HOW IT WORKED.
If Buffalo Bill had been blessed with the gift of prophecy he could
not have given a more accurate forecast of what would happen.
For no more than half an hour had gone by when Tim Benson appeared,
creeping out of the bushy covert of the hillside, in company with
the gigantic, apelike man, and a score of Ute Indians, with them the
chief himself, old Iron Bow.
It was plain that many of the Indians, if not all, were under
the influence of liquor--their reeling walk showed it; yet they
maintained, in spite of this, their characteristic Indian silence
when on dangerous ground, and they proceeded across the open sand to
the site of the cache without making much noise.
The two who led the way, though they were painted and feathered
like the Indians, it was easy to see were white men. The scout and
his pards knew that the small man was Benson; while Bill Betts was
equally sure that the apelike figure was Gorilla Jake.
“We’ve got the proof o’ all yer surmises, Cody, right hyer in a
nutshell,” Betts whispered. “Benson and Jake has been dopin’ the
reds.”
He did not know how accurately the word “dope” described just what
had been done.
“I figger thet I could drap that skunk Benson right frum hyer,” said
Nomad, fingering his revolver. “But ’twouldn’t do. Bersides, we
don’t want ter start no killin’; we want ter capter him, so’s he kin
git his jest desarts at ther hands o’ ther hangman.”
“And I’d hate to see Gorilla Jake killed,” said Betts, “as it would
cut me and Brother Jim out o’ that reward. Still, we might be able to
perduce his body, even if he was killed; and the reward is fer him
dead er alive.”
It was a characteristic of the Bettses that they kept their eyes
on the main chance, and in all their clever border detective work
thought more of the offered rewards than anything else. If it was
a defect, it was forgiven by their friends, who knew the terrible
chances they sometimes took to bring some ruffian to justice. They
earned all they got.
“I don’t suppose, Cody,” said the man from Laramie, the old reckless
light so often seen in his eyes flaming there once more, “that we
could charge that pizen crew and get Benson and the other feller? If
you say the word, I’m ready to try it.”
“We might do it!” the scout admitted.
“Wow! Then you’re willing!” and Hickok drew out his revolver.
“But I didn’t say that it would be wise to make the attempt. One or
more of us might be killed, and that wouldn’t pay, you know.”
“If we charge with revolvers cracking and every man Jack of us
yellin’ to beat the band those reds would run, and I know it.”
Buffalo Bill was not so sure of it that he was willing to take the
risk.
“Now we’ll see some fun,” whispered Nomad, as the Utes and their
guides came up to the cache which contained nothing but whisky
bottles filled with creek water. “It’ll be like deprivin’ children of
their promised candy. They won’t be willin’ to stand et.”
They saw Benson and the apelike man stop, and Benson point to the
ground. The Utes swarmed round the spot, forgetting their caution,
and talking, with furious gestures.
“Plenty stung up with excitement, when they thinks they’re goin’ ter
git er drink!” Nomad commented.
“They’ll be stung up a heap more when they discover that they ain’t
goin’ ter git none,” said Bill Betts. “Woosh! Wouldn’t I jes’ like
ter turn my umbreller gun loose on them varmints now.”
He pushed the singular weapon out in front of him.
“I reckon that would be too much like murder,” urged the man from
Laramie; “they’re heathen brutes, but still they’re human.”
Benson seemed to be talking to the Utes.
They were too far off to get the words; but they saw Gorilla Jake
drop down and begin to scratch away the sand with his huge, clawlike
hands. He went into the ground with the rapacity of a scared badger.
The excited Utes stooped over him, getting in his way; and there was
a great chattering, showing that they had lost their caution.
Buffalo Bill was beginning to think that an opportunity to charge and
capture Benson was being presented, when Gorilla Jake flung out a
bottle.
One of the Utes pounced on it; and so great was his eager haste that
he did not look at the contents, but broke off the neck of the bottle
with a blow of his brown fist and stuck the broken bottle to his
mouth.
He gave a choking howl of astonishment and grief when his mouth
filled with the luke-warm water; then he held up the bottle,
gesticulating furiously.
Gorilla Jake was flinging out more of the bottles, all of which
were being seized on. But the yell and the jabbering words of the
disappointed Ute nevertheless drew attention.
The Utes discovered suddenly that the bottles held tepid water
instead of whisky. Benson made the same astounding discovery, and so
did Gorilla Jake. The thing was at first incomprehensible.
