exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force
was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an
impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command.
Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men's village, and the troops
went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze
ostentatiously unprotected, so that the people in the thicket should
have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules
pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered
among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of
the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the
flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built
irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended
glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little
blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook's tent, and Sergeant
Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his
camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket
below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By
eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a
little occasional breeze, that passed like a chill hand laid a moment on
the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water
running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant
Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the
dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack
Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar,
because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command
of a battalion, they held the attitude of school-boys to a master--the
instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and
Cumnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they
stood at the fire, but away from him.
"How do you like this compared with barracks?" the sergeant asked,
conversationally.
"It's all right," said Jones.
"Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn't enjoy it
much myself. Sit down and get warm, won't you?"
The men came and stood awkwardly. "I 'ain't never found any excitement
in getting up early," said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted,
and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones
kicked the log into better position. "But this affair's gettin'
inter-esting," he added.
"Don't you smoke?" Keyser inquired of Cumnor, and tossed him his
tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going
better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.
"Arizona's the most outrageous outrage in the United States," declared
Jones.
"Why did you stay there six years, then?" said Cumnor.
"Guess I'd been there yet but for you comin' along and us both enlistin'
that crazy way. Idaho's better. Only," said Jones, thoughtfully, "coming
to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it's a wonder a man
don't just split like a glass chimbly."
The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.
"How! how!" said a strange, propitiating voice.
It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself.
They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not
running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and "How!
how!" he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who
remained seated.
"Good-evening," said the sergeant.
"Christmas is coming," said Jones, amicably.
"How! how!" said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his
horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and
beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly
jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp
and shaken his head; but the Indian's nerves were evidently on the
sharpest strain.
"Sit down!" said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started
suspiciously.
"Warm here!" Jones called to him, and Cumnor showed his pipe.
The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed
almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with
heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for
vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and
pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers
only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount,
looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got
off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they
smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the
magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.
"He's a jim-dandy," said Cumnor.
"You bet the girls think so," said Jones. "He gets his pick. For you're
a fighter too, ain't y'u?" he added, to E-egante.
"How! how!" said that personage, looking at them with grave affability
from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the
sergeant's pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures,
the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of
being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning
embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp,
crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante
gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had
come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it
would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview.
Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but
she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had
taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay
wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances.
The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice
made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant
on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.
By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty
waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten
o'clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the
squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to
do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn
smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking
wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race she
served. She hardly knew what was in her own mind. Then it became eleven,
and Crook was tired of it, and made the capping move in his bluff. He
gave the orders himself.
"Sergeant."
Keyser saluted.
"You will detail eight men to go with you into the Indian camp. The men
are to carry pistols under their overcoats, and no other arms. You will
tell the Indians to come out. Repeat what I said to them last night.
Make it short. I'll give them ten minutes. If they don't come by then a
shot will be fired out here. At that signal you will remain in there and
blaze away at the Indians."
So Keyser picked his men.
The thirty-one remaining troopers stopped joking, and watched the squad
of nine and the interpreter file down the bank to visit the three
hundred. The dingy overcoats and the bright green shawl passed into the
thicket, and the General looked at his watch. Along the bend of the
stream clear noises tinkled from the water and the ice.
"What are they up to?" whispered a teamster to Jack Long. Long's face
was stern, but the teamster's was chalky and tight drawn. "Say," he
repeated, insistently, "what are we going to do?"
"We're to wait," Long whispered back, "till nothin' happens, and then
th' Ole Man'll fire a gun and signal them boys to shoot in there."
"Oh, it's to be waitin'?" said the teamster. He fastened his eyes on the
thicket, and his lips grew bloodless. The running river sounded more
plainly. "---- ---- it!" cried the man, desperately, "let's start the
fun, then." He whipped out his pistol, and Jack Long had just time to
seize him and stop a false signal.
