THE DEAD MEN'S TALE
The wilderness, close at hand, soon was to make itself felt. Wingate's
outriders moved out before noon of one day, intending to locate camp at
the ford of the Big Vermilion. Four miles in advance they unexpectedly
met the scout of the Missouri column, Bill Jackson, who had passed the
Wingate train by a cut-off of his own on a solitary ride ahead for sake
of information. He was at a gallop now, and what he said sent them all
back at full speed to the head of the Wingate column.
Jackson riding ahead, came up with his hand raised for a halt.
"My God, Cap'n, stop the train!" he called. "Hit won't do for the womern
and children to see what's on ahead yan!"
"What's up--where?" demanded Wingate.
"On three mile, on the water where they camped night afore last. Thar
they air ten men, an' the rest's gone. Woodhull's wagons, but he ain't
thar. Wagons burned, mules standing with arrers in them, rest all dead
but a few. Hit's the Pawnees!"
The column leaders all galloped forward, seeing first what later most
of the entire train saw--the abominable phenomena of Indian warfare on
the Plains.
Scattered over a quarter of a mile, where the wagons had stood not
grouped and perhaps not guarded, lay heaps of wreckage beside heaps of
ashes. One by one the corpses were picked out, here, there, over more
than a mile of ground. They had fought, yes, but fought each his own
losing individual battle after what had been a night surprise.
The swollen and blackened features of the dead men stared up, mutilated
as savages alone mark the fallen. Two were staked out, hand and foot,
and ashes lay near them, upon them. Arrows stood up between the ribs of
the dead men, driven through and down into the ground. A dozen mules, as
Jackson had said, drooped with low heads and hanging ears, arrow shafts
standing out of their paunches, waiting for death to end their agony.
"Finish them, Jackson."
Wingate handed the hunter his own revolver, signaling for Kelsey and
Hall to do the same. The methodical cracking of the hand arms began to
end the suffering of the animals.
They searched for scraps of clothing to cover the faces of the dead, the
bodies of some dead. They motioned the women and children back when the
head of the train came up. Jackson beckoned the leaders to the side of
one wagon, partially burned.
"Look," said he, pointing.
A long stick, once a whipstock, rose from the front of the wagon bed. It
had been sharpened and thrust under the wrist skin of a human hand--a
dried hand, not of a white man, but a red. A half-corroded bracelet of
copper still clung to the wrist.
"If I read signs right, that's why!" commented Bill Jackson.
"But how do you explain it?" queried Hall. "Why should they do that? And
how could they, in so close a fight?"
"They couldn't," said Jackson. "That hand's a day an' a half older than
these killings. Hit's Sam Woodhull's wagon. Well, the Pawnees like
enough counted 'coup on the man that swung that hand up for a sign, even
if hit wasn't one o' their own people."
"Listen, men," he concluded, "hit was Woodhull's fault. We met some
friendlies--Kaws--from the mission, an' they was mournin'. A half dozen
o' them follered Woodhull out above the ferry when he pulled out. They
told him he hadn't paid them for their boat, asked him for more
presents. He got mad, so they say, an' shot down one o' them an' stuck
up his hand--fer a warnin', so he said.
"The Kaws didn't do this killin'. This band of Pawnees was away down
below their range. The Kaws said they was comin' fer a peace council, to
git the Kaws an' Otoes to raise against us whites, comin' put so many,
with plows and womernfolks--they savvy. Well, the Kaws has showed the
Pawnees. The Pawnees has showed us."
"Yes," said the deep voice of Caleb Price, property owner and head of a
family; "they've showed us that Sam Woodhull was not fit to trust.
There's one man that is."
"Do you want him along with your wagons?" demanded Jackson. He turned to
Wingate.
"Well," said the train captain after a time, "we are striking the Indian
country now."
"Shall I bring up our wagons an' jine ye all here at the ford this
evenin'?"
"I can't keep you from coming on up the road if you want to. I'll not
ask you."
"All right! We'll not park with ye then. But we'll be on the same water.
Hit's my own fault we split. We wouldn't take orders from Sam Woodhull,
an' we never will."
He nodded to the blackened ruins, to the grim dead hand pointing to the
sky, left where it was by the superstitious blood avengers.
Wingate turned away and led the wagon train a half mile up the stream,
pitching camp above the ford where the massacre had occurred. The duties
of the clergy and the appointed sextons were completed. Silence and
sadness fell on the encampment.
Jackson, the scout of the Missouri column, still lingered for some sort
of word with Molly Wingate. Some odds and ends of brush lay about. Of
the latter Molly began casting a handful on the fire and covering it
against the wind with her shawl, which at times she quickly removed. As
a result the confined smoke arose at more or less well defined
intervals, in separate puffs or clouds.
"Ef ye want to know how to give the smoke signal right an' proper, Miss
Molly," said he at length, quietly, "I'll larn ye how."
The girl looked up at him.
"Well, I don't know much about it."
"This way: Hit takes two to do hit best. You catch holt two corners o'
the shawl now. Hist it on a stick in the middle. Draw it down all over
the fire. Let her simmer under some green stuff. Now! Lift her clean
off, sideways, so's not ter break the smoke ball. See 'em go up? That's
how."
He looked at the girl keenly under his bushy gray brows.
"That's the Injun signal fer 'Enemy in the country.' S'pose you ever
wanted to signal, say to white folks, 'Friend in the country,' you might
remember--three short puffs an' one long one. That might bring up a
friend. Sech a signal can be seed a long ways."
Molly flushed to the eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothin' at all, any more'n you do."
Jackson rose and left her.