DANGER IN THE AIR--THE CHOICE OF A CAPTAIN--AN EFFECTUAL
SARCASM--GOING LAME--"THE HEATHEN CHINEE"--A MILITARY ENGINEER
WITHOUT A COMMISSION--NO VENTILATION--SMOTHERING LIKE RATS IN A
HOLE--THE MONETARY SURPRISE--TWO RED-SKINS--LEAVING THEIR GUNS
OUTSIDE--TRAPPED--"THE HEATHEN CHINEE" ONCE MORE--SOME QUIET TALK.
The next two or three weeks passed, to all appearance, quietly enough.
There was, however, an unpleasant feeling in Susanville and around Honey
Lake, of danger in the air. Perhaps, this feeling was not wholly
unpleasant. The Rangers had now been idle for a tolerably long time.
That is to say, there had recently been no positive Indian troubles.
However, the Deep Hole Spring murder had sounded the preparatory note.
Not long afterwards the gathering storm broke on us. A large stock of
cattle belonging to Bill Long and Allen Wood had been in the charge of
five good and trusty _Buccahros_ or herdsmen, at the upper end of the
valley. But red cunning, in this case, baffled white honesty. One dark
night, three hundred head of stock were driven off; and in the morning
the herdsmen found themselves without any herd to look after. At the
time when the intelligence reached it, I was in Susanville. In less than
an hour after we heard the facts, the Rangers, with the exception of
three, were in the saddle, and on their way to Emmerson's Ranch, from
which the cattle had been driven. Two of the three we picked up on the
road there. The third overtook us, long before we had arrived at the
spot where our services were required.
About fifty volunteers had collected at the Ranch, when we reached it.
They were occupied in the momentous duty of choosing a captain, and
appeared to find no small difficulty in making their selection. As soon
as Harry Arnold appreciated this difficulty, he approached me with an
air of very far profounder respect than he had ever before exhibited to
me, and raising his hand to his forehead in soldier-like style, said
with great gravity:
"Captain! Don't you think we had better take the trail? They won't have
chosen their commanding officer until--"
"The Day hof Judgment!" broke in Brighton Bill, with an oath.
"And after that," continued Harry with the same imperturbable
seriousness, "they will have to elect a Lieutenant, a Sergeant, and--"
"'Alf ha dozen Horderlies!"
For once in my life I very nearly forgot duty, as I looked at the two
whose criticism on the election going on, was couched in styles so
widely opposed. To avoid roaring with laughter, I roared out in a very
different tone.
"Rangers! take the trail."
In another instant, we were following its sufficiently broad and plain
indication.
Let me, as we pursue it, mention that Harry Arnold's gentlemanly
reproof, and Bill's coarser satire produced an immediate result. David
Blanchard was chosen captain of the Volunteers, in less than five
minutes, and in no more than ten after we were on the trail, they also
were in the saddles, and following it, closely behind us.
Blanchard had lived on the Plains for years, and was in every respect
well adapted for his present position. We soon had a good understanding,
and when we arrived at Smoke Creek where the Indians had evidently
camped for the night, on the day before, a plan of action was agreed
upon.
The horses were accordingly sent back under a sufficient guard to the
Ranch, and we divided ourselves into two parties. One of these was to
follow the red robbers up Painter's Cañon, which direction they had
taken. The other was to continue down Smoke Creek, by Buffalo Springs,
to protect the settlers from any other bands of the Pah-utes which might
be out, after anything they could pick up--provision or stock, weapons
or lives.
Very unfortunately, shortly after we had started, John Partridge and
myself, with one of the pack-horses retained to carry blankets and
provisions, as well as a Chinese who had accompanied the volunteers as a
man of all work, became so lame that it was impossible for us to
continue at the same speed as the rest of the party.
It was a matter of obvious necessity, that we should give up all idea of
doing so.
