THE RESCUE OF CAYUSE.
This was the scene which had brought the fierce frown to Buffalo
Bill’s brow, and the gasp to Dell’s lips and the white to her check.
Little Cayuse, suspended by the arms against the smooth cliff wall,
swinging and twisting with the rope.
Was he alive?
That was the question the scout asked himself as he ran forward
toward the wall of the blind gully, and it was the question Dell
Dauntless put to herself as she followed.
Cayuse was about ten feet above the ground, his eyes were closed and
his head was drooping forward.
“Cayuse?” cried the scout, halting close and peering up at the
slender form.
Instantly the boy opened his eyes and threw back his head.
“Wuh!” he answered.
“What fiends those Apaches are!” exclaimed Dell. “They drew him up
there and left him to die!”
The scout drew his revolver.
“What are you about to do, Buffalo Bill?” the girl asked.
“I could cut the rope with two or three bullets,” answered the scout
hesitatingly, “or I could ride up on my horse----”
“You couldn’t reach him on your horse, or, at least, you wouldn’t be
able to reach the rope. Put up your revolver, Buffalo Bill, and leave
it to me.”
Dell took a position in front of Cayuse and drew the bowie-knife that
swung at her belt.
“What can you do with that?” asked the scout.
“Cut the rope above Cayuse’s hands.”
The scout started and stared at the girl.
Such a feat, if successfully accomplished, would be one of the most
remarkable he had ever seen.
To throw a knife and keep it perpendicular was comparatively easy;
but, in order to sever the rope, Dell would have to throw the blade
so that its edge would meet the rope horizontally.
“Are you sure you can do it?” went on the scout gravely.
“I would not try if I were not.”
“If you made a miss----”
“I know what would happen if I made a miss, but I shall not. Stand
close enough to catch him when the rope parts, Buffalo Bill.”
Dell Dauntless was perfectly cool. The scout marveled at her
self-control, and her stony calmness.
Without removing her gauntlet, she took the knife in her right hand
by the point; then she measured the distance and the height with a
quick eye.
Once, twice, three times her hand went up in a circle, the pearl
handle of the bowie flashing in the sun.
“Now!” she murmured.
There was a second or two in the preparation for the throw, but the
feat itself consumed less than a second.
“Bravo!” cried Buffalo Bill, as the girl hurled the knife and its
edge bit into the rope above Little Cayuse’s head.
The rope was not cut cleanly through, but the few strands that were
left parted quickly, and Cayuse shot downward into the scout’s arms.
Carrying the boy to the horses, Buffalo Bill laid him on the ground.
Dell took her canteen from the saddle-horn, sank down beside the boy,
and took his head on her knee.
Her tenderness as she ministered to Cayuse gave the scout a glimpse
of another side of her nature.
“Poor little chap!” she murmured, pressing the canteen to his lips.
“You had a tough time of it, didn’t you?”
The water gurgled down the boy’s throat, and his black eyes gazed
into the blue ones above him, then swerved to the scout.
For a few moments he lay quietly, while the scout removed the rope
from his wrists and the girl removed her gauntlets and chafed his
temples with her soft hands.
“Ugh!” grunted Little Cayuse suddenly. “White squaw got heap good
heart; but Cayuse no squaw, him warrior.”
He sat up on the ground and began working his benumbed arms back and
forth between his knees. In spite of his stoicism, he winced, and the
scout saw that one of his shoulders was dislocated.
“Down on the ground again, Cayuse!” ordered the scout; “on your left
side, boy.”
Cayuse tumbled over obediently, the scout standing astride his body
and firmly gripping his right arm.
“Hold him down, Dell,” went on the scout.
With the girl pushing and the scout pulling, and Cayuse making no
outcry whatever, the shoulder was slipped back into place.
Cayuse crawled to the wall of the defile and sat up with his back
against it. His bare breast jumped with his hard breathing so that
his necklace of bear-claws and elk-teeth fairly rattled, but a ghost
of a smile flickered about his lips.
“Heap hard time,” said he. “Me no care. Umph! Me warrior;
Pa-e-has-ka’s pard.”
