The waggon train had just pulled out.
Winding along over the wide prairie came the string of great cumbrous
vehicles, their white tilts gleaming in the morning sunshine, the
monotonous creaking of their axles mingling with the cheery shout of the
"bullwhackers" and the crack of whips. Here and there along the line
rode horsemen in twos and threes, some leading spare horses, others
giving a general eye to the progress of the train. Squads of children
chattered and squabbled in the waggons, a shrill feminine voice now and
again rising high in remonstration. Women sat placidly sewing or
knitting--indulging too in gossip--of which perhaps Yseulte Santorex was
the subject more frequently than she would have guessed or approved.
All were in good spirits, for their journey was nearing its end. No
room was there for apprehension either, for they had now reached the
extreme limits of the Sioux range. So far from all minds was any
thought of danger that even scouting precautions had been of late very
much relaxed.
Thus they journeyed.
"There's something moving away there on the bluff, Dave," said Winthrop,
suddenly, shading his eyes.
"D'you say so, Colonel?" answered the cowboy, who with his employer and
mate was riding some little way ahead of the train. "Likely enough it's
Smokestack Bill coming back. He started off in that direction before
daybreak to hunt."
They were skirting a range of low round-topped bluffs, on one of which
had appeared the object which attracted Winthrop's attention.
"It's gone now," said the latter, still gazing intently. "I could have
sworn it was somebody's head."
"Oh, thunder! Look!" said the cowboy, quickly reining in his horse with
a jerk.
Well might even his stout heart--the heart of every soul in that
company--die away. For the crest of the bluff was by magic alive with
mounted figures. A great sheet of flame burst forth, and amid the
deafening crash of the volley a storm of leaden missiles whizzed and
hummed around the ears of the party. Oregon Dave had uttered his last
words. He threw up his arms with a stiffening jerk, and toppled heavily
from his saddle.
Then followed a scene of indescribable terror and confusion. Rending
the air with their shrill, vibrating war-whoop, a vast crowd of painted
horsemen swooped down in full charge upon the doomed and demoralised
whites. Flinging themselves behind their trained steeds, the Sioux
delivered their fire with deadly effect, then, recovering themselves in
the saddle with cat-like agility, they rode in among their writhing,
shrieking victims, spearing and tomahawking right and left. Perfectly
mad with terror, the draught animals stampeded. Waggons were
overturned, and their inmates flung screaming to the ground, or crushed
and mangled beneath the wreckage.
The surprise was complete; the demoralisation perfect. Utterly
panic-stricken, helpless with dismay, men allowed themselves to be cut
down without offering a shadow of resistance. Apart from the terror
inspired by the suddenness of the onslaught, there was literally not a
minute of time wherein to mass together and strike a blow in defence.
Even the privilege of selling their lives dearly was denied these doomed
ones.
The waggon train, pulled out at its full length, offered an easy prey,
and along this line, after the first and fatal charge, the warriors,
breaking up into groups, urged their fleet ponies; shooting down the
wretched emigrants with their revolvers, and ruthlessly spearing such
few who, being wounded, instinctively tried to crawl away. Whooping,
yelling, whistling, brandishing their weapons, they strove to increase
the terror of the maddened teams, who, unable to break loose, upset the
vehicles wholesale. They goaded the frenzied animals with their
lance-points, laughing like fiends if the wheels passed over the bodies
of any of the inmates thrown out or trying to escape; and once when a
whole family, driven wild with terror, instinctively flung themselves
from the creaking, swaying vehicle, which, upsetting at that moment,
crushed mother and children alike in a horrible mangled heap beneath the
splintering wreckage, the glee of the savages knew no bounds.
It was all over in a moment. Not a man was left standing--not a man
with power in him to strike another blow. All had been slain or were
lying wounded unto death. All? Stay! All save one.
Winthrop, alone out of all that outfit, was untouched. But he had
better have been dead. His wife! Oh, good God! For her to fall into
the power of these fiends!
There was the light horse waggon; but between himself and it already
surged a crowd of skimming warriors. Many a piece was aimed at him--
many a bullet sang about his ears, but still he went unscathed.