In consequence of this, Arnold took my place in command of the Rangers,
and with a sore heart in one bosom at least, I turned my back upon the
men whose labors and dangers I had so long partaken. It would be almost
impossible for me to explain precisely what my feelings were at that
moment. Of course, I felt none who had shared my previous struggles
would impute my disability to anything approaching fear, or a
disinclination to endure privation. And yet, in the immediate pursuit of
the rascals who had plundered two of our prominent settlers, I was
compelled to leave it entirely to others. In my eyes, this almost seemed
a humiliation which it must be long before I could surmount, and which
subsequent toil and courage might alone wipe out.
Necessarily, this now appears childish to myself as it will doubtless to
my readers. However, I felt it, and my heart seemed to weep tears of
blood and shame as I did so.
We had determined upon returning through Rush Valley, for two reasons.
One of them was, that knowing the ground, we fancied it would be easier
to travel for us in our partially disabled condition. The other was even
a simpler one. On reaching Mud Springs, which even in our present state
we might fairly count upon doing by nightfall, we should find a resting
place. This was in the house of a man whom I knew tolerably well, and
who had formerly kept the Station at this place.
Upon reaching Mud Springs, which we did earlier than we had calculated
on doing, we repaired to his dwelling, where we were welcomed warmly.
Scarcely, however, had he placed food before us, with some capital
coffee, than he began questioning us about the Indians. He asked us what
we had heard of them--whether they were yet moving--what action had been
taken with regard to them, and lastly, how it was that I, Buckskin Mose,
as I was now generally called, chanced to be here? In reply, I
recounted to him the plunder of Emmerson's Ranch, of which, he had as
yet heard nothing, and the steps which had been taken to pursue the
Pah-ute thieves. My narration was concluded with, I fear, no peculiarly
pious expression of pleasure at having been compelled to leave the
Rangers at a time when I should so desire to have been at their head.
As he listened to what I was saying, he chuckled audibly, and seeing my
look of astonishment, afterwards explained what had induced him to
indulge in so strange an exhibition of merriment.
"Yer see, Cap! I'm ready for 'em if they look me up. I don't choose to
turn tail, like some of my neighbors."
"What do you mean?"
"I was sartain the copper-colored devils were preparing for something o'
the sort, and so made a hole under the chapparal behind the house, whar
I don't much think they'll spot me, when I take to it."
The hole he alluded to was a large and comfortable excavation conducted
to by a subterranean passage of considerable length. It had taken him
several weeks to dig out the passage and room, which last was
sufficiently spacious to _cachè_ all his goods, and even portion of his
stock, if the necessity of doing so was forced upon him. He exhibited
his fortification, or we should perhaps call it his citadel, to myself,
Partridge, and the Chinaman, with a good deal of pride.
Nor, indeed, was it a place of security to be laughed at, by a solitary
dweller on the frontier during Indian troubles. Nature had evidently not
dealt on the square with him. With the advantages of education, the
fellow would have made a good military engineer.
Fatigued with our day's tramp, we retired at an early hour, and had
been asleep but a short time, when we were aroused by the continual
barking of his two watchdogs. These, I had noticed on arriving at the
house. They were noble-looking animals.
Throwing aside my blanket, and sitting up, I noticed that Partridge had
done the same.
As for the person who had failed to find his natural avocation, he was
already on his feet, as also was our Chinese friend. The latter
volunteered a very unnecessary explanation.
"Doggee too much barkee. Pig-tail Bobbee, no sleepee."
The dogs certainly did keep up a confounded row. We concluded that,
under the circumstances, a renewed attempt at slumber would be useless.
In accordance with this view of the situation, John Partridge and myself
also rose, "keeping an eye out" for what might turn up next.
We had only been on our legs for a few minutes, when one of the dogs
rushed against the door with a prolonged howl. On opening it, he ran in,
and we saw an arrow sticking in his body. The door was instantly closed
and barred. It was clear that we were attacked, and I instantly peered
through one of the small holes with which the boarded and sodded walls
of the house were pierced, to see what I could.
