decided was almost certain. But there was no need to break the terrible news to his companion.
“Can we not wait here?” said the latter. “We could retire into the ‘dug-out’ if they discovered us.”
“How very near your ideal of fun has come to being realised!” was the reply, with a shadow of a smile. “No, we should stand no chance.”
It did not escape Yseulte that, previous to starting, her escort gave a quick, careful look to her saddlery and girths, pausing to tighten the latter, and her heart sank with a chill and direful foreboding.
“You see, it’s this way,” continued Vipan. “It is almost certain that the war-party is a Sioux one, probably our old friends Crow-Scalper and Mountain Cat. This is the extreme western edge of the Sioux range, consequently when the reds quit the scrimmage they are bound to travel north or north-east. So we must put as much space as we can between us and them in the contrary direction. For the same reason, if your friends have whipped them – ”
He paused abruptly, but it was too late. She turned to him, her eyes dilating with horror.
“If! Oh, tell me the truth. You think they have no chance?”
“One can but hope for the best.” She turned her face away, and the tears fell thick and fast. She could hardly realise it. Her dear friends, under whose protection she had travelled many and many a day, in whose companionship she had been initiated into the delights of this wild new land, and also its perils, now massacred; even at that moment, perhaps, falling beneath the merciless blows of these bloodthirsty savages. She could hardly realise it. Her mind felt numb. Even the sense of her own peril failed to come home to her.
But her companion realised it to the full. This was no time to think of anything but how to neglect no possible means of effecting her safety, yet he could not banish the thrill of triumph which the thought inspired in him that her fate, her very life, was absolutely in his hands. Suddenly she turned to him. The black drop of suspicion was corroding her mind.
“Why did you bring me away from them all this morning?” she said, speaking quickly and in a hard tone. “Did you know what was going to happen?”
The adventurer’s face went ashy white. Even she could entertain such suspicions!
“You forget, Miss Santorex. My tried and trusted friend of years is in that outfit. Should I be likely to sell his scalp, even if I sold those of your friends?”
There was a savour of contempt in the cold incisiveness of his tone that went to her heart. What is baser than the sin of ingratitude? Did she not owe her life – and more than her life – to this man already, and now to be flinging her pitiable and unworthy suspicions at him! Would she ever recover his good opinion again?
“Forgive me!” she cried. “Forgive me! I hardly knew what I was saying.” And she burst into tears. Even yet she would hardly believe but that her fellow-travellers would succeed in holding their own.
Young though the day was, the torrid rays of the sun blazed fiercely down upon the great plains. Some distance in front rose a rugged ridge, almost precipitous. The only passage through this for many miles was a narrow cañon – a mere cleft. Beyond lay miles and miles of heavily-timbered ravines, and for this welcome shelter Vipan was making. This plan he explained to his companion.
“Look! What are those?” she cried, growing suddenly eager. “Indians? No. Wild horses? I didn’t know there were any wild horses in these parts.”
Save for a scattered line of brush here and there, the great plains until they should reach the defile above referred to were treeless, and presented a succession of gentle undulations. Nearly a mile distant, seeming to emerge from one of these belts of brush, careering along in a straggling, irregular line converging obliquely with the path of the two riders, came a large herd of ponies. It almost looked as if the latter were bent on joining them.
Yseulte did not see the change in her companion’s face, so intent was she on watching the ponies.
“Get your horse into a gallop at once, but keep him well in hand,” he said. But before she could turn to him, startled, alarmed by the significance of his tone, the sudden and appalling metamorphosis which came over the scene nearly caused her to fall unnerved from her saddle. By magic, upon the back of each riderless steed there started an upright figure, and, splitting the stillness of the morning air with its loud fiendish quaver, the hideous war-whoop went up from the throats of half a hundred painted and feathered warriors, who, brandishing their weapons and keeping up one long, unbroken, and exultant yell, skimmed over the plain, sure of their prey.
“Keep quite cool, and don’t look back,” he said. “We’ve got to reach that cañon before they do – and we shall. The war-pony that can overhaul old Satanta when he’s in average working order has yet to be built.”
So far good, so far true. But the same would not precisely hold good of Yseulte’s palfrey, which steed, though showy, was not much above the average in pace or staying power.
