CONCLUSION.
Carl was very much depressed when he went into the teamsters’ quarters
to get his supper. The men wanted to talk about the battle, but Carl
wanted some information about his cattle. How long had they been there?
Did anybody come with them? And did they run as though they were very
much frightened about something? The teamsters answered these questions
as well as they could, but they were certain about two things: nobody
had been seen with the cattle when they came up, and they were running
as though they had made up their minds not to stop until they reached
the Mississippi River. But they were easily controlled, and the men who
had been sent after them had no trouble at all in driving them back to
the fort.
“Now, Carl, tell us something more about the fight,” said one of the
teamsters. “How did Lieutenant Parker behave, any way?”
“He acted as though there was not an Indian within a hundred miles of
him,” answered Carl with animation. “He let his horse take his own way,
and never stopped until we were a mile away from the camp.”
“Did he kill any Indians?”
“Every time I saw him pull on an Indian, he dropped. But he saved one
Sioux from being killed, and that’s one thing I didn’t like about him.”
While Carl was engaged in telling this story about the Indian who
was shot through both legs and had a knife left with which to defend
himself, the bugle sounded, and that was something that Carl delighted
to hear. He hurried out to get his horse, and when he came back the men
were all drawn up in line and the captain was listening to some parting
instructions from the colonel.
“If you see any signs of the Sioux out there, you will follow them
up until you are certain that they go on their reservation,” said he.
“Carl, I hope it is not as bad as you think,” he added, turning to the
young scout, who came up at that moment. “A boy who behaved as you did
in the fight don’t deserve to have his ranch raided. Good luck to you.”
In a few minutes more the column, headed by Carl and the captain, were
out of the gate, and the darkness shut them out from view. For miles
they travelled at a fast walk, and not a word was said by anybody in
the ranks. Finally Carl, who had been watching his horse for some
time, stopped his own nag and reached out and touched the captain on
the shoulder. There was somebody coming, and he was coming fast, too.
In a few seconds more he caught sight of two or three hats which were
bobbing back and forth in front of the horizon, and in response to the
captain’s challenge they hauled up very suddenly.
“Halt! Who comes there?” asked the captain.
“Halt yourself,” answered a voice; and Carl was almost ready to
yell when he recognized that Thompson was speaking to them. “You are
soldiers, ain’t you? Have you seen any cattle down this way?”
“Thompson!” cried Carl.
“Well, I declare; if there ain’t Carl,” said Thompson, so delighted
that he could scarcely speak. “Where have you been?”
“I have been in a fight, but I am all here yet,” said Carl, riding
forward to shake his men by the hand. “How did those cattle manage to
get away from you?”
“You have been in a fight, have you?” said Thompson, so overjoyed to
see Carl again that he could hardly let him go. “Well, you haven’t been
in any worse one than we have. We’ve killed nine Indians, and have a
prisoner up there to show you.”
“A prisoner? Who is it?”
“It is Harding—that is who it is. He came out to the ranch with
twenty-five Indians to gather up some stock, and we were too many for
him. He stampeded some of the cattle, but we whipped the Indians and
drove them away.”
“That is the same thing he proposed to me while I was a prisoner,”
said Carl, turning to the captain. “I knew that if I gave him an order
on Thompson for the stock he would be killed when he presented it.
Well, he helped me to escape once, and you can help him this time.”
“Not by a long shot!” exclaimed the captain. “General Miles has ordered
every soldier in his department to arrest that fellow, and he will have
to go to the fort with me.”
“That is what I say, captain,” said Thompson. “He tried to rob our
safe, too.”
“We will go back to the fort now and report to the colonel,” added the
captain. “If he chooses to send us up there to-morrow, why we will get
him. What are you going to do with your men, Carl?”
“They will go to the fort with us and be ready to come back with the
cattle to-morrow. The soldiers and teamsters rounded them up for you,
and I guess they are all there,” he continued, addressing himself to
Thompson. “I am surprised at you,” he continued, when the captain had
brought the men around and headed them toward the fort. “I am sorry I
told you so much.”
“Now, Carl, see here,” said Thompson, lowering his voice almost to a
whisper. “You need not have him captured unless you want to.”
“How shall we prevent it? The colonel will send some men to the ranch
to-morrow, and when they get their hands on him he is booked for the
military prison at Leavenworth.”
