AN INDIAN RAID
It did seem, however, that the ranchman must have forgotten the surprise
he had in store for the six little Bunkers. He was so busy getting his
Mexican cook to make waffles for supper and seeing that the rooms had
all been made ready by his Mexican house boys for the use of the Bunker
family and doing a dozen other pleasant things for the comfort of his
guests that he did not say a word about the surprise.
It had been almost dark when the party arrived at the broad, low house
in which Cowboy Jack and his household lived. If the surprise was
outside the house the children would have been unable to see it.
Mun Bun fell sound asleep over his supper, and Margy had to "prop her
eyes open," as daddy declared, before the meal was done. Both these
youngest Bunkers made no objection to going off to bed. But Vi and
Laddie wanted to stay up as long as Russ and Rose did.
"We're almost as big as they are," declared Laddie, when he was
questioned on this point. "And if Rose and Russ would only stop and wait
for us a little, Vi and I would catch up to them--so now!"
But Russ and Rose were quite as eager to grow up as were Laddie and Vi;
so they were not willing to wait, could they have done so. Daddy pointed
out the fact of the "march of time" to the little folks and explained
that everybody had to grow older each tiny second.
"Why can't we stop and wait?" demanded Vi. "We can stop an automobile
and get out and wait."
"Or get lost from a train," put in Laddie, who was sitting on what
Cowboy Jack called a "hassock"--a low seat--and studying a paper he had
found. "I ought to make up a riddle about Vi and me being lost from the
train that time."
"I'll give you a riddle," said Cowboy Jack, with one of his booming
laughs.
"Is it a good one?" asked Vi.
"Please do!" cried Laddie. "I just love riddles."
"Well, here is one," said the ranchman. "'What is it that is black and
white, but red all over?'"
"Black--white--and red?" repeated Laddie, puzzled, for if he had ever
heard that riddle he had forgotten it.
"I know what is red, white and blue!" cried Vi. "That's the flag."
"Three cheers!" returned Cowboy Jack. "So you do, little girl. You've
got the flag quite right. But this isn't the flag I am talking about."
"I don't believe I ever saw anything that was black and white but red,
too," confessed Laddie slowly.
"Oh, yes, you have," said their big friend, apparently just as much
entertained by the riddle as the little folks.
"I guess you must be mistaken, Mr. Cowboy Jack," said Laddie soberly. "I
can't think of a single thing that is black and white, besides being red
all over."
"Why, look at what you have in your hand!" exclaimed the ranchman.
"This is a paper," said Laddie.
"And isn't it black and white?"
"Yes, sir. The print is black and the paper is white. But I don't see
any red----"
"But lots of us have _read_ it all over," chuckled Cowboy Jack. "It is
black and white, and is _read_ all over!"
"Oh!" cried Laddie, clapping his hands, "that's another kind of 'red,'
isn't it? I think that is a nice riddle. Don't you, Vi?"
But Vi was leaning against her mother's knee and her eyes were fast
closed. She had gone to sleep in the middle of the talk about the
riddle.
"It's time for all little folks to go to bed," said Mother Bunker.
So none of the six little Bunkers saw the surprise that night. But they
had not forgotten it when morning came again. The six little Bunkers
never forgot anything that was promised them!
While they were all at breakfast there was a great deal of noise
outside--whooping and shouting and the like--that startled the children.
But their mother would not let them leave the table to find out about it
until breakfast was over. They heard, too, the pounding of ponies'
hoofs, and then caught sight through the windows of a company of pony
riders galloping by and off across the plain.
"Cowboys!" cried Russ. "I guess we'd better go back and put on our
cowboy suits, Laddie."
The smaller boy was just as eager as Russ to get out and see the pony
riders. As soon as they could honestly say they had eaten enough, Mother
Bunker excused them all. But when they got outside upon the broad
veranda at the front of the great house, the cowboys had disappeared.
There was something else in sight, however, that astonished the children
more than the cowboys could, for they had expected to see them.
Traveling across the plain some distance from the house was a procession
that made all the little Bunkers shout aloud.
"What's those?" Rose asked at first sight. Rose almost always saw things
first.
Russ gave one glance and fairly whooped: "Indians!"
"Oh, dear me!" gasped Rose, "are they _wild_ Indians?"
"They are real Indians just the same!" exclaimed Russ, with confidence.
"They aren't just the dressed-up kind. Look at them!"
The big Indians riding at the head of the procession wore great feather
headdresses. "Feather dusters" Laddie called them. And they did look
like feather dusters from that distance.
"We'd better get our guns and bows and arrows, hadn't we, Russ?" the
little boy asked.
"The Indians are not coming this way," explained Russ. "I guess we're
safe enough."
"See! There are Indian babies, too," cried Rose. "There's one strapped
to a board on its mother's back--just like in the pictures."
"Just the same," said Vi, rather soberly for her, "I'm glad they are
going the other way."
