Away to the left of the little command tore the quarry and the chase.
Out on the rolling prairie, barely four hundred yards from where the
ambulance and mules were backed into a tangle of traces and whiffletrees
and fear-stricken creatures, another buffalo had dropped in a heap; a
swarthy rider had tumbled off his pony, cut a slash or two with
ever-ready knife, and then, throwing a bead bedizened left leg over his
eager little mount, had gone lashing away after his fellows, not without
a jeering slap at the baited soldiery. Then, in almost less time than it
takes to tell it, the pursued and pursuers had vanished from sight over
a low ridge a mile to the north. "Only a hunting party!" said one or two
nervous recruits, with a gulp of relief. "Only a hunting party," gasped
Burleigh, as presently he heaved himself up from the floor, "and I
thought I'd never find that damned gun of mine. All this fuss for
nothing!" he continued, his lips still blue and quivering. "That green
youngster up there in front hasn't learned the first principles of
plains-craft yet. Here, Brooks," he added loudly, "it's high time you
were looking after this sub of yours," and Brooks, despite his illness,
was indeed working out of the back door of his yellow trundle bed at the
moment, and looking anxiously about. But the engineer stood pale and
quiet, coolly studying the flustered growler, and when Burleigh's
shifting eyes sought that young scientist's face, what he read
there--and Burleigh was no fool--told him he would be wise to change the
tune. The aid had pushed out in front of the troop and was signaling to
Dean, once more in saddle and scanning through his glass the big band
afar down the valley.
"Take my horse, sir," said the sergeant, dismounting, and the officer
thanked him and rode swiftly out to join the young commander at the
front. Together they gazed and consulted and still no signal came to
resume the advance. Then the troopers saw the staff officer make a broad
sweep with his right arm to the south, and in a moment Dean's hat was
uplifted and waved well out in that direction. "Drop carbine," growled
the sergeant. "By twos again. Incline to the right. Damn the Sioux, I
say! Have we got to circle five miles around their hunting ground for
fear of hurting their feelings. Come on. Jimmy," he added to the driver
of the leading wagon. Jimmy responded with vigorous language at the
expense of his lead mules. The quartermaster and engineer silently
scrambled in; the ambulance started with a jerk and away went the party
off to the right of the trail, the wagons jolting a bit now over the
uneven clumps of bunch grass.
But once well up at the summit of the low divide the command reined in
for a look at the great Indian cavalcade swarming in the northeastward
valley, and covering its grassy surface still a good mile away. Out from
among the dingy mass came galloping half a dozen young braves, followed
by as many squaws. The former soon spread out over the billowy surface,
some following the direction of the chase, some bounding on south west
ward as though confident of finding what they sought the moment they
reached the nearest ridge; some riding straight to the point where lay
the carcasses of the earliest victims of the hunt. Here in full view of
the soldiery, but vouchsafing them no glance nor greeting whatever, two
young warriors reined in their lively ponies and disdainfully turned
their backs upon the spectators on the divide, while the squaws, with
shrill laugh and chatter, rolled from their saddles and began the
drudgery of their lot--skinning and cutting up the buffalos slaughtered
by their lords.
"Don't you see," sneered Burleigh, "it's nothing but a village out for a
hunt--nothing in God's world to get stampeded about. We've had all this
show of warlike preparation for nothing." But he turned away again as he
caught the steady look in the engineer's blue eyes, and shouted to his
more appreciative friend, the aide-de-camp: "Well, pardner, haven't we
fooled away enough time here, or have we got to wait the pleasure of
people that never saw Indians before?"
Dean flushed crimson at the taunt. He well knew for whom it was meant.
He was indignant enough by this time to speak for himself, but the
aide-de-camp saved him the trouble.
"I requested Mr. Dean to halt a few moments, Burleigh. It is necessary I
should know what band this is, and how many are out."
"Well, be quick about it," snapped the quartermaster, "I want to get to
Reno before midnight, and at this rate we won't make it in a week."
A sergeant who could speak a little Sioux came riding back to the camp,
a grin on his sun-blistered face. "Well, sergeant, what'd he say?" asked
the staff officer.
"He said would I plaze to go to hell, sorr," was the prompt response.
"Won't he tell who they are?"
"He won't, sorr. He says we know widout askin', which is thrue, sorr.
They're Ogallallas to a man, barrin' the squaws and pappooses, wid ould
Red Cloud himself."
"How'd you find out if they wouldn't talk?" asked the staff officer
impatiently.