“Look here,” said Thompson, lowering his voice so that no one but Carl
could hear it. “I have six men with me, and how does this captain know
but I have a hundred? Send Bert back and tell him to escape. I’ll bet
you that they won’t see him after that.”
It would seem from this that Carl kept the ranchmen posted on
everything that happened to him at the fort. When he came home after
his captivity among the Sioux, he told them all that occurred to
him—how Harding had threatened to shoot him because of the death of
Sitting Bull, but had suddenly grown merciful to him when he saw that
the Indians were determined to have revenge on him, and how he had
assisted him to keep out of their way. Thompson felt kinder toward
Harding after that, and so did all the herdsmen; and when they found
that Carl was anxious to have him escape, there was not one man who had
a word to say against it.
“Well, go and tell Bert to come here,” said Carl, after thinking a
moment. “You know what sort of a guard he is under, don’t you? Now you
tell him how you will arrange it.”
Thompson reined in his horse, and was gone but a few moments when he
rode up again with Bert at his side. In a few whispered words he told
Bert just what he had to do, and he understood it. He was pulling up
his horse to let the column get a little in advance of him, when Carl
said earnestly:
“Tell him that this is the last time I shall befriend him. He helped
me to escape once when I stood a chance of being staked out, and now
I have paid him back. If he ever gets into trouble with the soldiers
again, he will have to stand the result of his misdeeds.”
The captain did not know how many men were with Thompson, and
consequently he did not miss one of their number, who was going at his
best pace toward the ranch to warn the squawman that the soldiers were
coming to-morrow to arrest him. As Thompson had said, “You would not
see him very much after that.” If he once got out of that ranch and
felt a good horse under him, he would kill him before he would ever be
found in that department again.
The column pursued their way at an easy gait, and when they came within
sight of the cattle, Thompson and his men went down to relieve the
teamsters and soldiers who had been keeping guard over them, and the
rest rode on into the fort. Some few of the teamsters were awake as
Carl went in, and wanted to know all about it; but the young scout told
them that the Sioux had been whipped, and had made their way back to
their reservation.
The next morning Carl arose at an early hour, but his cattle were
nowhere in sight. Thompson had routed his men up as soon as they could
see their way clearly, and had started the cattle back toward home.
Carl now wanted to see the colonel. He wanted to know if there was
anything for him to do, otherwise he desired to go home and look after
things there. But the colonel did not appear until near breakfast time;
then, the captain having made his report to him, he sent for Carl. He
said that he was perfectly willing that Carl should go and stay as long
as he wanted to, but that Harding must be brought back.
“Your men have got him where they can hold him, have they?” asked the
commander. “He is a mighty slippery fellow, and if he sees the least
chance to get away he is going to improve it. I had him here in the
fort once, and how he got away beats me. I will send a sergeant and
four men with you to take him.”
“Very good, sir,” said Carl. He did not say that the men would find him
there, for he was quite sure they would not. He waited until the men
got ready and then mounted his horse, which he had ridden during the
fight, and started off on the trail of the cattle. In about three hours
they overtook them. Thompson was bringing up the rear, and his face was
all wrinkled up with smiles when he caught sight of the sergeant and
four soldiers.
“Say,” said he, “when you get that fellow I want you to hold fast to
him. This is the second time he has bothered me, and I ain’t agoing to
put up with it much longer.”
They had a long way to go, and late in the afternoon they came within
sight of the ranch. There was no one there to receive them, but Carl
did not mind that. He showed the soldiers where to put their horses,
for they were going to stay with him all night, and then led the way
into the hall.
“I suppose you want to see Harding the first thing you do,” said he.
“Well, he is in the office here——Why, what in the world does this mean?”
He had come to the door of the office, but it was wide open. The
key was on the outside, and the window was open, too. There was the
shakedown in which the squawman had spent the first night of his
captivity, but that was the only thing they saw of him.
“He has escaped!” said Carl; and one, to have seen him, would have
thought that it was a matter that crushed him completely.
“Yes, sir, he has escaped,” said the cook, who, hearing the sound of
their footsteps in the hall, had come in from the kitchen to see what
was the matter, “and I would like to know if anybody ever got away
under such circumstances before. We had one man outside here in the
hall, and another out by the window. They were cautioned to look out
for him, for he was like an eel—a hard fellow to hold. Well, sir, that
man outside went away for about five minutes, and when he came back the
window was open and Harding was gone. He took Thompson’s best horse,
too.”
