THE SIGN OF THE BROKEN FEATHER
When at length the ponies were brought to a halt, Rube was dragged to
the ground and left there, lying on his back, with his cramped arms
beneath him. He heard the muffled sounds of barking dogs and
chattering squaws, and he judged that he had been brought into the
Indians' encampment.
Presently he was turned over and his arms were set free, the tight
bandage was taken from his eyes.
He sat up and gazed about him wonderingly, with dim sight and aching
forehead.
For the first time in his life he was in an Indian village, surrounded
by wigwams, all of them similar to Kiddie's teepee, only that his was
cleaner and better made, and decorated with more care.
The village was pitched in the midst of a green valley, through which
ran a narrow creek, bordered with willows. Horses and cattle grazed on
the neighbouring slopes, and an enclosed cornfield and well-beaten
trails showed that the Indians lived here permanently.
Near to where he sat were two lodges larger than the rest. They were
decorated with many painted devices and trophies of the chase, and in
front of each of them was a high totem pole from which grim-looking
scalp locks and skulls and bones were suspended. He conjectured that
one of these tents would be the chief's wigwam and the other the
Medicine Lodge.
None of the Redskins took much notice of him, passing him with a mere
glance, or making a remark in a tongue which he did not understand.
A young squaw approached, carrying water. Rube signed to her, asking
for a drink. She stopped and stooped to give him one. He then made
further easily understood signs to show that he was very hungry. She
spoke to him, but he shook his head.
"Wish you c'd speak plain English," he said.
Then the squaw also began to talk in the sign language, and Rube
gathered that she did not dare to bring food to a prisoner.
Nevertheless, a little later she went past him and dropped within his
reach, as if by chance, a fragment of dry buffalo meat, which he ate
hungrily.
He was left alone for a long time. But he knew that he was being
watched, and that it would be worse than useless for him to attempt to
escape.
He saw the young Indian boys at their games of skill, or engaged in
competitions with the bow and arrow, horse racing, mounting and
dismounting while their bare-backed ponies were at the gallop, throwing
the lariat, wrestling and running, and thus training to become braves
and warriors.
At about mid-day two of the scouts who had been among his captors came
up to him and signed to him to follow them. They led him across a
foot-worn patch of grass towards the entrance of the Medicine Lodge,
where they came to a halt, standing on guard over him.
Rube wondered what was going to happen; but, watching, he began to
understand that the chief warriors and medicine men were within the
lodge, and that some sort of court of justice was being held. He
further gathered from the picture-writing on the lodge that these
Redskins were of the Crow nation, and that the tribal name of their
chief was Falling Water.
When at length he was marched into the lodge he saw the councillors
seated on the floor in a half-circle round a small fire. All of them
wore feathered war bonnets and had their faces painted.
Falling Water himself, a grim, wizen-featured old man, sat in the
middle, smoking a tobacco pipe that was shaped like a tomahawk and
adorned with coloured beads and feathers. He looked at Rube long and
steadily, and then spoke to one of the scouts inquiringly.
Rube could only understand the answer by the gestures and signs that
accompanied it. From these and what followed he was able to make up a
coherent outline of the offence of which he was being accused.
It appeared that a picket of scouts had been out on the mountains
watching for enemy spies. They had captured this one in the very act
of spying upon them. He had been making signals, sending messages and
answering messages by sounds made with his lips. He carried a gun, and
was ready to use it upon them if they had not been too quick for them.
And he was disguised. It was clear that he was an Indian--one of their
Sioux enemies--who had tried to make himself look like a Paleface.
Moreover, he wore the totem sign of his chief, who was the enemy of
Falling Water.
Rube was perplexed in his effort to understand this part of the scout's
evidence.
He was not surprised that he had been mistaken for a full-blooded
Indian. Was not his mother an Indian? And had not both he and Kiddie
when they started on their camping trip dressed themselves in fringed
buckskins and designedly made themselves look as much as possible like
Indians?
He supposed that the scouts picketed on the heights had heard Kiddie's
whistle from afar and his own feeble attempt to respond. What puzzled
him most was the spokesman's declaration that he wore the totem sign of
his chief. For so he understood the scout's gestures.
