INDIANS!
“Ah, now we are beginning to get into my own country again; this begins
ter look like home,” exclaimed Bart Witherbee, one day as the
adventurers made camp in a canyon in one of the southernmost spurs of
the Rockies in the state of New Mexico. The boys had made the detour to
the south to avoid crossing the range itself, which would have been a
difficult, if not an impossible, task in an aeroplane.
Still they had not sighted the rival racing air-craft, but they knew
that the others could not be far ahead now, as at a small settlement
they stopped at the day before they learned that the Slade party had
called at the blacksmith shop there to repair a truss brace that had
snapped. As the facilities of the smithy were rather clumsy for the fine
work that has to be done on the aeroplane, the Slade machine was delayed
several hours. So far as their judgment went, the boys decided that the
other party could not be much more than fifty miles ahead of them.
As for the dirigible, they had heard that the expansion of its gas bag,
caused by the sun, had compelled it to remain all one day in a small
town in the Texas Panhandle, and that while it was journeying across the
arid country it could travel only short distances. The boys, therefore,
felt much cheered as at sundown they alighted by the side of a brawling
mountain stream and made camp. Bart Witherbee at once got out his
improvised fishing tackle and started up the stream in search of trout,
which he declared would abound in such waters.
“We’ll have a change from canned beef, canned soup and canned vegetables
to-night, boys,” he declared, “if I haven’t lost the knack of it.”
They listened to his heavy footsteps plunging up the steep hillside till
they died out, and then took up the ordinary occupations of the camp.
The rocky defile up which the old miner had disappeared on his quest was
well covered with pine timber almost down to where it reached the arid
ground on the edge of which the lads were camped. Except for the
occasional scream of a hawk making for its night roost, or the crash of
some animal making its way through the dense growth that grew higher up
on the hillside, the place was as quiet as a cemetery.
Billy Barnes was examining his camera, which had been severely shaken up
on the trip, Frank and Harry were going over the _Golden Eagle_
admiringly, remarking on the way she had stood her hard ordeal, and old
Mr. Joyce was taking a lesson in wireless telegraphy from Lathrop. It
was beginning to grow dusk. Somewhere far up on the hillside there came
the hoot of an owl. The hush of the evening in the foothills lay over
everything, when suddenly the silence was broken by a sound that brought
them all to their feet.
The report of a rifle had rung out on the hillside above them.
“Must be Bart shooting at something,” remarked Billy, gazing at the
scared faces about him.
“That was a rifle shot,” said Frank slowly, “and Bart Witherbee carried
no rifle.”
“Then somebody else fired it?”
“That’s about it. Don’t make a sound now. Listen!”
They all held their breaths and waited anxiously in the stillness that
followed. For perhaps ten minutes they stood so, and then there came a
sharp crackle of snapping twigs, that told them some one was descending
the hillside.
Who was it?
Several minutes of agonizing suspense followed before they knew whether
it was friend or enemy advancing toward them. Then Bart Witherbee
glided, like a snake, out of the woods.
“What’s the mat——” began Frank. But he checked himself instantly.
Bart Witherbee’s hand was held up.
Every one of the group read that mute signal aright.
Silence!
The old plainsman waited till he got right up to the group before he
spoke, and then it was in a hushed tense whisper.
“Injuns,” he said, “they’re up on the hillside.”
“How many?” whispered back Frank.
“I dunno exactly, after that there bullet I didn’t wait ter see, and
say, boys, I had ter leave as nice a string of trout as you ever see up
there fer them pesky redskins ter git at.”
“Never mind the fish, Bart,” urged Frank, “tell us, is there danger?”
“There’s allus danger when Injuns is aroun’, and think they kin git
somethin’ that’s vallerble without gitting in trouble over it,” was the
westerner’s reply.
“We’d better get away from here right away,” exclaimed Harry.
“Not on your life, son,” was Bart’s reply; “not if I know anything about
Injuns an’ their ways. No, sons, my advice is ter git riddy fer ’em.
They was startled when they see me, therefore they didn’t know we wus
here till they stumbled on me. That bein’ the case, I reckin they don’t
know about that thar flying thing of you boys.”
“And you think we can scare them with it?” began Frank eagerly.
“Not so fast, son, not so fast,” reprimanded the old man. “Now, them
Injuns won’t attack afore dark, if they do at all. An’ when they do,
they’ll come frum up the mountain-side. Now, my idee is to git that thar
searchlight o’ yours rigged up, and hev it handy, so as when we hear a
twig crack we kin switch it on and pick ’em out at our leisure.”
“That’s a fine idea, Bart, but what if they attack us from behind?”
suggested Frank.
“They won’t do that. Yer see, behind us it’s all open country. Wall,
Injuns like plenty of cover when they fight.”