It was dark enough. Yet my eyes were sufficiently keen to discern the
dusky forms of objects moving in front, which were evidently red-skins.
But the gloom was too great for us to fire with a reasonable chance of
hitting them. We must wait for the daylight. It was now some two hours
past midnight, and when the dawn broke we should--ha! what was this?
Smoke driving through the dried sods on the inside of the walls,
followed here and there, where the shrinking of the matted earth had
given such a chance, by lancing tongues of flame.
Light had been afforded us much sooner than we had, in any way,
anticipated.
The red devils had set the house on fire.
It was clear that we should have to abandon our outer works, and retire
into the stronghold.
We accordingly made an orderly retreat through the tunnel which has
already been mentioned, carrying all our ammunition and weapons with us.
The Pah-utes had of course expected us to attempt an escape above
ground. In that case, they would have been able, by the light of the
blazing dwelling, to have counted us out and raised our hair. As it was,
we preferred concealing ourselves under the earth. This enabled us to
save our scalps, at any rate, for the time.
We had carried a spade with us. It was necessary to fill up the passage
through which we quitted the burning dwelling. In any less pressing
necessity than the present, I should certainly have set Pig-tail Bobbee
at the work of closing it. Chinese labor, however, although thorough, is
by no means rapid enough in moments of necessity.
So, I began it. Partridge and the engineer followed. Each worked in
turn, almost as fast as chain lightning.
In some ten or twelve minutes the mouth of the narrow tunnel was blocked
up, I may honestly say, with a speed and completeness which even a
Brunel or a Stephenson would have appreciated. McClellan would have
been nowhere, if his work had been brought into comparison with ours on
the score of rapidity.
We then transferred ourselves to the citadel. As I before intimated, it
was sufficiently large. However, it possessed one inconvenience with
regard to John and myself.
The engineer was a short man. He had dug it out, with an eye to his own
convenience. The Chinaman was even shorter. Consequently, he also found
it lofty enough for his height. But we counted nearly six feet in
stature. However, in such a case as the present one, minor personal
discomforts had to be overlooked. A graver one now presented itself. The
engineer had provided no means of ventilation. We had tenanted the
internal fort for some half an hour, when the atmosphere became
unpleasantly close. It might even have been pronounced stifling. Some
means of procuring fresh air had at once to be found. I questioned our
friend as to the presumable distance between the top of my skull and the
bottom of the _chapparal_.
"Tain't far, Cap, atween one and the other," was his answer.
"How far?"
"Mebbee, six inches," he reflectively answered.
"You're sure of that?"
"Or mebbee, six foot!"
"Good Heavens! man, have you no clearer idea about it than that?"
"How on airth should I, Cap?"
"Don't you know that there's a good chance of our being smothered, like
rats in a hole which has been stopped up?"
"Yow could I help it?"
There was no use in discussing the subject with the luckless engineer.
That was evident. Something, however, had to be done, and very shortly.
A rat in such a case would use its teeth without pausing to discuss how
much or how little he had to gnaw through. My teeth were not exactly
adapted to such an experiment. But my ramrod might be a good probe, and
if it found bottom or top (which it was, it would have been difficult to
say) the spade might save us.
In another instant I was working my ramrod through the earthen roof of
our air-tight, although scarcely pregnable citadel.
The earth was soft, and in less than a minute I felt its end had reached
fresh air, although none of that desirable commodity had yet reached us.
In order to enlarge the hole I had made, I was working the slip of
wrought-iron with which I had produced it, round and round, when a large
piece of rock fell down from the side of it, with a quantity of loose
soil.
It scraped my shoulder.
"What tumblee?" screamed Pig-tail Bobby.
"Hold your tongue, you fool!" said Partridge. "Don't you feel, Mose has
saved us from stifling."
