badger-hole which he had, during many days of hard labor, enlarged for a
playhouse.
The Indians were a party of Cheyennes who had been forcibly located in
the Indian Territory by the Government. On this occasion, half a
thousand of those fierce warriors decided to go on the warpath and
return to their former hunting grounds in Wyoming. On their way they
burned houses and slew and scalped everybody that fell in their path.
Among many other outrages they, for a little diversion, killed and
scalped a young woman school-teacher and forty pupils. United States
troops then rounded them up and corralled them in Fort Robinson,
Nebraska. One night they made a break to escape and the soldiers, now
out of patience, killed the whole bunch.
But to return to Dave: When the Indians saw the smoke coming out of the
top of the ground, their curiosity was excited, and discovering that it
was a dwelling they rode round it, red-man fashion, in a constantly
narrowing circle, firing guns and war-whooping.
The dog began to bark and struggle to free himself to get after those
Indians, but Dave thrust his hand into the animal's mouth, and grasping
his lower jaw managed to keep him from barking. It took all of Dave's
strength to hold that dog, but he knew that it meant life or death, for
if the dog should escape he would betray their hiding-place.
The Indians, finding no sign of life in the dugout except the barking
dogs that Dave had shut in, came closer and closer. Half a dozen of them
got up on the top of the dugout, and the others bunched themselves in
close to the entrance, preparatory to rushing the place.
But Dave had not succeeded in extinguishing the last spark of the fire
that he had started under the bunks, so, coincidentally with the Indians
arranging themselves about the cavern, the twelve kegs of gunpowder went
into action.
Dave could not imagine what had happened. He thought that possibly the
Indians had captured the gunpowder and exploded it purposely, but he did
not dare to emerge from his hiding.
There was an interval of silence. There were no more war-whoops, and he
concluded that the Indians had departed. They had, but not exactly in
the manner that Dave imagined.
The parent and Uncle Joe, returning on the edge of evening, were
dumbfounded at finding only a great hole in the ground where the
dwelling had been. Dave's father wrung his hands and bemoaned the loss
of his boy, while Uncle Joe consoled him with the usual I-told-you-so
that he ought not to have kept the gunpowder in the place.
They began a diligent search for any souvenirs of Dave that might have
happened to return to Mother Earth. After they had gathered up about a
wagon-load of the disintegrated Indians, Uncle Joe suggested that they
must be on the wrong scent.
At this puzzling juncture, Dave, hearing the voices of his father and
Uncle Joe, cautiously emerged from his hiding. When he came in sight,
Uncle Joe said, "There's Dave now! There's your boy!" His father looked
blankly at him for a moment. Though the vision looked like Dave he could
not trust it. He said, "No, it can't be my boy! It can't be my boy!"
But it was; and Dave is still with us.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Printer inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.