Benson spoke to the apelike man, who delved deeper and flung out more
bottles. But these, too, contained only water.
The Indians were yelling in their excitement. They were angry, too,
as if they thought that the white men with them had worked the trick.
Knives and hatchets flashed in the red rays of the now declining sun.
“A Kilkenny cat fight,” gulped Nomad. “Now’s ther time, Cody, ter
wade right inter them.”
Buffalo Bill drew his revolver, and was about to give the command,
when a score more of Ute warriors appeared on the scene, coming from
the direction of the village. Apparently, having been left behind
without a knowledge of what was to be done, they had suspected it,
and followed.
“Not now; it would be foolish to charge now!” the scout whispered.
“Waugh!” Nomad growled. “Yer had ought to done et a while ago!”
“That’s what I said,” avowed Bill Betts, fingering his umbrella gun.
He lifted and sighted it. The handle of the umbrella was the gun, the
umbrella frame and cloth being mere deceptions.
“Give the word, Cody, and I can sure sting ’em up some, and they
won’t know who’s doin’ it.”
But Buffalo Bill did not give the word. Twoscore or more wildly
excited Utes too much resembled a hornets’ nest for him to want to
poke them up in that way. Buffalo Bill was noted for his courage, but
that does not mean that he was noted for recklessness. A good many
people mistake the one for the other. Nor was he inhuman.
The Ute recruits were soon yelling quite as much as those who had
arrived at the cache with the white men. What was being said could
not be made out, but it was apparent that warm remarks were being
directed to Benson and Gorilla Jake. Benson could be seen, surrounded
by Utes, waving his arms as if trying to explain the thing.
Conditions changed with startling suddenness. Benson’s words seemed
to take effect. The Utes swung out from that centre of turmoil, and
began to make a search about the deceptive cache in quickly widening
circles.
It was plain to the scout and those with him that they would have to
get back to avoid trouble. The Indians were in a murderous mood. And
to try results with more than forty Utes who were in that ugly mood
would be not merely foolhardy, but an invitation to hasty death.
The Utes were rapidly widening their circles, running round and round
like hunting dogs that have lost a game trail. Apparently Benson had
convinced them that other white men had tampered with the cache,
and they were now furiously resolved to pick up the trail of these
interlopers and properly punish them for such an outrage.
Buffalo Bill gave the order to retreat.
“I hates ter go,” Nomad declared.
“No wuss’n I do,” said Betts. “I wouldn’t be keerin’, if only I had
Gorilla Jake by the slack o’ the neck, takin’ him along with me.”
Buffalo Bill and the man from Laramie dropped behind to hide the
trail; a work which they so thoroughly accomplished that the retreat
was effected quickly and safely.
From the top of a tree on a hill some distance off, as the sun was
going down, Buffalo Bill saw the Utes streaming back toward their
village, the two white men with them. The Utes were howling like
drunken maniacs.
Jim Betts set out shortly after dark with the intention of hastening
to Blossom Range that he might hurry assistance to Buffalo Bill’s
small party. Throughout the whole afternoon the hope had been held
that a strong force would appear from the town, to avenge the death
of the sheriff and his men, but the help had not come. Jim Betts
had been selected because his legs were long and he was a rapid and
tireless walker. No horses were to be had, as those of the scout’s
party were too far away.
But a wise man makes sudden changes in his plans when there seems
reason for so doing.
Hence, instead of striking straight out at his best gait, Jim Betts
did not go toward the town at all, after he had proceeded less than
half a mile in that direction but turned toward the Ute village.
The reason was that he had seen a shadowy, skulking form moving in
that course that he believed to be Gorilla Jake.
Jim Betts, quite as much as his brother Bill, was moved most strongly
by considerations touching his pocket; he, too, wanted the reward
offered for the arrest of Gorilla Jake. If he could get the ape-man
soonest by following him now and pouncing on him it was what he
wanted to do. Perhaps he could, he thought, make the capture and take
Gorilla Jake right on into the town with him.
The thing was too tempting not to try, and he slipped off through the
darkness in hasty pursuit of the skulking figure.
The man he was following was really Gorilla Jake, as Betts made sure
when the Ute village was approached. He had not been able to come up
with him, nor even see him clearly, until the man passed into the
light of a small fire glowing before one of the outer tepees of the
village.
Betts hastened his steps, but he was too late; for the apelike man
flitted on past the fire.
