THE RENEGADE.
As Buffalo Bill and Nick Wharton approached the first of the camp
fires, they saw that the Indians were dancing the Sioux ghost dance
around it, while at the next fire several of the Cheyennes were
indulging in their own tribal war dance.
Several sentinels had been placed around the camp, but, by careful
scouting and judiciously taking advantage of cover, the two comrades
managed to dodge them and get inside the cordon.
When they had accomplished this feat, Buffalo Bill uttered a sigh of
relief. They were now fairly safe, unless they were observed by some
of the braves around the fire. In that event, the sentries were likely
to cut off their retreat, unless it were made too rapidly to give them
time to take up the alarm.
Nothing was going on around the first two fires except the dancing,
which both Buffalo Bill and Wharton had seen many a time before.
Taking shelter behind a clump of bushes, they crawled forward until
they were right in the center of the camp, and opposite the largest of
the bivouac fires.
Here they saw that most of the leading chiefs of the three tribes were
gathered, and they rightly concluded that a war council was being held.
Four braves were posted near the camp fire, evidently for the purpose
of keeping the other Indians from intruding while the chiefs and the
old men discussed their plan of campaign.
Among the men seated around the fire the two scouts saw the renegade
Kennelly.
He was smoking a big pipe, which looked incongruous in the midst of
such wild and weird surroundings. His face was stained with blood
from a wound in the forehead where a bullet had grazed him, and this
intensified his ordinary ferocious look.
Nick Wharton drew his revolver--the rifles had been left behind with
Wild Bill--and in another moment would have sent a bullet through the
head of the renegade, but Buffalo Bill seized his arm and signed to him
to control himself.
They crept nearer and nearer to the camp fire, until they were within
about fifteen paces of it, lying hidden in a small clump of low
brushwood.
They could get no nearer, for the light of the fire brightly
illuminated the surroundings, and there was no other cover.
The Indians were talking angrily in the Sioux tongue, and the scouts,
who were both familiar with it, were pleased to find that they were
loudly abusing Kennelly for the failure of the attack on Fort Larned.
One after another denounced him as a bad leader, who had betrayed them
into believing that they had hardly any opposition to meet, and had
then taken them up against an almost impregnable position.
At last, after a young war chief had denounced him as a lying traitor,
Kennelly took the pipe from between his lips and broke silence for the
first time.
“Listen, my brothers, and pay heed to my words, for I do not speak with
a false tongue,” he said. “I told you that it would not be easy to
take the fort, and that you must be willing to lose many braves in the
attempt.
“I told you that Long Hair, the slayer of many buffaloes, was there,
and you know well that he is worth a hundred men in himself. Yet you
persisted in making the attempt, and you have no right to blame me for
the failure.
“Did I hang back in the charge? Did I not lead your young men up to the
walls of the fort? If they had followed me, we would have got inside
and taken the scalps of all the men there.
“It was not my fault that they reeled back and would not follow me when
the big firing began. How was I to know that your warriors are nothing
but women and babes?”
At this gross insult half a dozen of the chiefs sprang to their feet
and menaced the renegade with the tomahawks which they drew from their
belts.
But the Irishman, in spite of his villainy, was a brave man. He merely
gazed at them contemptuously, without deigning to draw his gun, and
went on:
“You think that you have a quarrel with me. Very well. Name your
champion, and I will meet him in single combat before you all.
“If he overcomes me, he may take my scalp; but if I slay him there must
be no more disputing of my orders. My brothers, the Sioux, chose me for
their war chief in this fight, and I will be obeyed.”
The young chief who had denounced Kennelly most hotly eagerly accepted
this challenge, and begged his red comrades to let him act as their
champion.
After a few minutes’ consultation among themselves, they agreed.
Kennelly watched them from the corner of his squint eye, but pretended
to be utterly uninterested in the matter which spelled life or death to
him.
The young chief threw off his buffalo robe and stepped out into an open
space near the fire, naked to the waist, but gorgeously painted with
the war colors of his tribe. He was a Cheyenne.
As he stood in the firelight, straight as a young sapling, with
his right hand resting upon the tomahawk in his belt, he looked a
formidable foe.
Kennelly glanced at him for a few moments through half-closed eyelids,
and then yawned sleepily and knocked the ashes out of the bowl of his
pipe.
The Indians, on the one side, and the two scouts, hidden behind the
bushes on the other, watched the scene with interest.
The young chief stamped his foot impatiently, and Kennelly slowly
raised his huge, bulky form from the ground.
Once he was upon his feet, however, a wonderful change came over him.
Seated upon the ground, he had seemed as lazy and inert as a hog, but
now his body was as tense and active as that of a panther.
Stealthily he crept toward the Indian, and they looked into one
another’s eyes as intently as if they were both hypnotized.
An old Crow chieftain gave the signal for the duel to commence by
dropping his tomahawk to the ground.
Instantly the young Cheyenne rushed forward, whirled his tomahawk
around his head, and flung it straight at the skull of his enemy.
But he had reckoned without his adversary’s lightninglike quickness of
eye.
Kennelly ducked just in time to escape the deadly missile, which tore
off part of one of the feathers in his headdress.