"'Twas the bucks wouldn't talk--except in swear wurruds. I wasted no
time on them, sorr. I gave the first squaw the last hardtack in me
saddle-bags and tould her was it Machpealota, and she said it was, and
he was wid Box Karesha--that's ould Folsom--not six hour ago, an'
Folsom's gone back to the cantonment."
"Then the quicker we skip the better," were the aide-de-camp's words.
"Get us to Reno fast as you can, Dean. Strike for the road again as soon
as we're well beyond their buffalo. Now for it! There's something behind
all this bogus hunt business, and Folsom knows what it is."
And every mile of the way, until thick darkness settled down over the
prairie, there was something behind the trooper cavalcade--several
somethings--wary red men, young and wiry, who never let themselves be
seen, yet followed on over wave after wave of prairie to look to it that
no man went back from that column to carry the news of their presence to
the little battalion left in charge of the new post at Warrior Gap.
It was the dark of the moon, or, as the Indians say, "the nights the
moon is sleeping in his lodge," and by ten P. M. the skies were
overcast. Only here and there a twinkling star was visible, and only
where some trooper struck a light for his pipe could a hand be seen in
front of the face. The ambulance mules that had kept their steady jog
during the late afternoon and the long gloaming that followed still
seemed able to maintain the gait, and even the big, lumbering wagon at
the rear came briskly on under the tug of its triple span, but in the
intense darkness the guides at the head of the column kept losing the
road, and the bumping of the wagons would reveal the fact, and a halt
would be ordered, men would dismount and go bending and crouching and
feeling their way over the almost barren surface, hunting among the sage
brush for the double furrow of the trail. Matches innumerable were
consumed, and minutes of valuable time, and the quartermaster waxed
fretful and impatient, and swore that his mules could find their way
where the troopers couldn't, and finally, after the trail had been lost
and found half a dozen times, old Brooks was badgered into telling Dean
to let the ambulance take the lead. The driver shirked at once.
"There's no tellin' where we'll fetch up," said he. "Those mules can't
see the trail if a man can't. Take their harness off and turn 'em loose,
an' I suppose they can find their way to the post, but sure as you turn
them loose when they've got somethin' on 'em, or behind 'em, and the
doggone cussedness of the creatures will prompt them to smash things."
But the quartermaster said he'd tried it with those very mules, between
Emory and Medicine Bow a dozen times, and he'd risk it. The driver could
get off his seat if he wanted to, and run alongside, but he'd stay where
he was.
"Let me out, please," said the engineer, and jumped to the ground, and
then the cavalcade pushed on again. The driver, as ordered by an
employer whom he dare not disobey, let the reins drop on the mules'
backs, the troopers falling behind, the yellow ambulance and the big
baggage wagon bringing up the rear.
Then, with a horseman on each side, the mules were persuaded to push on
again, and then when fairly started Burleigh called to the troopers to
fall back, so that the mules should not, as he expressed it, "be
influenced." "Leave them to themselves and they can get along all
right," said he, "but mix them up with the horses, and they want them to
take all the responsibility."
And now the command was barely crawling. Brooks, heavy, languid with
splitting headache, lay in feverish torpor in his ambulance, asking only
to be let alone. The engineer, a subaltern as yet, felt that he had no
right attempting to advise men like Burleigh, who proclaimed himself an
old campaigner. The aide-de-camp was getting both sleepy and impatient,
but he, too, was much the quartermaster's junior in rank. As for Dean,
he had no volition whatever. "Escort the party," were his orders, and
that meant that he must govern the movements of his horses and men by
the wishes of the senior staff official. And so they jogged along
perhaps twenty minutes more, and then there was a sudden splutter and
plunge and stumble ahead, a sharp pull on the traces, a marvelously
quick jerk back on the reins that threw the wheel team on their
haunches, and thereby saved the "outfit," for when men and matches were
hurried to the front the lead mules were discovered kicking and
splashing in a mud hole. They were not only off the road by a dozen
yards, but over a bank two feet high.
And this last pound broke the back of Burleigh's obstinacy. It was
nearly midnight anyway. The best thing to be done was unhitch, unsaddle
and bivouac until the gray light of dawn came peering over the eastward
prairie, which in that high latitude and "long-day" month would be soon
after three. Then they could push on to Reno.
