THE GAMBLERS 'PUT UP'
'Towzer, my lad, you mustn't take it unkindly, but I think you and
Frank had better watch together to-night. You see you ain't as used
to camping out as Snap and me, and there's a good deal of risk
to-night,' said Wharton.
'Quite right, Dick!' said Frank; 'I know we're duffers, but Rome
wasn't built in a day.'
'No, no, lad, I know that, and you'll be as good as any of us
by-and-by. Will you and Snap take the first watch till midnight?'
'All right; wake up, young 'un!' cried Frank.
'No fear of us both sleeping at once,' said Towzer sulkily to his
brother, 'you snore so.'
After an hour or two spent in watching all the mysterious shadows
which begin only to move and live in the forest after the moon comes
up, Towzer noticed something which seemed to him more substantial
than the shadows creeping slowly up a glade towards the camp. Towzer
gripped his brother's arm and pointed silently towards it.
'A hind feeding up this way, isn't it?' whispered Frank.
'I don't know; that Indian was a wolf last night, it's likely enough
he'll be a hind to-night; but, hind or Indian, I'm going to put a
bullet into him as soon as he comes close enough to make certain,'
answered the boy savagely, and he sank slowly on to his stomach to
get a steady shot with his rifle.
Just then the thing, whatever it was, came out into the moonlight.
'Hold hard, Towzer, it's "the Cradle"; I can see his white fetlock as
plain as the nose on your face.'
'Might be an Indian in his skin,' answered Towzer, only half
convinced.
'No, no, I can see him quite plainly, can't you? And he is alone and
unsaddled. Let's see what he'll do.'
Slowly the pony came along, smelling every now and then at the
ground, and at last walked boldly into the camp, and, bending his
neck, hung his wise old head over Snap's sleeping form, and rubbed
his velvet muzzle against the boy's cheek.
Snap was on his legs in a minute.
'Why, old chap, where have you come from?' he cried, and the pony
laid back his ears and whinnied ever so softly. It was a regular
pony whisper.
Frank and Towzer came up and by this time old Wharton was sitting up
too, his hand upon his rifle.
'Slipped them durned Redskins, hev you, old fellow?' laughed Dick
softly. 'Well, I've known you get rid of better men than they'll
ever be, before now; but bust me if I can guess how you found us out.
You haven't brought Frank's rifle along, I suppose,' he added, for
the shot fired the night before had been from Frank's rifle, which
the Indian had somehow managed to steal from the bough from which it
was hanging. Unfortunately, even 'the Cradle's' 'cuteness had not
gone as far as this.
'I say, Snap,' said Wharton, coming out of a very brown study, in
which he had remained for nearly five minutes, 'it's a very bright
moon to-night, isn't it?'
'Never saw a brighter,' said the boy.
'That isn't the way "the Cradle" kem along, is it now?' asked
Wharton, pointing down the glade.
'Yes, that's where I first saw him,' said Towzer, pointing.
'Ah!' continued Wharton. 'Now, did it ever strike you that that haze
down theer wasn't altogether nat'ral, not on a night like this,
anyway?' and he pointed to a thin vapour which hung about the trees
some three miles away.
The boys looked in the direction indicated, and saw the vapour
plainly enough.
'Well?' said Snap, and waited.
'Wal!' returned Dick, 'that's them durned Redskins. They don't think
we'll dare to follow them; the pony has slipped 'em, that shows they
are pretty careless, and' (with a vigorous slap on his thigh) 'if
you're game I'm going the way that theer Cradle came, and am goin' to
have Frank's rifle and an Injun's hair in camp right here before
daylight.'
Here, in the heart of civilisation, Dick's speech, sounds
bloodthirsty, and his programme of amusement for that autumn night
anything but attractive. Out there, in those wild forests, the boys
only remembered that grey wolf changing in the moonlight into a
thieving savage; they remembered the rifle-ball that luckily
scattered the ashes of their camp-fire and not their brains; they
remembered the lost pony and lost rifle, and nothing more. Rising,
they stood, tall, silent, young figures in the moonlight, ready to
follow Dick Wharton anywhere.
'Towzer, my lad,' said Dick, 'I am going to give you the worst work
of all. You must wait with "the Cradle"; and if anything happens to
us, if we aren't back in six hours' time, get on the pony's back,
turn his head for the river, and let him lead you. He'll take you
back to Rosebud somehow, and then you bring the boys on our trail.
Keep your rifle; I've got my six-shooter, and you'll, may be, want
it. Good-bye, lad, there's not much fear, but we'll see you again
soon.'