Falling Water was apparently dissatisfied, for he closely questioned
the witness, whose answer, partly in the Crow tongue and partly in
pantomime, threw a flood of light upon Rube's perplexity.
Plucking a feather from his own headdress, the scout pinched the quill
and bent it over, holding it in position on Rube's head.
This, then, was the totem sign of his supposed chief. And he, Rube
Carter, was believed by these Crow Indians to be a spy of their enemy
Broken Feather!
He did not know that one of the medicine men had questioned him in the
tongue of the Sioux, which, if he were indeed one of Broken Feather's
tribe, he ought to have understood. His failure to answer was taken
for stubbornness, a sure evidence of his guilt.
Falling Water spoke, holding up a cautioning finger to impose attention
to his words. Rube guessed by his serious judicial manner that he was
passing a sentence of punishment upon him.
"It's a pity none o' you c'n understand plain, straight-forward
English," he protested. "I c'd explain in a jiffy."
"Eh?" cried the medicine man who had addressed him in the Sioux, "you
c'n speak English yourself, can you, young 'un?"
Rube looked across at him in astonishment. Surely he was not an
Indian, speaking like this! He was an old, old man with a wrinkled
face, white hair, and a matted white beard and dim blue eyes. In dress
and manner, however, he was very little different from his companions.
"It's the only language that I c'n speak," said Rube.
"Barrin' your own," winked the medicine man. "But you're not the only
one of your tribe that can speak English. Broken Feather himself's a
dab hand at it, so I hear. A clever scoundrel is Broken Feather.
Togged you out like a Paleface and sent you into this reservation to
spy around and find out how many braves and warriors we've got, how
many war-horses we possess, and how far it's safe for him to come out
on the war-trail against us. Well, young 'un, you're caught at it, and
you've got to take the consequences, which is as much as to say that
you're going to be tortured to death. You asked for plain English, and
now you've got it. Quit!"
"But you haven't let me explain," Rube objected hotly.
The old man closed his dim blue eyes and drew his red blanket closer
about his shoulders.
"No explanations needed," he grunted.
At a sign from the chief, the scouts dragged Rube forcibly away, and
again tied his hands.
They took him into an empty teepee and there bound his legs together
and mounted a guard outside so that he could not possibly escape.
No food and no drink were given to him during the rest of the long,
weary, monotonous day. He watched a shaft of sunlight moving slowly
across the earthen floor of the wigwam until it became a thin streak
and then faded.
At dusk a new guard entered--two powerful young Indians with
grotesquely painted faces. They loosened the bonds about his legs, but
did so only that he might walk as they led him out into a lane broken
through a dense crowd of excited braves and squaws and curious
children, waiting to witness his torture.
He saw Falling Water with his medicine men and principal warriors in
their full war-paint seated in a group in the midst of an open circle
of the expectant people. Drums were being beaten, weird Indian songs
were being chanted, braves wearing hideous masks were dancing round a
blazing fire.
In the middle of the wide ring was the charred stump of a tree, and to
this Rube was led. When he came closer, he saw a procession of youths
march up, each carrying a large load of faggots. Following them came
Indians armed with spears, scalping-knives, bows and arrows, and
formidable clubs.
Rube began to feel exceedingly limp. He was trembling from head to
foot, though as yet he only guessed at the ominous meaning of these
preparations.
Suddenly he was seized from behind and thrust bodily towards the grim
execution tree. He struggled, but was overpowered. A blow on the head
made his brain reel, and all the strength of his resistance went out of
him.
When he came to himself again he found that he was bound by ropes to
the tree, and that flames were licking at his feet and legs, while by
the light of the fire and through the mist of smoke he saw hideous
figures of red men dancing round him, menacing him with their spears
and knives and tomahawks.
The fire nipped his shins, the ropes were cutting into his flesh, the
sparks and smoke were choking him.
"Kiddie! Kiddie!" he cried aloud in his anguish of body and mind.
And then, from immediately behind him, there came a calm, steady voice--
"All right, Rube; all right. I'm here."
Never, never, though he should live to be a hundred, could Rube Carter
forget those magical, unexpected words, coming to him as they did in
the most awful moment of his young life!