“Perhaps we could connect up some blue flares, and plant them on rocks
up the hillside, and scare them that way,” suggested Billy.
“That’s a good idee, son, but who’s goin’ ter go up there an’ light ’em?
It would be certain death.”
“Nobody would have to go up and light them,” eagerly put in Harry. “We
can wire them up and then just touch them off when we are ready. We can
get plenty of spark by connecting up all our batteries.”
“Wall, now, that’s fine and dandy,” exclaimed the miner admiringly, “see
what it is ter hev an eddercation. Wall, boys, if we’re goin’ ter do
that, now’s the time. Them Injuns won’t attack afore dark, and if we
want ter git ready we’d better do it now.”
While Frank and Harry planted the blue flares on rocks on the hillside
within easy range of the camp, and old Mr. Joyce utilized his electrical
skill in wiring them up and connecting them to a common switch, Billy
and Lathrop and Bart Witherbee struck camp and packed the paraphernalia
in the tonneau of the auto.
“Better be ready ter make a quick gitaway,” was the miner’s
recommendation.
These tasks completed, there was nothing to do but to wait for a sign of
the attack. This was nervous work. Bart had informed the boys that in
his opinion the Indians were a band from a reservation not many miles
from there who had somehow got hold of a lot of “firewater” and had “got
bad.”
“I’ll bet yer there’s troops after ’em now, if we did but know it,” he
opined.
“Well, I wish the troops would get here quick,” bemoaned Harry.
“They won’t git here in time ter be of much use ter us,” remarked old
Bart, grimly biting off a big chew of tobacco, “and now, boys, keep
quiet, and mind, don’t fire till I tell yer, and don’t switch on them
lights till I give you the word.”
How long they waited neither Frank nor Harry nor any of the others could
ever tell, but it seemed to be years before there came a sudden owl hoot
far up on the hillside.
“Here they come, that’s their signal,” whispered old Bart in Frank’s
ear; “steady now.”
“I’m all right,” replied Frank, as calmly as he could, though his heart
beat wildly.
The hoot was answered by another one, and then all was silence.
Suddenly there came the crack of a twig somewhere above. It was only a
mite of a noise, but in the stillness it sounded as startling as a
pistol shot.
“We won’t have to wait long now,” commented Bart in a tense undertone;
“all ready, now.”
Each of the boys gripped his rifle determinedly. Old Mr. Joyce had been
armed with a pistol. At their elbows lay their magazine revolvers fully
loaded.
Following the first snapping of the twig there was a long interval of
silence. Then the staccato rattle of a small dislodged rock bounding
down the hillside set all hearts to beating once more.
The attack was evidently not to be delayed many moments now.
It came with the suddenness of the bursting of a tropical storm.
Hardly had the boys drawn their breath following the breathless suspense
that ensued on the falling of the rock before there was a wild yell, and
half a dozen dark forms burst out of the trees. They were received with
a fusillade, but none of them were hurt, as they all vanished almost as
quickly as they had appeared.
“That was just to see if we was on the lookout,” said old Bart in a
whisper. “I reckon they found we was. Look out for the next attack.”
They hadn’t long to wait. There was a rattle of falling stones as the
main body rushed down the hillside.
“_Now!_”
Old Bart fairly screamed the command in his excitement.
At the same instant Billy shoved over the switch that connected the
sparking wires of the blue-flare battery with the electric supply for
the wireless, and the whole woodland was instantly illumined as if by
the most brilliant moonlight.
With cries and yells of amazement, a score of the attacking redskins
wheeled and vanished into the dark shadows of the hillside. The lights
glared up, brilliantly illuminating everything in the vicinity, but the
Indians were far too scared to come out of their hiding-place and renew
the attack.
“Fire a volley up the hillside,” ordered Bart. “We can’t hit any of ’em,
but it will add to their scare and keep ’em off till I can work out a
plan.”
There was a rattling discharge of shots, which met with no return, and
then, as the lights began to burn dimly Bart ordered Frank and Harry to
get into the aeroplane and sail into the air.
“Turn your searchlight on the wood from up above, and they’ll run from
here to San Franciskey,” he declared.
Though rather dubious of the success of the experiment, the boys obeyed,
and in a few seconds the roaring drone of the engine was heard far above
the wood, while the great eye of the searchlight seemed to penetrate
into its darkest depths.
If the boys had had any doubt as to the feasibility of Bart’s recipe for
scaring Indians they regained their faith then and there. With yells
that echoed into the night, the redskins ran for their lives, tumbling
over each other in their hurry to escape the “Air Devil.”
What the blue lights had begun the aeroplane had completed.
“It’s goin’ ter take a year ter round them fellers up ag’in,” commented
Bart.