"Why, you must be skeered," said Long. "I've a mind to beat yer skull
in."
"Waitin's so awful," whimpered the man. "I wisht I was along with them
in there."
Jack gave him back his revolver. "There," said he; "ye're not skeered, I
see. Waitin' ain't nice."
The eight troopers with Keyser were not having anything like so
distasteful a time. "Jock," said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, as they
followed the sergeant into the willows and began to come among the
lodges and striped savages, "you and me has saw Injuns before, Jock."
"And we'll do it again," said Cumnor.
Keyser looked at his watch: Four minutes gone. "Jones," said he, "you
patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There
must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with
side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It's a big
one--all brothers." Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick
through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all
the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the tangle,
fleeting visions of yellow and red through the quiet-colored twigs.
Others squatted stoically, doing nothing. A few had guns, but most used
arrows, and had these stacked beside them where they squatted. Keyser
singled out a somewhat central figure--Fur Cap was his name--as his
starting-point if the signal should sound. It must sound now in a second
or two. He would not look at his watch lest it should hamper him. Fur
Cap sat by a pile of arrows, with a gun across his knees besides. Keyser
calculated that by standing close to him as he was, his boot would catch
the Indian under the chin just right, and save one cartridge. Not a red
man spoke, but Sarah the squaw dutifully speechified in a central place
where paths met near Keyser and Fur Cap. Her voice was persuasive and
warning. Some of the savages moved up and felt Keyser's overcoat. They
fingered the hard bulge of the pistol underneath, and passed on,
laughing, to the next soldier's coat, while Sarah did not cease to
harangue. The tall, stately man of last night appeared. His full dark
eye met Sarah's, and the woman's voice faltered and her breathing grew
troubled as she gazed at him. Once more Keyser looked at his watch:
Seven minutes. E-egante noticed Sarah's emotion, and his face showed
that her face pleased him. He spoke in a deep voice to Fur Cap,
stretching a fringed arm out towards the hill with a royal gesture, at
which Fur Cap rose.
"He will come, he will come!" said the squaw, running to Keyser. "They
all come now. Do not shoot."
"Let them show outside, then," thundered Keyser, "or it's too late. If
that gun goes before I can tell my men--"
He broke off and rushed to the entrance. There were skirmishers
deploying from three points, and Crook was raising his hand slowly.
There was a pistol in it. "General! General!" Keyser shouted, waving
both hands, "No!" Behind him came E-egante, with Sarah, talking in low
tones, and Fur Cap came too.
[Illustration: "HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN"]
The General saw, and did not give the signal. The sight of the
skirmishers hastened E-egante's mind. He spoke in a loud voice, and at
once his warriors began to emerge from the willows obediently. Crook's
bluff was succeeding. The Indians in waiting after nine were
attempting a little bluff of their own; but the unprecedented visit of
nine men appeared to them so dauntless that all notion of resistance
left them. They were sure Gray Fox had a large army. And they came,
and kept coming, and the place became full of them. The troopers had
all they could do to form an escort and keep up the delusion, but by
degrees order began, and the column was forming. Riding along the edge
of the willows came E-egante, gay in his blankets, and saying, "How!
how!" to Keyser, the only man at all near him. The pony ambled, and
sidled, paused, trotted a little, and Keyser was beginning to wonder,
when all at once a woman in a green shawl sprang from the thicket,
leaped behind the chief, and the pony flashed by and away, round the
curve. Keyser had lifted his carbine, but forbore; for he hesitated to
kill the woman. Once more the two appeared, diminutive and scurrying,
the green shawl bright against the hill-side they climbed. Sarah had
been willing to take her chances of death with her hero, and now she
vanished with him among his mountains, returning to her kind, and
leaving her wedded white man and half-breeds forever.
"I don't feel so mad as I ought," said Specimen Jones.
Crook laughed to Glynn about it. "We've got a big balance of 'em," he
said, "if we can get 'em all to Boise. They'll probably roast me in the
East." And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one
escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of
the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington,
and explained to each other how they would have done it.