There was a lump in Towzer's throat. It was hard to be the youngest
and miss all the fun; to be left alone, and have perhaps that
terrible ride home; but he could not help feeling that Dick was
right, for all that. Either of the others was twice the man that he
was for fighting, and then, too, if it came to a long ride, he was
three stone lighter even than Snap, and Frank was heavier than
either. So he shook hands as heartily as he could, and stood
watching his brother and his friend glide noiselessly down the glade
after old Wharton.
What fine fellows they looked, to be sure! Snap was a perfectly
built athlete, if there ever was one--tall and wiry, with not an
ounce of spare flesh anywhere. Frank was the biggest of the three, a
huge bull-necked Englishman, a man who could have killed even Snap as
a terrier kills a rat if he got him in a railway-carriage or a
corner, but no match for his active friend in the open. As for Dick,
he was tough and old, 'old, with the might and breath of twenty boys.'
In a few minutes they had all mingled with the shadows, and Towzer
and 'the Cradle,' alone, stood craning their necks after them in vain.
But we have the fairy cap, and, my boys, with your leave, will follow
those three silent forms. Old Wharton had a true woodman's instinct
for direction, and, having once ascertained for what point he wanted
to steer, he kept his course truly and with no apparent effort. Now
and again he bent down as he crossed 'the Cradle's' tracks, but he
did not depend upon them for guidance. At last he paused, and,
beckoning the boys to his side, whispered:
'Their camp is close to here. I'll creep on and have a look at it
first, and come back to you when I've seen how the land lies.'
The two young Englishmen crouched down and waited. By some instinct,
when the old fellow had slid away like a snake in the grass, Snap
held out his hand silently to Frank, who gripped it hard in silence.
It was an Englishman's oath. They had silently sworn to do or die.
It seemed hours before anything more happened, but at last a part
seemed to detach itself from one of the pine-trees at which Frank was
looking, and came gliding into the moon-lit space. It was old
Wharton returning.
'They're all right,' he whispered; 'couldn't be better!'
'What, are they all asleep?' asked Snap.
'Better nor that, pard,' the old frontiersman chuckled; 'they're
gambling for all they're worth; come along!' and, signing to them to
follow, he glided away again from tree to tree, until at last the
boys could see the red gleams of a camp-fire on the pines in front of
them.
Another half-dozen yards and the whole scene was presented to their
eyes. In a little hollow of grass burned the camp-fire, and in its
light sat half a dozen Redskins in a group, three facing the other
three. They were all squatting on their hams when Snap caught sight
of them, and all chanting a kind of song which sounded like a witch's
incantation more than like a decent expression of merriment, such as
a song should be. The fire lit up their ugly faces, painted with
bars of vermilion and black; gleamed on their long, snaky tresses,
and glittered in their bead-like black eyes. Much to old Wharton's
delight, too, it flickered back from a pile of rifles stacked under a
pine a good twenty paces from the group of gamblers.
As the boys reached their point of view Buck Rabbit seemed the chief
actor in the game. He had his back to them, but there was no fear of
mistaking even his back, with its high, broad shoulders, heavy with
knots and lumps of muscle, and that great bullet-shaped head, which
seemed set right between them, with nothing but one great wrinkle of
fat to show where the neck should be. His hands as they looked at
him were the only moving things in the firelight, and they flitted
and flashed backwards and forwards until you grew dizzy as you
watched them, the old droning song rising and falling with the pace
of the hands. The three men facing him had their eyes fastened on
Buck Rabbit's hands all the while with an intensity which reminded
the spectators of a cat watching a mouse or a snake trying to
fascinate a bird. Suddenly, quick as a snake's stroke, one of the
Indians opposite to Buck Rabbit shot out his arm and laid a long dark
finger upon one of the chiefs hands. For a moment the song dropped.
As his hand was touched Buck Rabbit stretched it out across the
firelight, palm uppermost and empty! One of the three opposite to
him without a word stooped down, and, taking one from a bundle of
short sticks beside him, threw it across to Buck Rabbit's party, when
the song again rose and the hands again dashed backwards and forwards
in the firelight.
'I wonder, now, what that stick were worth? A blanket or a
beaver-skin, you bet,' whispered Dick; 'or, may be, it's scalps
they're playing for!'
'I don't understand the game,' answered Frank in the same low murmur.
'Oh, it's simple enough. That handsome old friend of ours has got a
piece of bone in one of his hands. They've got to tell him in which
hand it is. If they are right, he pays. If not, they do,' replied
Dick. 'They'd go on at that game until this time to-morrow if we let
them,' he added; 'but I guess we'll rise the winners this journey.'
'Now,' he whispered after a pause, 'you just be here and cover those
Crows with your Winchesters. You, Snap, draw a bead on a spot about
halfway between Buck Rabbit's shoulders, and you, Frank, cover that
old villain with a little tuft of hair on his chin and only one eye.
That's Teeveevex, the medicine-man, and the biggest scoundrel in the
whole lot. If one moves before you hear me speak, fire and keep
shooting as long as an Indian is left to shoot at.'
