Nearer, nearer, the sun sank down to the western peaks, and upon the
wilderness rested the sweet and solemn stillness of the evening hour.
Save the call of a bird at intervals within the timber belt, there was a
silence that might be felt. The broad stream, tranquilly flowing around
its bend, gleamed first with living fire, then red, as the last rays of
the sun fell upon its surface, to lift in a moment, leaving its waters
grey and cold. Then one last kiss of golden light upon the tree-tops,
and the lamp of day had gone down.
One living creature moved within this solitude, however. Alone,
enjoying with all her soul the spacious grandeur of the Western
wilderness, stood a very lovely girl. Every now and then she would
pause for a few moments to drink in that glorious sense of unfettered
freedom which the vast expanding roll of hill and plain, never ending,
like a sea of billowy verdance stretching from sky to sky, inspired in
her, then return to her occupation. That occupation was--fishing.
She wore a riding-habit which, fitting her like a glove, revealed the
undulating curves of an unrivalled figure. By some clever contrivance
she had shortened its otherwise inconvenient length, and with the grace
and deftness of a practised hand she was wielding a trout-rod. What a
spectacle to come upon suddenly in the heart of the wild and
blood-stained West! And what insane fatuity should bring her here alone
in the fast falling twilight?
At this moment, however, the last thought in her mind is any fear of
danger. Her cast whirls in the air; the flies drop noiselessly into a
bubbling eddy. There is a rush through the water and a splash. An
eager light comes into the velvety blue eyes, fading as rapidly to give
place to one of vexation as the cast, suddenly released from its
tension, springs high overhead, describing many a fantastic gyration.
"How sickening," she cries, with a little stamp of impatience. "How
unutterably sickening! That _was_ a beauty, and I shan't rise another
to-night. But--it's nearly dark. I must go back."
What is that stealthy rustle in the depths of yonder scrub? For the
first time the girl is conscious of a shade of nervousness as she
hurriedly begins to take her rod to pieces. Her thoughts suggest the
proximity of some hideous snake, or a panther perhaps.
She turns towards where she left her pony. Can the gathering dusk be
playing her tricks? The animal is not there. Though securely fastened,
it has disappeared.
But the sight which does meet her eyes roots her to the ground with
horror. Stealing noiselessly towards her, in the dark shade of the
timber, are three half-naked Indians--tall, athletic, hulking savages,
hideously painted. They halt for a moment as they see themselves
perceived. They are barely a dozen yards distant.
"How, lily gal!" grunts the foremost, wreathing his repulsive face into
a frightful grin, and advancing with outstretched hand. "How, lily gal!
No 'fraid! Me good Injun, me. Ha, ha! Me good Injun brudder."
The exultant mockery underlying this friendly address was too
transparent. Her eyes dilating with horror, the girl stepped back, the
consciousness that she was alone in the power of these fiends turning
her limbs to stone. They, for their part, secure of their beautiful
prize, were enjoying her terror.
"No run 'way," said the first speaker, who had diminished the distance
between them. "No run 'way. Injun, good brudder." And he seized her
left wrist in the grasp of a vice--while another, with a fierce
chuckling laugh, made a movement to seize her right one.
But the brutal contact broke the spell of horror which was weaving
around her. A wild cry of indignation escaped her lips, and her eyes
blazed. Wrenching her right wrist free, she dashed the heavy butt end
of her fishing-rod with all her force--and it was not small--full into
the first assailant's face, knocking out some of his front teeth, and
causing him to loosen his hold.
With the fierce growl of a wounded cougar, the savage sprang at her
again, the blood streaming from his mouth, and as the unhappy girl
recoiled to renew her efforts to keep her persecutors at bay, such a
marvellous change came over the scene that not one of the actors in it
was quite aware what had happened.
An enormous dark mass seemed to fall from the very heavens,
simultaneously with a thundrous roar. The girl, now tottering on the
verge of faintness, saw, as in a flash, her first assailant lying with
his skull crushed to pulp, another lay gasping in the agonies of death,
while the third was just vanishing in the timber! At him pointing the
still smoking muzzle of a revolver, mounted on a huge black horse, was
the most splendidly handsome man she had ever seen.
"Quick! Drop all that gear and mount in front of me. Give me your
hand."
There was no disobeying the curt commanding tone. Resisting a deadly
impulse to faint right away, she extended her hand. In a second she was
swung up before the stranger on his powerful horse.
It was all done like lightning. The first appearance of the savages--
the assault--the rescue--occupied barely a couple of minutes. Pale to
the lips, shaky, and unnerved, she could hardly now realise it all. But
often in the time to come would she look back to that strange ride, the
weight of the appalling danger she had just escaped still hanging over
her, the courage and promptitude of her rescuer, the struggle she was
waging with her own natural terror, dreading she knew not what.