He did not ask himself just then how it had been possible for Kiddie to
find him and to penetrate the crowd of excited Indians unnoticed and
unhindered. All that he thought of was that Kiddie was here to rescue
him from the torturing death from which there had seemed to be no
faintest hope of escape.
But even yet escape had not been achieved.
The rising flames were scorching his legs, the flying sparks were
stinging his face and neck, the resinous smoke of the pine wood was
stifling him, and the madly-gesticulating Redskins were prodding at him
with their long spears and striking at him with their tomahawks to see
how nearly they could hit him without yet touching him. They prolonged
the process of cruelty to increase his mental suffering; but the delay
gave Kiddie his chance.
"Cut the rope, Kiddie--cut the rope!" Rube cried, not knowing that
Kiddie's sharp knife had already done its work.
Hardly had he spoken, when a strong arm was flung round him, and he was
lifted bodily backward beyond reach of the flames and the menacing
weapons of torture. His brain reeled as the supporting arm was
withdrawn; he stumbled and sank to the ground.
In his stupor he heard a wild yell from the Redskins robbed of their
victim. His eyes nipped painfully, but by the light of the leaping
flames he could distinguish Kiddie standing at bay above him, with a
revolver in each outstretched hand swinging threateningly from side to
side as the Indians made a rush towards him.
Believing that Kiddie's life was now in imminent peril, Rube managed to
scramble to his knees. He felt instinctively for his gun, forgetting
that it had been taken from him.
But Kiddie was not shooting. Were his pistols empty? Rube wondered.
He saw the crowd of Redskins fall back with lowered weapons and sullen
looks and hoarse grunts of disappointment.
"Best put them guns out of sight now," Rube heard some one advise. He
turned and saw the English-speaking medicine man standing at Kiddie's
side. "You've managed all right up to now," the same voice continued.
"Boy's not much harmed, by the look of him. You pulled him out just in
time, though. Another minute and they'd have been at him like a pack
of wolves. Hold hard while I go forward and explain to 'em."
He strode off and harangued the Indians in a loud voice of command.
"Who is he, Kiddie?" Rube was curious to know. "Who and what is he?"
"A man of the name of Simon Sprott," Kiddie told him. "Used to be a
friend of Gid Birkenshaw's years ago, when Gid was a lone trapper in
Colorado."
"Then he ain't a Crow Injun?"
"Well, he is and he isn't," returned Kiddie, helping the boy to his
feet. "When Gid knew him at first he was just an Englishman, come out
West on a trip of adventure. Then he got mussin' around with the
Redskins, married a squaw, and took the blanket. They made him a
chief, calling him Short Nose, and when he became too old to lead the
braves on the war trail they made him a boss medicine-man. That's
about all I know of him. I ran up against him when I was sneakin' into
the village on your track, and it was him that put me wise about what
they were doin' to you. I guess you'd a narrow squeak, eh?"
"I just had." Rube nodded. "But all the time I kinder felt as you'd
turn up, somehow. I gotter 'normous faith in you, Kiddie. I was plumb
certain you'd foller on my tracks, though I didn't blaze no trail."
"You blazed it quite enough for me, Rube," Kiddie averred. "I didn't
fool around any, searchin' for your dead body at the foot of the cliffs
in Lone Wolf Cañon. The sight of the eagles in flight and, afterwards,
the signs of Injuns told me all I needed to know. Say, you didn't make
an extra good witness for the defence, else you'd have made 'em
understand that you weren't the enemy spy they took you for. Pity you
never mentioned the name of Gideon Birkenshaw, or of Buckskin Jack, or
even of your own father. Simon Sprott would sure have tumbled to your
innocence."
"Dare say," acknowledged Rube. "But how in thunder was I ter know as
any of 'em c'd understand English? Simon Sprott never let on that he
was anythin' but a pure Injun until after I was condemned."
"You ain't hurt any, I hope?" Kiddie inquired.
"Nope. Shins are some scorched. Moccasins an' leggin's are spoilt,
an' my eyes are nippin'. Oh, an' they've took my six-shooter, Kiddie.
D'you reckon we c'n get it back?"
"Very likely," said Kiddie. "I'll ask Si Sprott. Here he is comin'
back."