With the fresh air, a little light, it was very little, came through the
hole to us. As for me, I felt a new man. Looking around for a barrel
which I had seen in the excavation when we had first visited it, with
its proprietor, I set it erect under the ventilator so unexpectedly
manufactured. Mounting on it, I protruded my head through the bottom of
the _chapparal_. Day had already broken. Through the under branches of
the trees I could see the still smoking timbers of the burned-down
house. The rascally Pah-utes were dancing around them, in fiendish glee.
It was too great a temptation to be resisted, and I asked John to hand
me my rifle.
After he had handed it to me, I passed its barrel through the bushes
with great care, so as to avoid any noise which might attract the
attention of the Indians.
Never, possibly, was any red devil more surprised than that Pah-ute,
when he felt the leaden messenger of death crashing through his skull.
His surprise, however, was but momentary. It silenced him forever.
They handed me another rifle, and another of the red-skins fell.
Yet another, and another--until, at last, when nine of the Indians had
been slain, the remainder of them fled from the scene they had so
recently fancied one of complete victory.
We now quitted the cave which had served us so well, having taken some
pork from the barrel I had used to stand upon with so much advantage.
While cooking this on the still burning embers of the house, I saw the
charred carcase of the poor hound, who had given us so timely a warning.
He had been forgotten by his master, when we took refuge in the citadel,
constructed by him without the indispensable requisite of an air-hole.
As we were drinking a little sugarless and milkless coffee, chancing to
turn my head, I saw something moving in a large sage-brush.
Leaping to my feet, I started for it, and as I did so an Indian broke
from it and ran. He did this in a zigzag manner, leaping from side to
side, which rendered it a matter of extreme difficulty to fetch him. At
length, however, I was enabled to accomplish this. He must have been on
a scouting expedition from the party we had so narrowly escaped. If so,
he had not well calculated the time of his return. Half an hour later or
earlier, he might have kept his scalp.
Although still lame, I was enabled to cover more ground on our way back
to the Ranch of George Laithrop, which we arrived at, close upon four
o'clock in the afternoon.
A little after we had entered it, and while we were eating our supper,
Laithrop, who had been out when we got there, turned up. He was
astonished to see me, supposing I had been with the Rangers; but he had
little time to devote to the expression of any such feeling. Two mounted
Pah-utes were advancing to the house. Three months since they would have
been received as friends, so far at least as a red-skin can ever be
deemed friendly by the white man, of whom, on the slightest chance or
whim, he is ready to become the enemy. After the preceding few days,
they could merely be regarded in the light of the latter designation.
"Let them enter, Laithrop! but without their guns. We will go into the
back-room."
In two or three minutes the red-skins were at the door. He told them,
they must "leave" their "guns outside." They were probably upon an
expedition for spying out the nakedness of the land, and counted on
doing no immediate harm, as they consented to do this. Leaning one gun
on either side of the door, they accordingly entered the main-room of
the Ranch. Partridge and myself quitted the house by the rear doorway,
and passing round it on either side, secured their two weapons. Having
effected this, I entered the room, followed by my companion, and told
them they were "our prisoners." An indescribable mixture of rage and
fear flashed over the features of the taller red-skin.
"The Pah-ute know Buckskin Mose. He laugh at his words, a heap."
While saying this, he had leapt into a corner of the room, caught up an
old repeating rifle which was standing there, and struck heavily with it
at George Laithrop. Had Laithrop not dodged the blow, it would have
severely injured him. As it was, it caught him slantwise on the back and
sent him staggering across the room.
The next instant he was struggling with myself and Partridge.
He managed to draw his knife.
However, this had been seen by me in time to avoid the thrust. With a
blow from my fist, I dashed him from me. At the same instant a shot from
his own Minie rifle, which Laithrop had caught up from the place where I
had laid it, passed through his breast, and he fell.
Then I looked round for his companion.
To my surprise, I found him on the bed in the grip of Pig-tail Bobby.