Jim Betts stopped, his heart hammering against his ribs by reason of
his rapid pursuit, while a sense of disappointment and anger went
through him.
The Utes were either having a powwow near the centre of the village,
or were doing a lot of screeching there just because they liked to
howl in their present demoralized condition: but the apelike man had
not gone in that direction; and, because he had not, and no one was
near the tepee or the fire to observe, the daring fellow, who long
before had won the title of the Gamecock because of his recklessness,
crossed the line into the Ute village, still pursuing the murderer
of the mine superintendent.
Once again he caught sight of Gorilla Jake, near another lodge, and
scudded in that direction, bending his tall form and running with
almost silent feet.
“If I kin lay my hands on the dog I’ll choke the wind out o’ him and
manage to git him out of hyer, when, if I kin do that much, you bet I
kin git him down to Blossom Range. I could land him in the jail thar
while I am attendin’ to the other matter, and hold him in it till I
got ready to take him to Sody Springs.”
The Indians were still howling.
To his disappointment he saw the apelike figure turn in the direction
of those inharmonious sounds.
Betts stopped and listened, called himself softly any number of fools
for not getting out of that dangerous place, then went on, still
pursuing Gorilla Jake.
There was a fire leaping in front of a lodge, and in and about the
lodge he saw many Indian figures; but what they were howling about he
could not make out, unless simply noisy because they were drunk. He
concluded that the latter must be the explanation.
Then he saw the apelike man, who had been moving toward the Utes,
stop beside a lodge, duck his head as if he had heard something, then
pass into the tepee.
“Wow!” said Jim Betts, staring. “What’s it mean?”
Anyway, he thought he might be given a chance to dive into that
lodge, even though it was almost under the painted noses of the
yelling Utes, and grip his intended prisoner. He was too close to the
lodge not to try it, reckless as it was.
He was cautious enough to keep the bulk of the lodge between himself
and the Indians, and to take all the advantage possible from the
shadow cast by the leaping fire; he crouched low, too, so that he
seemed to slide his tall form along the ground.
In that manner he gained the rear of the lodge, where he was stopped
from proceeding farther by hearing Gorilla Jake talking with Tim
Benson. At first Betts thought they had company, for he heard Indian
grunts, which came, however, from behind the lodge.
The white men were flinging accusations at each other, as soon as
Gorilla Jake entered the lodge; it was apparent that Benson had seen
him passing and beckoned or called to him to come in.
“You didn’t have as many of them tablets as you said,” Benson
declared.
“And you didn’t have any whisky, ’cept what we fust brought in,”
Gorilla Jake flung back at him.
“Was that my fault?”
“It wasn’t mine!”
“Some one tampered with the cache. I’m betting it was one of Cody’s
crowd.”
“Fer which reason,” said Gorilla Jake, and Jim Betts heard him suck
in his breath angrily, “if I’d hed a million o’ them tablets you
wouldn’t had the whisky to use with ’em.”
“We might have used them alone. We could have told the Utes that they
were better than whisky. That was my plan, when I found the whisky
was gone; then I discovered you didn’t have any more. They’ll sober
off now, and then----”
“We can cut out o’ this, can’t we?”
“Not while I’m on yer trail,” Jim Betts whispered. “You’re my meat.”
“Cody will follow us!” said Benson.
His tone showed that his courage had broken down, or else he was
losing his mental balance.
The apelike man snorted his anger and moved uneasily about the lodge.
“He’ll be comin’ out in a minute,” thought Jim Betts.
In spite of the peril he began to crawl round to the tepee entrance,
with the intention of knocking Gorilla Jake on the head there and
making a desperate fight to get out of the village with him. He drew
his heavy revolver, which he held so that he could use the butt.
Betts had crawled no more than halfway round when the apelike man,
appearing in the lodge entrance, drew toward him a mob of furious
Utes, who came at him howling.
Betts heard him utter an exclamation and step back; then heard him
say to Benson:
“If you’ve got any influence with ’em you’d better use it now. They
want me. I reckon, frum the looks; but they’ll be wantin’ _you_ next.”
The Indians foamed up to the entrance, then flowed on into the lodge.
A desperate curiosity caused the reckless Gamecock to lift the edge
of the lodge skin and peer in, his form flattened out and his face
against the earth.
As he did it a blow sounded; and he saw, then, that Gorilla Jake had
knocked one of the Indians down, and was backing over against the
wall, passing Benson, who sat crouched on a lot of skins.