“You’re a brave little fellow, that’s what you are!” declared Dell
admiringly.
Cayuse studied her face attentively.
“Who you?” he asked.
“I’m Buffalo Bill’s girl pard,” laughed Dell. “And I’m your pard,
too, Cayuse, if you’ll have me for one.”
“No like um squaw pard. Squaw make um fire, boil um kettle, sew um
beads on moccasins, no go on war-path with braves.”
“I’m different from the ordinary run of squaws, Cayuse,” said Dell,
with a humorous side-glance at the scout.
“You throw um knife heap fine,” observed Cayuse.
“I can shoot as well as I can throw a knife.”
“Umph! You make um squaw your pard, Pa-e-has-ka?”
“Yes,” smiled the scout.
“Squaw your pard, squaw my pard. Shake um hand.”
Cayuse lifted his hand--his left one--and the compact was sealed.
“Now that that formality is over, Cayuse,” said Buffalo Bill, “you
might tell us how you came to be strung up there against the cliff.”
The boy looked distressed.
“Cayuse no good. Make um worst break this grass. Let Apaches and
paleface ketch um.”
“Paleface?”
“Wuh. One paleface, five Apaches. Paleface make um heap swear, say
Cayuse tell um if Pa-e-has-ka sent um. Cayuse no tell um. Apaches
haul Cayuse up with rope. Ugh.”
“Was the paleface Bernritter?”
Cayuse shook his head.
“Was it Bascomb?”
Again Cayuse shook his head.
“There has been underhand work at the mine, Cayuse,” explained
Buffalo Bill. “Bascomb and Bernritter have taken away McGowan’s
daughter, who was coming from ’Frisco, and the arrow that was shot
into camp contained a message. Understand?”
“Me sabe.”
“The message was from Bascomb and Bernritter, and stated that if
McGowan would not agree not to prosecute them for their attempt to
get the mine bullion the other day, and would not leave a bar of gold
at the old shaft near the Black Cañon trail, he would never see his
daughter again.”
The boy fixed his eyes on the scout’s face.
“Apaches and bad white men got heap black hearts,” said he. “You like
ketch um white man that string me up?”
“Yes, if we can. He’s probably in this plot with Bascomb and
Bernritter. If we could capture him we might be able to discover
something of importance.”
“Where Squaw Rock?” asked Cayuse.
“That’s too many for me,” said the scout.
“I know where it is,” spoke up Dell. “It’s about two miles and a half
from here.”
“Paleface go there. Say he meet other paleface name Hendricks at
Squaw Rock. Tell Apaches come Squaw Rock report if they make trouble
for Buffalo Bill. Me hear um say so.”
“Good!” exclaimed the scout. “That gives us something to work on,
Dell, and we won’t have to go back to the camp and wait for Nomad to
carry that agreement and that bar of bullion to the deserted shaft.”
“Me go too?” asked Little Cayuse.
“We’ll have to take you, Cayuse. I wouldn’t let you try to tramp back
to the mine in your present condition.”
“Ugh, me all right.”
“Most white boys, with a shoulder like yours, would be in bed,
Cayuse.”
“Me use um left hand.”
“All aboard, Dell,” said the scout, getting into his saddle. “If
we’re going to do anything with that ruffian who mistreated Cayuse,
we’ll have to lay him by the heels before the Apaches join him. You
lead the way and set the pace. Cayuse and I will tag along on Bear
Paw.”
“It’s a rough road,” said the girl, rising to her own saddle; “by
taking an even rougher one we can lop off that extra half mile.”
“Lop it off,” answered the scout. “I’ll lay a blue stack Bear Paw can
follow wherever Silver Heels can lead.”
“This way, then,” cried the girl.
She spurred straight to the side of the defile and started up the
dizzy path which the Apaches had climbed some time before.
Arizona is full of difficult country for a horseman; but of all the
up-and-down trails the scout ever covered in the saddle, the course
Dell led him on the way to Squaw Rock was one of the worst.