The Indians were traveling away from the ranch house and soon were out
of sight. So before the children could ask any of the older people about
them they were gone. And "out of sight out of mind" was almost always
the rule with the little Bunkers, as daddy frequently said. Besides,
there were so many new and interesting things to see that the matter of
the Indians escaped the new-comers' minds.
There were great corrals down behind the big house, as well as
bunkhouses in which the cowboys lived, and stables, and a long cook-shed
in which three men cooked for the hands, as Cowboy Jack called his
employees. Cowboy Jack owned a very large ranch and a great number of
steers and horses and mules.
"It's almost like a circus," said Russ. "And all the different kind of
dogs, too. _That_ dog has hardly any hair, and he comes from Mexico, so
they say. While that _wolfy_ looking dog comes from away up in Alaska.
Then there are dogs from places all between Alaska and Mexico."
This information he had gained from one of the Mexican boys with whom he
became acquainted. They did not think to ask the friendly Mexican about
the Indians, and not until the children went back to the house did they
think to make inquiry about the procession they had seen right after
breakfast. It was then Vi, inquisitive as usual, who broached the
subject.
"Why do Indians wear feather dusters in their hair?" she asked.
"For the same reason that ladies wear feathers in their bonnets,"
declared Daddy Bunker seriously. "Because they think the feathers are
ornamental."
"And why do they strap their babies to boards?" demanded Vi.
"Where did you see Indians?" asked Mother Bunker, guessing the source
from which Violet's questions were springing.
"Oh!" cried Rose. "There _were_ Indians--lots of them. We saw their
parade go by--just like a Wild West Show parade."
Cowboy Jack began to laugh. And when he laughed his great body shook all
over, and the chair in which he sat shook too.
"Are there Indians here, Mr. Scarbontiskil?" asked Mother Bunker.
"That's part of the surprise I told the children about," said Cowboy
Jack, nodding to Mother Bunker, but smiling at the interested children.
"Those Injuns are a part of it."
But he would not tell them any more--at least, not just then.
"It's a sort of a riddle," said Laddie eagerly, when they were all out
of doors again. "I know it's a riddle. And we ought to find the
answer."
"Well," scoffed Vi, his twin, "you can sit down and think of your old
riddle if you want to. I'm going to pick flowers for mother."
"There must be some nice flowers here," agreed Rose. "I'll go look, too,
Vi."
"Me want to pick flowers!" cried Mun Bun eagerly.
He always wanted to do anything the older children did. And picking
flowers was one thing Mun Bun could do pretty well, little as he was.
Holding a hand each of Rose and Vi he trudged off from the ranch house.
Russ and Margy and Laddie came after. Russ and Laddie were still
discussing the matter of putting on their cowboy suits so as to help
herd the cattle with Cowboy Jack's "other hands." Just at this time,
however, they became more interested in picking flowers.
For they did find pretty blossoms along the wagon track they followed.
The ranch house was soon out of sight, for the children went over a
little ridge and then down into a swale in which were clumps of low
trees. It was quite a pretty country, and there was much to interest
them.
At one place something jumped out of the shrub and went leaping away
along the wagon track with great bounds.
"A rabbit!" cried Laddie. "Oh, such a big rabbit!"
"The very longest legs I ever saw," agreed Russ. "And long ears--like
those on the mules in the corral."
"And he thumps the ground just like a horse stamping," said Rose. "There
he goes out of sight. I--I believe I would be afraid of that rabbit if
he came at me."
"Well, he is going, not coming," remarked Russ. "I want to see where he
went."
He and Laddie started on the run to mount the little ridge over which
the jackrabbit had disappeared. This ridge crossed the swale, or valley,
and divided what lay beyond from the view of the six little Bunkers.
When the children climbed the rise and came to the top, they all
stopped. Even Russ did not say a word for a full minute; nor did Vi ask
a question, so astonished was she by what she saw.
There, on the low land beside a stream of water, was a log cabin. It
looked like a dilapidated cabin, for there were no windows and the door
was off its leather hinges. There was a bonfire by the doorstep and a
black kettle was hung over the fire from the tripod of smoke-blackened
sticks.
On the doorstep sat a woman who appeared to be rocking her baby to sleep
in her arms. She was watching whatever was cooking in the pot. A man was
chopping wood a little way; from the doorstep. He wore a funny fur cap,
with the tail of some animal hanging from it down to his shoulder, and
his hair was tied in a funny looking queue--the strangest way for a man
to dress his hair the little Bunkers had ever seen.
Suddenly Russ pointed behind the cabin--over to another ridge, or knoll,
of land.
"Look!" Russ gasped. "Those Indians!"
None of the Bunker children had thought of the Indians they had seen as
really wild Indians. But here came riding the Indian men now on active
ponies, and with be-feathered spears in their hands. Their headdresses
nodded, and, as the redmen rode nearer, the children saw that their
faces were broadly striped in red and yellow. The paint made the
Indians' faces look frightful.
"Oh!" cried Rose, clinging to Mun Bun, who clung to her in return.
"Those Indians are coming right at that woman and her baby--and the
man!"
"It's an Indian raid," murmured Russ. "Do you suppose it is _real_, or
just make-believe?"