THE AVENGER’S VOW.
Our story turns to a spot about five or six miles away from the place
last mentioned.
Just where the rolling prairie was barred by a patch of woods, long,
narrow and dark, a hardy pioneer had erected a rough but substantial
dwelling, which, with the waving grass of the plains in front and the
dark foliage of the adjacent strip of timber land to form a background,
looked as pretty and tasteful as a picture.
Only a very brave man, one who laughed at danger could have been
sufficiently heedless of peril to build a dwelling in such an
unprotected location.
Jared Dwight knew no such thing as fear.
He had brought his wife and two little children here, had camped in
the patch of woods while building the house, and had then taken up his
residence in the out-of-the-way dwelling with all the coolness in the
world.
His wife was one of those brave, hardy women of the West, who could
handle a rifle with skill, and shoot down a stag as well as she could
cook the animal after she had slain it.
Here, then, Jared Dwight lived quietly for some time, until the
afternoon of the day on which we bring the reader to his dwelling.
Dwight was hoeing a little patch of corn when a bullet came whistling
past his ear, and the report of a rifle snapped out near at hand.
Dwight knew that the shot came from the woods.
He did not look around nor stop for a moment.
Where one shot had come from, more might come.
Without a moment’s hesitation the tall borderman bounded towards the
door of his house, shouting out to his wife as he leaped onward.
A chorus of yells rang out, and a storm of bullets flew around and over
the swiftly-running man; but he passed on without a scratch, and dashed
safely into the door of the house.
The instant that he was in, his wife closed the portal with a bang, and
dropped the heavy bar into its socket.
In one hand she held her rifle, and although her cheek paled somewhat,
as she gazed upon the two frightened little ones crouching upon the
floor in terror, yet her hands were as steady as those of her fearless
husband.
“Jared, they’re Injins,” she said.
“Injins! and worse than Injins,” said Dwight. “They’re half white and
half red, and the white part is the worst of the two, for a renegade is
the worst critter on earth.”
He walked to the window, and looked out.
Several forms were dancing in and out among the trees on the edge of
the narrow wood patch.
As the borderman had said, some of these were white and others were
red, and probably the whites were worse by far to deal with than the
savages to whom they had linked themselves.
A big Indian stood exposed for a moment by the side of a tall
cottonwood.
That moment was his last one on this side of the happy hunting-grounds.
Jared Dwight’s rifle, its muzzle peering out through a little hole,
spoke out sharply, and the red-skin, leaping high into the air, with
an awful shriek, fell lifeless to the ground.
Some of his comrades dashed forward to lift him from the ground.
Jared spoke out sharp:
“Shoot the foremost man!”
His wife’s rifle flew to her shoulder, the end of the barrel resting
in the little port-hole; her keen eye flashed over the weapon, and her
steady forefinger pressed the trigger.
“Crack!”
A yell of mortal agony followed the shrill report, and the first man
of the number which had rushed forward, fell dying in the arms of his
comrades.
A chorus of yells rang out as they bore the dying man back into the
shelter of the trees.
Then all was still.
“A good shot,” said Jared. “They’ll begin to understand that we’re not
going to be gobbled up very easily.”
“But they could starve us out if they held out long enough,” said his
wife; and the brave woman felt a strange heaviness at her heart when
she looked upon the two children, who were crying as they huddled
together in a corner.
“They won’t wait so long,” said Jared Dwight. “They’re very still, and
that is what I don’t like. It means deviltry of some kind, and--my God!”
A flaming arrow tore through the air, and fixed itself in the dry logs
of the house.
Another and another followed, until the air seemed full of blazing
darts.
They fixed themselves in the building very rapidly, until a great part
of the log-house was covered with the blazing arrows.
The logs caught fire, and soon the red and white flames roared, and the
blue smoke curled up from the blazing side of the settler’s cabin.
“Now we’re gone,” said Dwight, and his voice was steady with the awful
calmness of perfect, hopeless despair. “We have only one chance. Let me
see if any of them are at the front.”
He dashed to the front of the little house, and peered out upon the
plains.
Several forms, hitherto hidden by the tall prairie grass, were now
dancing up and down in savage glee.
“We’re hemmed in,” despairingly said the borderer. “To go out by either
door would be to get a bullet, or a dozen of them, through your body.
We must stay here as long as we can, and trust for something to turn
up to aid us, and if nothing does come, then we’ll die together in the
cabin. You and the children had better die than fall into the hands of
those brutes yonder.”
His wife threw her arms around his neck, and pressed her pale lips to
his.
“I can die with you,” she said.
The children, crying bitterly, crept up to them, and the little
clinging hands took hold of their garments.
“Curse these wretches,” gasped Dwight, as he gazed upon his children.
The flames were hissing and crackling, the blue smoke rolled in clouds
around the burning cabin, and the loud yells close at hand told that
the demons had closed up around the doomed dwelling.
A dozen bullets came crashing through the little window, and with an
awful cry of agony, the brave wife sank down upon the floor, the blood
welling slowly upward from a wound in her breast.
“My God! she’s killed,” gasped Dwight, and not daring to look at her,
he slung his rifle over his back, picked up the two children, and
dashed up the stairs, for the room was becoming choked with smoke, and
the heat was intolerable.
His wife, wounded, but not dead, heard him leaping up the stairs with
the two children, and with great difficulty she arose and staggered
after him, and when she reached the room above, she gasped for breath
and staggered feebly to the window, where, with her arms held forth in
a supplicating attitude, she stood until another bullet put an end to
her life.
Outside, the red fiends and their white brothers in crime were dancing
up and down with devilish joy.
Dwight had clambered out upon the roof of the little log hut, and there
he stood with a child on each side of him, until the whistling bullets
from the fiends below struck down the poor children, laying them both
dead at his feet.
He seemed to bear a charmed life, for, although some of the leaden
missiles rent his clothing, he still stood there unwounded.
A loud whistle, shrill and piercing, rang in his ears, and looking over
the plains he beheld the Steam Horse, making splendid time over the
plains towards him.
The Indians scattered like chaff as the monster bounded towards them,
very gradually reducing its speed; and as the prairie steed drew near,
Jared Dwight made a leap from the roof of the house, landed safely upon
the hard ground, and then bounded nimbly into the wagon as it passed by.
“Onward,” he cried, and Frank Reade increased his speed. “The rest are
all gone.”
“Who are killed?” asked Frank, as Barney handed his consoling flask to
Dwight.
“My wife and my children,” said Jared, and his face grew dark and stern
with a terrible thought; “all I had to love and care for in this world.
They were all shot down by those red and white devils, and their bodies
will burn in that fire.”
“Do you know your foes?”
“Know them?” said Dwight. “Aye, I do, and they shall know me. I have
now nothing to live for but revenge, and they shall know what it is to
be harassed by the untiring hate of an avenger, for here I swear to
devote my whole life to the work of ridding the plains of these human
fiends. Neither by night nor by day shall my hatred sleep, and to the
last man will track them down to death. Hear me, just God, and give
ear, oh, earth, that from this time forward, until my arms are still in
death, I am an avenger!”