Not once during the entire trip were the horses on a level. When they
were not standing almost straight up in the air, pawing their way
aloft like mountain-goats, they were inclined downward so far that
the stirrups touched their ears, and the riders had to brace back in
them to keep from sliding over their heads.
Such a rough passage was hard on Cayuse’s tender shoulder, but he
would have scorned to make the slightest complaint.
At one place on the devious path there was a cool spring, and here
for a space the riders halted, refreshing themselves and their
sweltering mounts with a drink.
At one place, too, Dell forced Silver Heels to a jump of half a dozen
feet over a crevasse; and at another place she made a leap downward
over a bluff of twelve feet. Bear Paw and his two riders were always
behind, the scout marveling at Dell’s perfect horsemanship.
The girl, it was plain, was entirely at home in the saddle. Was there
anything, the scout was asking himself, in which Dell Dauntless did
not excel?
Throughout the entire journey it was necessary to keep a keen lookout
for enemies, white and red. None were seen, perhaps because none
would dare this almost impossible trail.
At last, after two hours of sweating labor, Dell pulled Silver Heels
to a halt under the brow of a steep hill.
“Going to rest and breathe the bronks?” asked the scout.
“Nary, pard,” answered Dell, with an easy return to the colloquialism
of the West; “we’re close to the end of our trail, and that’s why
we’re rounded up. Squaw Rock is just over the rise. I thought
perhaps you might like to reconnoiter before we shacked down on the
place.”
“That’s the sensible thing to do, of course. Cayuse will look after
the horses while you and I climb the slope.”
Leaving the boy below with the mounts, the scout and the girl crawled
up the sun-baked rise to the crest, and peered over.
What the scout saw was a circular, cactus-covered plain. In the midst
of the plain arose a boulder about the size of a two-story house.
But it was not the shape of a two-story house. On the contrary, from
the angle at which the scout and the girl viewed it, the boulder
had the contour of a woman’s head and shoulders, with the shoulders
blanketed.
To all seeming, the rock was the upper part of some gigantic statue,
embedded in the sand from the shoulders down.
In the shadow of the rock stood a horse, head down and listlessly
panting with the heat. Closer to the base of the rock a man half sat
and half reclined. He was smoking a pipe and gazing out across the
plain. Evidently this was the man they wanted, and he was alone.
The scout and the girl slipped downward on the slope for a hurried
consultation.
“The scoundrel is there, all right,” whispered Dell.
“The question now is to capture him,” returned the scout. “He’s on
the east side of the rock, and we’re to the north of it.”
“We could rush him,” suggested Dell, “and have him covered before he
could mount and ride away. Even if he did get on his horse, we could
overhaul him.”
“A better plan, I think,” said the scout, who hesitated to place
Dell in the peril her plan would call for, “would be to take him
by surprise. While he’s mooning down there, and looking across the
desert; I’ll slip down the slope, crawl around the base of the rock,
and have a bead drawn on him before he’ll know there’s any one else
within a mile of him.”
“If he should hear you getting down the slope he might shake a bullet
out of his gun before you had a chance to fire first.”
“He’d have to be quick, if he did. However, you can remain here and
keep him covered.”
“You’re taking all the risk,” demurred the girl.
“It’s right I should.”
Without debating the question further, Buffalo Bill regained the top
of the hill, rolled over, and started downward on hands and knees.
As he crawled, a foot at a time, he kept his eyes on the man at the
foot of the rock.
The fellow seemed completely absorbed in his reflections. He smoked
languidly, like one half asleep.
The scout, remembering the brutal treatment accorded Little
Cayuse--and the boy had not told him the half of it--would have been
only too quick to meet the ruffian in a two-gun game. But he wanted
to make a capture, and try persuasion in an attempt to find out
something about Annie McGowan.
The girl was certainly hidden away somewhere among the hills.
Wherever she was, quite likely Bernritter and Bascomb were, also;
and the scout was not losing sight of the fact that he wanted to get
hands on Bascomb quite as much as he wanted to rescue Miss McGowan.
Watched by Dell Dauntless, Buffalo Bill succeeded, in due course, in
reaching the base of Squaw Rock without attracting the attention of
the ruffian.