This last sentence the old man hissed out with an energy which
impressed his hearers, and before it was well finished he had gone
again. The boys could hear their hearts beat, and the only wonder to
them was that the Indians could not hear them too, so loudly they
seemed to thump against their ribs.
This time, it seemed, Teeveevex had been too many for old Buck
Rabbit. His long, skinny claws clutched the chief's wrist like a
vice, and when his palm was turned up the little ivory disc gleamed
in it. All the shiny, evil-looking heads were bent together, when a
voice rang out clear and hard in the stillness, 'Hands up! the man
who moves dies!'
[Illustration: 'HANDS UP!']
The boys were as much startled as the Redskins. Looking up they saw
the Indians sullenly and in silence lift their hands above their
heads, red statues of wrath glaring fiercely but helplessly at a
tall, rigid figure in the moonlight, standing between them and their
rifles, its right arm raised, its vigilant eyes noting their every
breath, and in its ready right hand a revolver, on which the
moonlight rested cold and chill. That little weapon held the lives
of six men. If one dared to move, that one died before he could draw
another breath. They knew that. At ten yards old Dick Wharton could
not miss. How they must have cursed the madness which had riveted
their eyes on that glancing bone whilst this avenger stole between
them and their weapons! If all rose and dashed at him he would not
have time to kill more than one or two, but then he who led that
movement must die, and, even so, would the others back him up? It
was a hard question. No one was ready to make that first move and
pay the price, and so, as men always do when 'put up' by a resolute
man who 'has the drop upon them,' they sat still.
'Boys,' said the voice again, 'you can git up now and take these here
rifles from behind me. Look sharp.'
Frank and Snap needed no second bidding, though they felt the six
men's eyes following their movements. Their eyes were all they dared
to move, for they knew that even while he issued his orders Dick
Wharton's eyes never left them for a moment; like the muzzle of his
revolver, they rested on them unceasingly.
'There's a Redskin tied up to a tree and gagged behind them rifles,'
the voice continued; 'cut his thongs and set him free; give him a
rifle and see as it's loaded; pick a rifle for me and see as that's
loaded; take all the cartridges as you can get your claws on, and
then smash up them other rifles against the handiest bull-pine. Do
you mind me?'
'All right, Dick,' answered Snap, his knife already hacking at the
leather thongs which bound the captive Indian, a fine-looking fellow,
whose eyes glistened, but whose tongue said nothing even when Snap
took away the gag.
He stretched his arms stiffly, and bent the joints of both legs and
arms backwards and forwards once or twice as if uncertain whether or
not he had lost the use of them, and when first set free he almost
fell from weakness or stiffness--and no wonder, for his bonds had cut
deep into his flesh and were dark with his blood.
Crash! crash! went the butts of the good rifles against the
bull-pine. It seemed a sad waste, but they were Dick's orders and he
was in command.
'Are you through there?' cried the voice again.
'Yes,' cried Frank.
'All the rifles broke, mine loaded, the Indian free and armed, and
the cartridges pouched?' he inquired again.
'Yes, Dick,' they replied.
'Very well; now keep your rifles ready if they try to rush me,' said
Wharton, and then added, to the figures by the fire:
'Now, gentlemen, I'll not detain you any longer; you can skip;' and,
dropping his revolver, he turned on his heel and joined the boys. As
he did so a report rang out, and then another. The next moment Dick
Wharton had wrenched the smoking rifle from the hands of the Indian
whom Snap had released; but it was too late, one of the gamblers had
a bullet through his skull, and the great hare-lipped chief himself
reeled for a moment as the second bullet cut through the muscles of
his arm. With a curse, however, he recovered himself, and, dripping
with blood, followed his comrades into the forest.
'Why does my brother spare these dogs?' cried the Blackfoot; 'we
should have taken six scalps to-night, and my brother has but one.'
'We don't set much store by scalps, exceptin' our own, Warwolf,'
replied the cowboy; 'and whites don't care about shootin' men without
arms in their hands.'
It took all Dick Wharton's eloquence, however, and tried Warwolf's
gratitude for his deliverance to the uttermost, before he could be
persuaded not to pursue the five unhappy Crows that night. It was a
clear waste of the good gifts of Providence, he thought, and, though
Dick Wharton might be a good fellow and a mighty warrior for a
whiteskin, he could not help feeling that he was something quite out
of the common as a fool. He followed his old friend Wharton back to
camp, however, and there dressed his wounds, and gave his deliverers
some account of what had been happening lately in Bull Pine Park and
its neighbourhood.
Needless to say that for a night or so, at any rate, the three boys
and the old foreman, with Warwolf for an ally, had no fear of attack
from the disarmed Crows. Still they kept a good look-out, from habit.