Spurring his horse, straight for the waggon he went--straight into the
thick of the yelling, whirling crowd. Already, searing his ears like
molten lead, rose the piercing shrieks of miserable women writhing
beneath the scalping-knife, or struggling in the outraging grasp of the
victorious barbarians. He sees a number of small bodies flung high into
the air--even marks the piteous terror in the faces of the wretched
little infants as they fall, to be caught dexterously on the bright
lance-points extended to receive them, and the laughing yells of the
painted fiends as the warm blood spurts forth and falls in jets upon
their hands and persons. All this passes before his eyes and ears as a
vision of hell, and more than one of those fierce and ruthless
assailants deftly turns his horse away rather than face the awful fury
of despair blazing from his livid countenance. One after another falls
before his revolver. A moment more and he will reach his wife. Then
they will both die together by his own hand.
The crowd of whirling centaurs seems to give way before him, and with
his eye upon his goal he spurs between their ranks. But a roar of
mocking laughter greets his ears.
The canvas curtains of the waggon-tilt part, and a great savage,
hideously painted, springs forth, uttering an exultant whoop as he
brandishes something in the air. It is a scalp--the blood trickling
freely down the long, shining, silky tress.
The whoop dies in the Indian's throat. Winthrop's ball has sped true.
His wife's slayer falls heavily, still grasping in the locked grip of
death the relic of the murdered victim. Yet, grim as it may seem, the
murderer really deserves the gratitude of both. Then a thumping blow on
the arm sends his pistol flying out of his hand.
"How! white Colonel," says a gruff voice at his side. "How!
Crow-Scalper big chief. White scalp damn better nor `chuck.' How?"
Grinning with delight, the gigantic warrior extended his hand in the
most friendly fashion; with difficulty curbing the plunges of his
excited steed. He felt sure of his prey now.
Not yet.
Quick as thought, Winthrop had whipped out another pistol--a Derringer.
But for a timely swerve, Crow-Scalper would have been sent straight to
his fathers. Then thinking things had gone far enough, the chief
pointed his revolver and shot the unfortunate Englishman dead.
It was all over in a moment--the firing and the din, the shrieks of
tortured women, the dying groans of mortally-wounded men--over in an
infinitely shorter time than it takes to narrate. Not a man was left
alive; and already many a corpse lay where it had fallen, stripped and
gory, a hideous mangled object in the barbarous mutilation which it had
undergone. Some of the Indians were busy looting the waggons. Others,
scattered far and wide over the plain, were in pursuit of the fleeing
animals, which had stampeded in every direction. All were in the
wildest degree of excitement and exultation. They had mastered the
outfit at a stroke, with the loss of only three warriors. They had
wiped out their former defeat, and had reaped a rich harvest of scalps.
They accordingly set to work to make merry over their plunder.
Over the worst of what followed we will draw a veil. There were females
in that doomed waggon train. Where these are concerned the red man, in
his hour of victory, is the most brutal, the most ungovernable fiend in
the world.
Singing, dancing, feasting, whooping, the barbarians kept up their
hideous orgie. Then in furtherance of a new amusement a number of them
began to pile together the beams and planks of the wrecked waggons until
a huge heap was formed, in shape something like a rough kiln. Up to
this structure were dragged about a dozen bodies.
Dead bodies? No; living.
Men wounded unto helplessness and death, yet still with just the spark
of life in them. Women, two or three, too elderly or unattractive to
fulfil the terrible fate invariably befalling the female captive of the
ruthless red man. Some of the elder children who had not been speared
were also there. All these, bound and helpless, were first deliberately
scalped, then flung inside the improvised kiln. Fire was applied.
Drowning the appalling shrieks of their miserable victims in shrill
peals of laughter, the whole array of painted and feathered fiends
danced and circled around the blazing pyre in an ecstasy of glee. For
upwards of an hour this frightful scene continued. Then when the
anguish of the tortured victims had sunk in death, the savages gathered
up their spoils and departed, refraining from setting fire to any more
of the wreckage lest the too conspicuous sign of their bloody work
should by its volume be visible at a greater distance than they desired.
One more tragedy of the wild and blood-stained West. A pack of coyotes,
snapping and snarling over their meal of mangled and defaced corpses,
whose scalpless skulls shone red and clotted in the sunlight. A cloud
of wheeling, soaring vultures, a few piles of charred and shattered
wreckage, and many an oozy, shining pool of gore. One more frightful
massacre. One more complete and ruthless holocaust to the unquenchable
vendetta ever burning between the unsparing red man and his hated and
despised foe, the invading white.