His task now was to follow the base of the rock around until he came
near the spot where the man was sitting. This was almost directly
under the chin of the profile, and the scout had to get around one of
the shoulders.
Drawing his revolver, the scout immediately began his flanking
movement, still on all-fours and pushing the weapon ahead of him.
Just as he was on the point of passing around the edge of the
shoulder, and coming out in plain view of the man, if he happened
to be looking in the right direction, the scout observed peculiar
actions on the part of Dell.
With head and shoulders above the hill-crest, the girl was waving her
hands and pointing westward.
The scout could not understand, and the girl, in her excitement, had
risen so far above the ridge that the ruffian might catch sight of
her at any moment.
As the quickest way to terminate the situation, the scout hurried
on around the rock. Rising to his feet the moment he had the man
squarely in front of him, Buffalo Bill leveled his six-shooter.
“Hands up, you!” he shouted.
The ruffian shot into the air as though propelled by some powerful
spring. His pipe went one way and his hat another. Also, his hand
darted at his hip, but a warning bullet from the scout’s forty-four
buzzed past his ear.
“Hands up, I said!” shouted the scout. “The next bullet I send at you
won’t go so wide.”
The man turned, at that, and lifted his arms.
“Who the blazes are you, anyhow?” he snarled.
“Buffalo Bill is the label I tote. What’s your own mark?”
“Banks.”
“Well, Banks, you’re mine. Come this way till I strip off your guns.”
“What’s the matter with ye?” scowled Banks. “What have I ever done to
you that you make a play like this?”
“Never you mind that for now. I feel hostile enough to put a bullet
into you, right where you stand, on account of the way you treated my
little Piute pard. Are you coming?”
“Your hand has the call,” grunted Banks. “Sure I’m coming.”
He moved toward the scout, but slowly.
“I reckon I’ll have to plant a little lead around your feet so’st to
make ’em more lively,” remarked Buffalo Bill. “Step off, high, wide,
and handsome. Try it, now, before my patience begins to mill. You’re
slower than molasses in zero weather.”
The man increased his pace. When he had come within a couple of
yards of the scout, something happened which the scout had not been
expecting.
“Up with _your_ hands, pilgrim! That’s my pard ye’re a-drawin’ a bead
on.”
This raucous voice came from behind. A thrill ran through the scout’s
nerves as he began to understand what Dell’s dumb-show meant.
She had been trying to tell him that another of the ruffians was
coming.
The man had come, and was now in the scout’s rear.
Naturally, Buffalo Bill could not look behind him. To have done so
would have been an invitation for the man in front to drop his hands,
pull a revolver, and begin firing.
“That you, Hendricks?” the scout called, without making a move to
lift his hands, and without taking his eyes off the fellow in front
of him.
“Sure it’s me,” came the voice, “big as life an’ twicet as onnery.
Did ye hear me when I told ye to put up yer hands?”
“I heard you,” the scout answered, “and I’m not going to do it. The
click of a trigger in your hands will be my signal to throw lead into
Banks.”
“I ain’t a-goin’ to have no foolin’,” snorted Hendricks. “If you
want to drop yer guns an’ skin out, well an’ good; Banks an’ me
won’t object. You’ll find it a heap healthier, I reckon, than to try
to make front on the pair of us. We ain’t got no crow to pick with
_you_, and you hadn’t ort to force our hands. Will ye git?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m a-goin’ to count three. By the time I finish the count I’m
a-goin’ to turn loose the fireworks, unless you either git or throw
up yer hands. That’s plain enough, ain’t it?”
“I understand you, but----”
“_One!_”
There was a tone in the voice behind that plainly meant business.
“_Two!_”
The scout was just planning to jerk his second revolver from his
belt and whirl about so as to cover both Hendricks and Banks, when a
fourth person took a hand in the odd game.
This was Dell. From the hill-crest she was leveling a revolver at
Hendricks.
“Drop that gun!” she cried; “drop it quick or you’ll hear from _me_!”
Buffalo Bill could hear Hendricks swearing to himself at this
unexpected summons.