The black steed was going at a gallop now, but his rider had him well in
hand. The girl noticed that they were making something of a _detour_
which took them far out on the open plain, whereas her ride down to the
river had led her along the very edge of the timber. She noticed, too,
the anxious, alert look on the stranger's face. Though he did not turn
his head, she felt assured that not a detail in the surroundings escaped
him.
"There are your people," he said briefly, as they suddenly came in sight
of the camp. The waggons had just unhitched, and the mules and oxen
were being driven down to the water; not the river we have seen, but a
small creek running into it. Already columns of smoke were rising on
the evening air.
"I can never thank you enough," said the girl, suddenly and with a
shudder. "But for your promptitude where should I be now?"
"Say but for your own courage and self-possession. The average idiot in
petticoats would have shrieked and fainted and gone into hysterics.
Meanwhile, the reds would have captured her and shot me," he rejoined,
somewhat roughly. "Be advised by me now. Don't startle the rest of the
women, or they'll hamper us seriously. Now we'll dismount."
He lifted her to the ground, and, without another word, turned to
confront a man who had hurried up. But the girl's clear voice
interrupted him before he could speak.
"This gentleman has rescued me from frightful danger, Major Winthrop.
There are Indians about."
"By Jove!" said he addressed, with a start of astonishment, looking from
the one to the other. He was a man below middle age, of medium height,
active and well-built, and there was no mistaking him for anything other
than what he was--an English gentleman.
"Boss of this outfit, I take it?" said the new arrival shortly.
"Yes. Allow me to offer you my most grateful thanks for--"
"Well, there's a big lot of Sioux preparing to `jump' you at any moment.
Corral your waggons without delay, and have your cattle brought in at
once. Not a second to lose."
A frightful yell drowned his words. There was a thunder of hoofs upon
the turf as a band of some fifty mounted Indians, dashing from their
cover, bore down upon the herd of draught stock which was being driven
back from the water in charge of three or four men. On came the
savages, whooping and whistling, brandishing blankets and buffalo robes
with the object of stampeding the now frantic cattle.
But among those in charge of the latter there chanced to be a couple of
experienced plainsmen. In a trice there rang out three shots, and two
of the assailants' ponies went riderless. Crack--crack! Another pony
went down. This was more than the redskins could stand. Like a bird of
prey alarmed in its swoop, the entire band swerved at a tangent and
skimmed away over the plain as fast as their ponies could carry them.
The herd was saved.
"There goes the first act in the drama," said the stranger coolly. "Now
stand clear for the second."
The suddenness of it all--the yelling, the shots, the swoop of the
painted and feathered warriors--had created a terrible panic in the
camp, and had the main body of the savages charged at that moment
nothing could have saved its inmates. As the stranger had at first
conjectured, two of the waggons were full of women and children, the
families of some of the emigrants. These at once rushed to the
conclusion that their last hour had come, and shrieks and wailings
tended to render confusion worse confounded. But Major Winthrop, with
military promptitude, had got the men well in hand, and a very few
minutes sufficed to corral the waggons, bring in the cattle, and put the
whole camp into a creditable state of defence. It was now nearly dark.
"Will they attack us to-night?" enquired Major Winthrop, as, having
completed his arrangements, he returned to where the stranger was seated
smoking a pipe and gazing narrowly out into the gloomy waste.
"I should be inclined to say not. Their surprise has fallen through,
you see, and then Indians don't like fighting at night. But it's at the
hour before dawn, when we're all infernally sleepy and more or less
shivery with being up all night--it's then we shall have to keep a very
bright look-out indeed. I should keep about half your men at a time on
guard all night through if I were in your place."
"Who air you, stranger?" said a not very friendly voice.
He addressed turned, and beheld a lank, dried-up individual who might
have been any age between thirty and fifty. His hawk-like face was the
colour of mahogany, and, but for a small moustache, was devoid of
hirsute adornment. His deep-set grey eyes, however, were those of a man
prompt and keen to act in the moment of difficulty or danger. His dress
consisted of a rather dirty blue shirt and fringed breeches.
"Who am I? Why just who I look--neither more nor less," was the
rejoinder, given with provoking tranquillity.
"And what might your name be--if it's a fair question?"
"It might be Jones, or it might not. The question is a fair one,
however. That being so, I don't mind telling you my name is Vipan.
What's yours?"
"I'm Oregon Dave, champion bronco-buster [ranch term for a professional
horse-breaker] of Wyoming. I'm boss-guide of this hyar outfit, and the
chap who reckons he knows Injuns and their little ways better nor I had
best just step out and say so."
"If I were boss-guide of any outfit, I'm damned if I'd let a young lady
belonging to that same start off by herself to go fishing among a Sioux
war-party," said Vipan, with a quiet satire in his tone that was
maddening to the last degree. He resented the other's truculent
bearing, and intended to let him know it.