Straightening himself immediately, he flung his own tomahawk at the
Cheyenne, burying it deep in his skull.
The man staggered, yelling his death whoop; but before he could fall to
the ground Kennelly leaped upon him, caught him in his arms as if he
was a baby, and tossed him high into the air over his own head.
He fell to the ground, and when the other Indians rushed up to examine
him they found that not only was his skull cleft, but that his neck had
been broken by the terrible fall.
Bad Eye calmly drew his knife and took the dead man’s scalp, although
he knew that that act would doubly enrage the already furious Cheyennes.
Then, holding the bloodstained knife above his head, and dangling the
scalp in the other hand, he cried:
“I have overcome your champion, oh, chiefs! Who will be next to yield
up his scalp to Bad Eye?”
There was no response to this challenge. The Indians were brave men,
and the Cheyennes, at least, were much irritated at the death of their
champion; but not one among them cared to try conclusions with such a
redoubtable fighter as Kennelly had shown himself to be.
Suddenly Buffalo Bill rose from a clump of bushes in which he had lain
concealed, and stalked, a majestic figure, into the circle of light
cast by the glow of the fire.
To say that the Indians were surprised by this sudden apparition is but
faintly to convey their absolute amazement. They looked as if a ghost
had suddenly emerged into their midst.
The renegade Kennelly was not less astonished. He stared at the border
king for a moment, and then sat down heavily upon the ground, picked up
his discarded pipe, and began to fill it with tobacco.
Buffalo Bill surveyed the scene for a moment with quiet amusement, and
then said, in the Sioux tongue:
“Greeting to you, chiefs and elders of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow
tribes! I have heard the challenge thrown down by Bad Eye, and I come
into your midst to accept it.
“You know me for your enemy. I am Long Hair, and I have slain many
of your braves. But I come fearlessly among you for the ordeal by
single combat, for I know your code of honor must give me a fair start
on my horse after the fight is over, supposing that I come out of it
victorious. Is it not so, oh, chiefs?”
Cody’s action might have seemed to the outsider to be nothing else but
suicide. To a man acquainted with the Indian laws of chivalry, however,
there was nothing so very extraordinary about it.
One of their most stringent rules was that an enemy who challenged one
of their braves to the ordeal by single combat must be held sacred,
like an envoy under the white man’s flag of truce; and after the fight
was over he must be allowed a good chance of retreat.
The oldest chieftain by the camp fire, after looking round the circle
and catching the eyes of his comrades, acted as spokesman. He bent his
head gravely, and said:
“It is as you say, Long Hair. You are a great warrior, and your fame
has been sung by our young men round the camp fires. You shall fight
Bad Eye if you desire to do so, and at the end, if you live, you shall
go forth unharmed and bestride your horse, and ride away from us. None
of our braves shall seek your scalp until you are half a mile distant.”
Buffalo Bill saluted the chief gravely, after the Sioux fashion, and
then turned to Kennelly, who sat smoking and glowering at him, and
asked:
“What weapons?”
“Tomahawks,” growled the renegade, as he rose to his feet and fronted
the border king.
Nick Wharton had followed Buffalo Bill, after a moment’s pause, due
to his absolute amazement at the bold course Cody had taken. His
appearance did not alarm or surprise the Indians. Too many startling
events had happened that evening for one more to have any effect on
them.
“Durn my cats, Buffler!” said old Nick, after he had glanced defiantly
round the circle of Indians. “You are the queerest duck I ever struck
in my galumpin’ existence. What in thunder d’ye want to butt into this
yere controversy for? Let me tackle thet thar Irish mountain o’ flesh!
I guess I kin manage to settle his hash for him.”
The border king waved his friend aside, and whispered:
“Be on the watch, Nick, in case any of the Indians tries to get me in
the back while I am fighting him.”
Wharton nodded, and promptly rested his hand upon his six-shooter in
his belt, ready to whip it out and fire at a moment’s notice.
The Indians formed a ring, which was speedily added to by hundreds of
other braves who flocked to the scene from the camp fires near by.
Buffalo Bill and the renegade stood in the center.
Kennelly held his tomahawk, red with the blood of the slain Cheyenne,
in his hand.
Buffalo Bill did not possess such a weapon, but a Cheyenne brave
stepped out of the circle of onlookers and handed one to him.
It was a weird and impressive scene.
The firelight cast a fitful glow on the faces of the duelists, and
illumined their eyes as they circled around for a few moments, waiting
the opportunity to send their sharp-edged weapons whizzing to the mark.
Suddenly Kennelly stepped forward with a rapid motion and flung his
tomahawk at the border king’s head.
Buffalo Bill had held his eyes, just as the pugilist does those of his
opponent, and instinctively he knew what was coming a second before
Kennelly raised his hand.
He flung himself forward, and the tomahawk passed harmlessly a foot
above his head.
“Wah!” cried the Indians, in admiration of the border king’s clever
movement.
Before the exclamation had died upon their lips, Buffalo Bill had
darted forward and struck Kennelly a terrible blow on the crown, which
cleft his head asunder almost to the chin.
Bad Eye would trouble the peace of the border no more. The renegade had
met with his deserts at last.