The race was literally one for life, and the pace was terrific. To the girl it seemed like some fearful dream. Sky and earth, the great mountain rampart reared up in front, all blended together in rocking confusion during that mad race. The yells of the pursuing barbarians sounded horribly nearer, and the pursued could almost hear the whistle of their uncouth trappings as they streamed out on the breeze.
Vipan, reaching over, lashed her horse with a thong which he detached from his saddle. The animal sprang forward, but the spurt was only momentary. And the war-ponies were horribly fresh.
Nearer, nearer. The great rock walls dominating the entrance to the pass loomed up large and distinct. Again he glanced back at the pursuers. Yes, they were gaining. It was more a race than a pursuit – the goal that grim rock-bound pass. Even should the fugitives reach it, what then? Their chances would still be of the slenderest.
Ah, the horror of it! Yseulte, white to the lips, kept her seat by an effort of will, her heart melting with deadly fear. Her companion, fully determined she should never fall alive into the hands of the savages, held his pistol ready, first for them, then for her, his heart burning with bitter curses on his own blind and besotted negligence. It was too late now. They were to founder in sight of land. Ah, the bitterness of it!
Bang!
The whiz of a bullet, simultaneously with a puff of blue smoke – this time in front. Vipan ground his teeth. There was no escape, they were between two fires.
But the regular thunder of the pursuing hoofs seemed to undergo a change. What did it mean?
Bang!
Then a glance over his shoulder told him that as the second ball came whizzing into their midst, the painted warriors had swerved, throwing themselves on the further side of their horses.
Only for a moment, though. Realising that this new enemy represented but a single unit, they hurled themselves forward with redoubled ardour, yelling hideously.
“The gulch, pardner! Streak for the gulch!” sung out a stentorian voice; and sending another bullet among the on-rushing redskins, this time with effect, Smokestack Bill kicked up his horse, which had been lying prone, and in half a minute was flying side by side with his friend.
Short though this check had been, yet it had given them a momentary advantage. But, now, as they neared the mouth of the pass, it became clear to these two experienced Indian fighters that one of them must give his life for the rest.
“Take the young lady on,” said the scout. “You’re in it together, and must get out of it together. Reckon I’ll stand them back long enough for you to strike cover.”
Here was a temptation. Vipan knew well that it was so. A short ten minutes would save her – would save them both. His friend could hold the bloodthirsty savages in check for more than that. A struggle raged within him – a bitter struggle – but he conquered.
“No, no, old pard. I’m the man to stay,” he answered, slipping from his saddle, for they were now at the entrance of the pass. “Good-bye. Take her in safe.”
It was no time for talking. The pursuers, rendered tenfold more daring by the prospect of the most coveted prize of all – a white woman – were almost on their heels, the rocks re-echoing their exultant yells. Yseulte’s horse, maddened with terror and stimulated by a shower of blows from the scout, bounded forward at a tearing gallop.
“Wait, wait! We cannot leave him like this! We must turn back!” she cried, breathless, but unable to control her steed, which was stampeding as though all the Sioux in the North-West were setting fire to its tail.
“Help me! Help me to turn back!” she cried, in a perfect frenzy of despair. “We have deserted him – left him to die!”
Left alone, the bold adventurer felt no longer any hope, but in its stead he was conscious of a wild elation. His death would purchase her safety, and death was nothing in itself, but every moment gained was of paramount importance. Carefully he drew a bead on the charging warriors and fired. A pony fell. Another rapid shot. This time a human victim. This stopped their headlong rush, and still wheeling in circles they hesitated to come nearer.
He glanced around. Overhead, the slopes, almost precipitous, offered many a possible hiding-place. He might even escape – but he was not there for that. He was there to hold back the enemy – till night, if necessary.
The day wore on. The Sioux, who had drawn off to a distance, seemed in no mood to renew the attack. They were resting their ponies.
Suddenly he saw a score of them leap on horseback again and ride rapidly away. What could this mean?
A shadow fell between him and the light. There was a hurtling sound – a crash – and before he could turn or look up, the whole world was blotted out in a stunning, roaring, heaving sea of space. Then faintness, oblivion, death.