"Eh! Say that again," said the first speaker, flushing with anger.
"We mustn't quarrel my friends, we mustn't quarrel," put in Major
Winthrop, earnestly. "It was mainly owing to your pluck and
promptitude, Dave, that we haven't lost every hoof of our cattle. And
but for Mr Vipan, here, Miss Santorex would at this moment be a
prisoner among the Sioux. I was to blame in that matter, and I bitterly
acknowledge it." Then he told him the circumstances of Vipan's
unexpected and opportune appearance among them. Before its conclusion
Oregon Dave turned to the latter with outstretched palm:
"Shake, stranger, shake. You're all there, and I'm only fit to be
kicked into a kennel to yelp. Guide? No, I ain't no guide, only a
tenderfoot--a doggoned professor. Scalp me if I don't go and hunt bugs
upon the perairie with a brace o' gig-lamps stuck across my nose. I'll
go now and ask the reds to tar and roast me. Good-bye, Kurnel;
good-bye, stranger, I ain't no guide, I ain't. Thunder, no!"
"Nonsense, man," said Winthrop, clapping him on the shoulder. "We were
all to blame. We were informed along the road that the Indians were
peaceable, and that all chance of war was at an end, for this summer, at
any rate," he explained, for Vipan's benefit. "That being so, we have
travelled much too carelessly, although in camp we've been on the alert
for horse or cattle thieves."
"I've been watching your outfit, and I've been watching the reds for
nearly two hours," said Vipan. "They mean't jumping you yonder at the
creek, and would have done so before this if you had not changed your
plan, and camped here. As near as I can count, there are about three
hundred of them. See that butte away up there? That's where I've been
located. Came down to warn you--none too soon, either."
"No, indeed. We owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay, myself
especially. Good God, if harm had befallen Miss Santorex! I can't even
stand the idea of it."
"Relative of yours?" said the other shortly.
"_No_. She's the sister of a neighbour of ours--man who runs the
adjoining ranch. She's come out from England to stay with her brother
for a bit, and took the opportunity of travelling with us. And--if
anything had happened--good God, if anything had happened! It's an
awful responsibility, and I devoutly wish we were safe through it. Now,
I think, we may go and get some supper."
Major Winthrop, as we have said, was English. He had retired early from
the service, and being an energetic fellow had soon found an unoccupied
life pall upon him. Accordingly he had migrated to the Far West and
started ranching--a life that suited him thoroughly. His wife, a pretty
little vivacious brunette, was American. She was considerably his
junior, and they had not been long married; and at the time we make
their acquaintance were returning from a visit to her home in the
Eastern States.
"My! what a fine-looking fellow!" she whispered to her friend, as she
watched the approach of her husband's guest. "Why, Yseulte, it was
worth while getting into a fix to be rescued by such a knight-errant as
that."
To her surprise the colour came to the girl's face--visible in the
moonlight--as she answered:
"What nonsense, Hettie! Do be quiet, or they'll hear you."
"I ought to scold you severely, Miss Santorex, for running such an awful
risk," said Winthrop, as they sat down to supper, picnic fashion, beside
the horse waggon which served as the ladies' bedroom, saloon, and
boudoir--and in bad weather, dining-room--all run into one.
"Please don't, for I assure you I'm very penitent," she answered.
"And then just think what an adventure she'll have to tell about when
she gets home again," put in Mrs Winthrop. "Well, now, Yseulte, what
do you think of our Indians, now you have seen them--real ones--at
last?"
"Oh, don't ask me!" answered the girl, who was still rather pale and
shaky, in spite of her plucky efforts to recover her self-possession.
"That last charge was all over so quickly. But aren't they rather
cowardly?"
"Why?" said the Major.
"Well, a number of them like that to be turned back by three men."
"I trust you may have no practical occasion to alter your opinion," put
in Vipan, speaking for the first time. "That was a small surprise party
bent on running off the stock--not fighting. As it was, they lost two
killed and wounded at the first fire, and one pony, which is enough to
turn any Indian charge of that strength."
"Killed! Were there any killed?" asked Mrs Winthrop, in a horrified
tone. "They seemed only frightened."
"H'm, perhaps that was all, or they may have been only wounded," said
Vipan, inventing a pious fraud for the occasion. These two delicately
nurtured women would require all their resolution on the morrow; there
was no need to unnerve them with an instalment of horrors to-night. So
both men affected an unconcern which one of them at any rate was far
from feeling, and little by little the contagion spread, and the
emigrants' families began to forget their first fears, and the spell of
brooding horror which had first lain upon them began to pass away, and
the terrible danger with which they were threatened seemed more remote,
yet, the night through, men sat together in groups, chatting in an
undertone, as, rifle in hand, they never entirely took their gaze off
the moonlit waste, lest the ferocious and lurking foe should creep upon
them in his strength and strike them unawares.