Not until nearly eight o'clock in the morning, therefore, did they heave
in sight of the low belt of dingy green that told of the presence of a
stream still long miles away; and here, knowing himself to be out of
danger, the major bade the weary escort march in at a walk while he
hurried on. In fifteen minutes the black-hooded wagon was twisting and
turning over the powdery road a good mile ahead, its dust rising high
over the sage-covered desert, while the other two, with the
dust-begrimed troopers, jogged sturdily on. Loring, the young engineer,
had waved a cordial good-by to his old cadet acquaintance. "See you
later, old man," he cried. Stone, the aide-de-camp, nodded and said,
"Take care of yourself," and Burleigh said nothing at all. He was
wondering what he could do to muzzle Loring in case that gifted young
graduate were moved to tell what the quartermaster actually did when he
heard the rush and firing out at the front on the road from Warrior Gap.
But when at last the black wagon bowled in at the stockaded quadrangle
and discharged its occupants at the hut of the major commanding, there
were tidings of such import to greet them that Burleigh turned
yellow-white again at thought of the perils they had escaped.
"My God, man!" cried the post commander, as he came hurrying out to meet
the party, "we've been in a blue funk about you fellows for two whole
days. Did you see any Indians?"
"See any Indians!" said Burleigh, rallying to the occasion as became a
man who knew how to grasp an opportunity. "We stood off the whole Sioux
nation over toward Crazy Woman's Fork. There were enough to cover the
country, red and black, for a dozen miles. We sighted them yesterday
about four o'clock and there were enough around us to eat us alive, but
we just threw out skirmish lines and marched steadily ahead, so they
thought best not to bother us. They're shy of our breech loaders, damn
'em! That's all that kept them at respectful distance."
The major's face as he listened took on a puzzled, perturbed look. He
did not wish to say anything that might reflect on the opinions of so
influential a man as the depot quartermaster at Gate City, but it was
plain that there was a train of thought rumbling through his mind that
would collide with Burleigh's column of events unless he were spared the
need of answering questions. "Let me tell you briefly what's happened,"
he said. "Red Cloud and his whole band are out on the warpath. They
killed two couriers, half-breeds, I sent out to find Thornton's troop
that was scouting the Dry Fork. The man we sent to find you and give you
warning hasn't got back at all. We've had double sentries for three days
and nights. The only souls to get in from the northwest since our
fellows were run back last night are old Folsom and Baptiste. Folsom had
a talk with Red Cloud, and tried to induce him to turn back. He's beset
with the idea that the old villain is plotting a general massacre along
the Big Horn. He looks like a ghost. He says if we had five thousand
soldiers up there there'd hardly be enough. You know the Sioux have
sworn by him for years, and he thought he could coax Red Cloud to keep
away, but all the old villain would promise was to hold his young men
back ten days or so until Folsom could get the general to order the
Warrior Gap plan abandoned. If the troops are there Folsom says it's all
up with them. Red Cloud can rally all the Northern tribes, and it's only
because of Folsom's influence, at least I fancy so--that--that they
didn't attack you."
"Where is Folsom?" growled Burleigh, as he shook the powdery cloud from
his linen duster and followed the major within his darkened door, while
other officers hospitably led the aid and engineer into the adjoining
hut.
"Gone right on to Frayne. The old fellow will wear himself out, I'm
afraid. He says he must get in telegraphic communication with Omaha
before he's four days older. My heaven, man, it was a narrow squeak you
had! It's God's mercy Folsom saw Red Cloud before he saw you."
"Oh, pshaw!" said the quartermaster, turning over a little packet of
letters awaiting him in the commanding officer's sanctum. "We could have
given a good account of ourselves, I reckon. Brooks is down with fever,
and young Dean got rattled, or something like it. He's new at the
business and easily scared, you know; so I practically had to take
command. They'll be along in an hour or so, and--a word in your ear. If
Brooks has to remain on sick report you'd better put somebody in command
of that troop that's had--er--er--experience."
The post commander looked genuinely troubled. "Why, Burleigh, we've all
taken quite a shine to Dean. I know the officers in his regiment think a
heap of him; the seniors do, at least."
But Burleigh, with big eyes, was glaring at a letter he had selected,
opened, and was hurriedly reading. His face was yellowing again, under
the blister of sun and alkali.
"What's amiss?" queried his friend. "Nothing wrong, I hope. Why,
Burleigh, man! Here, let me help you!" he cried in alarm, for the
quartermaster was sinking into a chair.
"You can help me!" he gasped. "Get me fresh mules and escort. My God! I
must start for Frayne at once. Some whisky, please." And the letter
dropped from his trembling hands and lay there unnoticed on the floor.