Never before had I seen a Chinaman with any fight in him. It was my
first experience of a new phase in the character of the "Heathen
Chinee." Bobby's knife was out, and in another minute the Pah-ute's
life-blood would have been staining the blankets. This was a most
useless proceeding, as blankets, at this time, were not over-plentiful
round Honey Lake. Therefore I pulled Pig-tail back, with a round
exclamation of disgust at the lavish profligacy of such a proceeding.
The red-skin, however, had more leg and less pluck than his companion.
Leaping from the bed, he darted through the door, and was off.
However, I was as quick as he was. No sooner had I seen him make for the
open, than I was after him. As I left the house I had caught up a
double-barrelled shot gun, and brought him down before he had run fifty
yards from it.
After burying the Indians, Partridge started with me for Susanville,
taking their ponies with us.
A few days only had passed when Harry Arnold also returned with the rest
of the Rangers. They had recaptured only a few head of cattle. The rest
of the herd had been killed by the thieving red-skins, in the same
cowardly manner which I have elsewhere detailed.
One might have fancied the lesson they had received at Mud Springs, and
the close pursuit which had induced their main body to resort to this
expedient, would have kept them quiet. It, however, did not. The
periodical lust for robbery and bloodshed which seems, from time to
time, to possess them, had mastered their nature. More complete
punishment could alone stop it.
A week later, George Laithrop sent me a pressing demand to come down
with a few of the boys and pass some time with him. Two Pah-utes had
recently appeared at the Ranch, and told him they had seen Buckskin Mose
and himself kill their two companions and bury them. They had then
threatened him with prompt vengeance, openly telling him that they
intended not only to kill him and burn his house in a few days, but to
slaughter every white man in the valley.
It must be owned that the open hardihood of these threats looked
ominous. The red-skin so seldom threatens before he strikes, that it
seemed to me the dwellers about the Lake might be exposed to a graver
danger from the Indians, than any they had as yet incurred.
In consequence of this belief, my men were at once summoned. The same
day we started for George's Ranch, and got there after nightfall. On
consulting with Laithrop, it was considered advisable to keep the
Rangers as much out of sight as possible, to prevent the red-skins from
realizing how well he was protected. In compliance with this idea, only
some half-dozen of the boys, amongst whom was Tom Harvey and myself,
became occupants of the house. Half of the remainder were stationed in a
large log _corral_ about one hundred yards distant on the south side.
The rest were secreted in an old root-shed, or rather in the cellar of
one, to the west.
George and myself sat by the burning logs on his hearth, talking on
until a late hour.
Our subject was the red man, and he bitterly denounced the way in which
our Government dealt with such a grave subject. It was, he said,
continually patting them on the back, and buying a temporary truce.
This, he believed, made the Indians actually think that a power which
had only to plant its heel firmly upon them and crush them out of
existence, actually feared their strength. "Greater liars, more
unblushing thieves, as well as more reckless murderers," he continued,
never existed. And these were the men whom Uncle Sam protected against
his own children, whenever the blue-coats appeared upon the frontier.
Nor can I affirm but that he is, in the main, right. It is only by
terrible punishment for their crimes, the whites are able to keep the
red-skins within anything like reasonable bounds.
My knowledge of them, up to this time, vouched for the necessity of
such retaliation. In no case which I have yet recounted had the settlers
commenced an Indian war, if these struggles are entitled to such a name.
When we struck, the blow was called for, by gross outrage or bloodier
murder. Since I had met and known them, I had encountered no red-skin
who had dealt squarely with me, except the father of Clo-ke-ta and Old
Spotted Tail. And, possibly, of all the tribes I had yet any
acquaintance with, the Pah-utes possessed the fewest virtues and the
most thorough vices. George Laithrop's opinion of the Indian, founded in
a great measure upon their character, was, in a fuller or lesser degree,
shared by all who had ever been brought in contact with them.