“Well, that lets us off,” said the sergeant, looking around at the
soldiers. “Can’t we follow him up and catch him?”
“No,” said the cook. “Don’t I tell you that he has the best horse on
the ranch? Some of the men are out now looking for him. He didn’t take
to the prairie, but concealed himself in the mountains. He won’t come
out till he gets among his friends.”
The cook spoke so earnestly, and seemed so disgusted over Harding’s
escape, that the sergeant never thought to blame him for it. If the
truth must be told, he was the man who brought the horse and tied him
to the bushes in the yard so that the squawman could readily find him,
and he stood in his door and saw Harding leap out of the window, mount
the nag, and ride away in the darkness. Some of the men were indeed
out, but they were not looking for Harding. They were attending to the
cattle.
“I think we will go back and report to the colonel,” said the sergeant,
after meditating a few moments. “He ought to know that he ain’t going
to get the man.”
And we may add that this was the last adventure that befell Carl while
he stayed at the fort. The troops never suspected Carl, and neither
did they ever see Harding again. What became of him after that nobody
knew. Of course the soldiers were all on the lookout for him, but he
disappeared completely. And we may go further, and say that no one on
the ranch ever heard of Claude again. A young man with such habits as
his don’t often turn out to be anybody in the world. If he keeps such
company as the two men who attempted to rob Carl of his money, he is
probably in State’s prison before this time.
The sergeant and all the soldiers were surprised and perplexed over
the escape of Harding, and when the horses had had a rest and the men
had eaten their supper they set out for the fort. The men stood on the
porch and saw them go; and when they had got out of sight the cook
turned to Carl, laid one finger alongside his nose, and winked first
one eye and then the other. If the sergeant had seen that motion he
might have been led to suspect something.
Carl, the Trailer, remained at home for a week, and when he started for
the fort again he took a big load from Thompson’s mind by telling him
that he had seen all the scouting he wanted to see, and that in a few
days he was coming home to remain.
“There is no more fight in the Sioux, for, now that Sitting Bull has
gone and Big Foot was killed during that fight, there will be no one
to take command of them,” said Carl. “But first I want to bring the
lieutenant up here, to let him see how I live when I am at home. I will
come back in a week or two, and I shall never go away again.”
The men were all glad to hear that piece of news, and when Carl
returned in company with the lieutenant, they extended to him a hearty
welcome; for Carl had told his herdsmen how he behaved in that fight
with the Sioux, and they were glad to shake a brave man by the hand.
“I don’t see why you wanted to leave this nice place, where you have
everything just as you want it, and come down to the fort to go
scouting,” said Parker, when he had been shown about the ranch, and
supper was over and the men had gathered on the porch. “If I had a
ranch like this I would resign in a minute. I never would go on another
hunt after Indians.”
That was what his men all said, and they were glad to welcome him
home. Carl still lives on the plains, but he does not go down to the
fort as much as he used to. Time has made changes, and there are but
few officers left who knew him as Carl, the Trailer. Parker has now
become a captain, and has been ordered to the coast. He keeps up a
regular correspondence with Carl; and of all the stories he has to tell
to his younger officers, there are none that he takes so much delight
in as those in which the young scout was engaged. The Ghost Dance is a
thing of the past. It has never been heard of since Yellow Bird caught
up that handful of dust and threw it into the air, which started the
massacre of Wounded Knee.
Transcribers’ Notes
Italics are rendered between underscores; e.g. _hiding_.
Small caps are rendered in ALL CAPS.
The List of Illustrations was generated by the transcriber.
The following table shows changes made by the transcriber.
+---------------------------+
| Transcribers’ changes |
+----+-----------+----------+
|Page|as printed |changed to|
+----+-----------+----------+
| 131|squwman |squawman |
| 133|dance,’ |dance,’” |
| 155|closely |closely. |
| 159|thing |thing. |
| 174|scott free |scot-free |
| 182|vension |venison |
| 187|a-going |agoing |
| 205|said |said, |
| 250|cordicil |codicil |
| 252|did’nt |didn’t |
| 253|reply, |reply. |
| 273|a-going |agoing |
| 278|bar-keepeer|barkeeper |
| 285|you?” |you? |
| 287|aint |ain’t |
| 294|you.” |you?” |
| 355|left. |left.” |
| 378|them.” |them. |
| 385|choses |chooses |
+----+-----------+----------+