A DARING DEED.
In the mean time, the battle was raging with infernal hotness. All
of Captain Shields’ party were unerring marksmen, and they were so
accustomed to the most desperate contests with the red-skins, that
despite the terrible strait in which they were placed, they preserved
their coolness and equipoise like true veterans, and loaded and fired
with such rapid sureness, that to this alone may be attributed the
severe check, which kept the Comanches from making an overwhelming
charge, that would have carried every thing before them.
The first night passed with little disturbance, as we have already
shown, and the second day the battle was renewed and kept up with
scarcely an intermission until nightfall.
This day, especially the latter portion, was very warm, and the
suffering of the little band was terrible--so much so that many of
the living envied the dead, who had been so speedily released from
their distress. The thirst felt by all was a perpetual torment, from
which there was scarcely the slightest relief. Many of the men,
despite the great danger, dug into the ground, until the damp soil was
reached, which they scooped up and placed in their mouths as a slight
assuagement of their anguish.
The females stood the trial like martyrs, for their own greatest
suffering was that of seeing the half-dozen moaning children piteously
begging for water, when there was none to give them.
The history of the world has proven that men will run any risk, no
matter what, for the sake of satisfying the maddening thirst, that
threatens to drive them raving wild; and, it was this that was the
cause of one of the most daring deeds ever recorded, upon the part of
young Egbert Rodman.
The Comanches could not but be aware of this fearful distress of the
whites, and with a fiendish malignity, characteristic of the Indian
race, just at nightfall, when the Dead Man’s Gulch was bathed in mellow
twilight, one of the red-skins was seen to leap off his mustang and
walk toward the encampment, with a large tin canteen in his hand--a
relic undoubtedly of some massacre of United States soldiers.
There was a lull in the firing at this moment, and the whites, at a
loss to understand the meaning of the proceeding, stealthily peered out
from their coverts in the wagons, to learn what new trick was on the
_tapis_.
It looked as if he were going to summon them to surrender, or call for
a parley, as he walked straight forward until he was within a hundred
feet of the nearest wagon, when he paused and held up the canteen
before him, contorting his face into the most grotesque grimaces, and
shaking the vessel in front and over his head.
The stillness at this moment was so profound, that more than one
distinctly heard the gurgle of water in the vessel, and, if any doubt
remained of the red-skin’s purpose, it was dissipated by his calling
out, in broken English:
“Yengese--come--muchee drink--hab muchee drink--”
These words were scarcely uttered, when _crack, crack_ went two rifles
almost simultaneously, and the foolhardy wretch made a scrambling leap,
and his taunting words ended in a wild howl, as he fell prostrate
across the can, that he had brandished so tormentingly in the faces of
the sufferers.
It is strange that such a dog should not have known the risk he ran in
making such a taunt.
The Indian had scarcely fallen when several of his comrades started
down the declivity to bring away his body. At the same moment, Egbert
Rodman, who was in one of the wagons, sprung out, and was seen to run
at full speed in the direction of the fallen man.
“Come back! come back! or you’re a dead man!” shouted Captain Shields,
divining his purpose on the instant.
But the young man’s lips were set, and he was determined upon
possessing that canteen, if it were within the range of human
possibility. He saw a horde of Comanches swarming down the gulch on a
full run, screeching like demons, and evidently certain of securing the
daring Yengee, whose torturing thirst had stolen away his senses.
But Egbert was not to be deterred by any such appalling danger as this.
Now that he had undertaken the desperate task, nothing but death should
turn him aside!
In far less time than it requires to be narrated, he had sped over the
intervening ground, and was at the prostrate figure. He was fleet of
foot, and he ran as he never ran before, reaching it, however, only a
few seconds in advance of the rescuing Comanches, one of whom actually
fired and missed him, when scarcely a rod in advance.
One tremendous jerk of his arm, and Egbert threw the dead Indian off
the canteen, and catching it up in his hand, he turned about and
started at the same headlong speed for the encampment, clinging to the
vessel as if it was his own life; but the Comanches were all about
him, and it looked as if it was all up, when he whipped out his only
weapon--his revolver, and blazed away right and left in their very
faces. At the same instant the whites opened fire, and made such havoc,
that in the confusion Egbert made a dash, and sped like a reindeer for
the wagons, and leaped in behind them with the canteen and the water
and himself intact.
Then a shout went up from within the little band, and making his way
to the central wagon, Egbert first furnished the moaning children
with several swallows of the delicious--(oh, how delicious!) fluid,
no argument inducing Lizzie Manning to take a drop, until all her
companions had first done so.
Then the brave fellow made his way from man to man, every one
partaking of the soul-reviving cold water, whose delicious taste could
not have been approached by the “nectar of the gods.”
All drank moderately, for they knew that Egbert was to come last, and
nothing could induce one to cut his allowance short; and so he let
several swallows gurgle down his parched throat, when he carried the
remainder to the women’s wagon, and placing it in the hands of Lizzie,
said:
“Keep it for the poor suffering little ones and for yourselves! We are
hardy men, and can stand thirst better than they, and know how to chew
our bullets, when we have nothing else!”
With many a fervent blessing upon the noble fellow’s head, the canteen
was accepted and preserved as he requested.