And so the General's bluff partly failed. E-egante kept his freedom,
"all along o' thet yere pizen squaw," as Mr. Long judiciously remarked.
It was not until many years after that the chief's destiny overtook
him; and concerning that, things both curious and sad could be told.[A]
[Footnote A: Let me no longer pervert General Crook's military tactics.
It was a dismounted charge that he ordered on this occasion, as a friend
who was present has written me since the first publication of this
story.
_Mr. Remington's illustration was made to suit the text in its original
form._--Publisher's Note.]
SALVATION GAP
After cutting the Gazelle's throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent,
secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was
the other man--the unknown one. There were his boot-prints this fine
morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He
was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously
made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.
The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on
account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer
Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested
in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn's relations with the
Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was
genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling
him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of
the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn's "rusted mustache
had livened up; same ez flow'rs ye've kerried a long ways when yer girl
puts 'em in a pitcher o' water." Being the sentiment of a placer miner,
the lover's feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the
Gazelle's that was purely official; it was for him that she personally
cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her
trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits--gold,
coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust--that her hall of entertainment
earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton'
needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to
ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money
until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting
her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once,
on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry
the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain
shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to
the right place. A woman's name and an address at San Antonio were
certainly scrawled on the parcel. The faithful Drylyn waited till the
stage came in, and handed over his treasure to the messenger, who gave
him one amazed look that he did not notice. He ought to have seen that
young man awhile afterwards, the package torn open, a bag of dust on his
knee, laughing almost to tears over a letter he had found with the gold
inside the wrapping. But Drylyn was on the road up to Salvation Gap at
that time. The shot-gun messenger was twenty-three; Drylyn was
forty-five. Gazelles are apt to do this sort of thing. After all,
though, it was silly, just for the sake of a laugh, to let the old lover
learn the face of his secret rival. It was one of those early unimagined
nails people sometimes drive in their own coffins. An ancient series of
events followed: continued abject faith and passion on the miner's part;
continued presents of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued
trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her
very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn's first sickening dawn of
doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final
accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to
the Gap come out of the Gazelle's tent so early in the morning; the
instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever,
calculating wild beast. So now her throat was cut, and she was good and
dead. He had managed well. The whole game had shown instantly like a
picture on his brain, complete at a stroke, with every move clear. He
had let the man go down the hill--just for the present. The camp had got
up, eaten its breakfast, and gone out to the ditches, Drylyn along with
the rest. Owing to its situation, neighbors could not see him presently
leave his claim and walk back quickly to the Gap at an hour when the
dance-hall was likely to be lonely. He had ready what to say if the
other women should be there; but they were away at the creek below,
washing, and the luxurious, unsuspecting Gazelle was in bed in her own
tent, not yet disturbed. The quiet wild beast walked through the
deserted front entrance of the hall in the most natural manner, and so
behind among the empty bottles, and along the plank into the tent; then,
after a while, out again. She would never be disturbed now, and the wild
beast was back at his claim, knee-deep, and busy among the digging and
the wetness, in another pair of overalls just like the ones that were
now under some stones at the bottom of a mud-puddle. And then one very
bad long scream came up to the ditches, and Drylyn knew the women had
returned from their washing.
He raised his head mechanically to listen. He had never been a bad man;
had never wished to hurt anybody in his life before that he could
remember; but as he pondered upon it in his slow, sure brain, he knew
that he was glad he had done this, and was going to do more. He was
going to follow those tracks pretty soon, and finish the whole job with
his own hand. They had fooled him, and had taken trouble to do it; gone
out of their way, made game of him to the quick; and when he remembered,
for the twentieth time this morning, that day he had carried the package
of gold-dust--some of it very likely his own--to the smooth-faced
messenger at Folsom, Drylyn's stolid body trembled from head to foot,
and he spoke blind, inarticulate words.