A growl like that of an aroused animal came from the lips of Gorilla
Jake.
“Stand up hyer and help me!” he flung at Benson.
But Benson knew which side his bread was buttered on right then, and
he did nothing of the kind. He saw that the Utes had come for Gorilla
Jake, and that if he interfered he would put his life in jeopardy. So
he sat still, letting the angry Utes stream past and even over him.
“Wow!” breathed the excited Gamecock, an eye at the aperture taking
everything in. “Wish’t Brother Bill was hyer ter see this right now.
But I’m afeard that this trouble is goin’ to make it mighty hard
fer me and Bill to collect that reward fer Gorilla Jake; it begins
to look as if he is goin’ to git all that’s comin’ to him. Yet that
reward offer said ‘alive or dead.’ If he was scalped, I don’t reckon
that would make any difference. Only--I hope they won’t burn him;
’twould be purty hard ter produce the body, in that case.”
The Gamecock was trembling with excitement and apprehension. He
wanted to hurl himself in there and take the part of the threatened
man, then lead him off to the Blossom Range jail. But, plainly, that
would not do. Even Jim Betts was not reckless enough to try that.
“Benson’s a coward, er he’d git right up and into that game,” he
breathed. “Gorilla Jake is his friend, ain’t he? Well, why don’t he
stand by his friend?”
The Indians were crowding before Gorilla Jake, who was shouting
wildly at them. The one he had knocked down was on his feet again,
this time with a hatchet in his hand.
“Stand back!” the apelike man howled at them. His knife had come
out. “Stand back, all o’ ye, er take the consequences. Y’ ain’t
goin’ to pull me to pieces, and not git my knife, I tell ye. Thar on
the floor is the man you want--not me; _he’s_ the man that started
this thing, by s’jestin’ it. He’s the man that was to furnish the
whisky--the coward; and now he sets thar, an’ let’s me do the
fightin’. Stand back!”
Few if any of them understood his English, but they understood the
significance of the sweep of his long arm as it whirled the knife.
The watching Gamecock did not know what they were yelling, but he
judged that they were accusing him of treachery or deceit, or were
demanding more whisky, which it was clear he could not furnish. It
was plain, too, that they were temporarily crazy. That was the only
explanation; and Benson and Gorilla Jake had made them so. No band
of maniacs in any lunatic asylum ever looked more terrifying or more
desperate.
One of them sprang straight at the throat of Gorilla Jake like a dog
flinging at an enemy.
But he never reached the panting man. Gorilla Jake’s long arm swept
out, struck him in mid-air with a thump, and the Ute dropped at the
feet of the apelike man, his chest torn open by the knife.
“Stand back!” the desperate man yelled, swinging the bloody knife.
He looked insane, too, now; his lips frothing, his great shoulders
and muscular arms working, his hairy, painted face twisted in rage,
and his gray eyes glittering like an angry animal’s.
The fall of the Ute stayed the braves before him, it had come so
suddenly, but only for a moment; then another leaped at him, with
still others rushing in right behind.
Thump! Thump!
Two of the Utes fell. The third Gorilla Jake caught to his breast,
gave him a deadly squeeze, such as a great ape might give, and hurled
him lifeless as a missile straight into the faces of his friends,
knocking down half a dozen.
Flinging himself backward against the rear wall of the tepee, Gorilla
Jake tried to get out there, but found that he could not, and turned
to rip the tough, dried skins with his knife.
It gave an opportunity for the maddened Utes to close in on him, and
they made use of it.
His swinging arm clove open a hole in the tepee, and he staggered
through it, with Utes hanging to him like leeches. Others poured,
yelling, through the hole after them.
As this happened, the staring-eyed white man who watched under the
edge of the lodge saw Tim Benson rise from the skins he sat on and
project himself out of the lodge by the way of the regular exit,
brushing aside the Utes crowding in there.
The Gamecock got into action.
But he was bewildered by his desire to follow and capture Benson and
his equally strong desire to know what was being done to Gorilla
Jake. Already he had reached the conclusion that if he ever received
a reward for producing the body of Gorilla Jake, it would be by
producing a dead body.
The roaring tumult on the other side of the lodge where the apelike
man and the maniacal Utes had gone was indescribable.
But Jim Betts was not able to see what became of Gorilla Jake.
He found it necessary to consider his own safety. Utes were all round
him. One had actually stepped on the Gamecock’s fingers as he lay
sprawled on the ground.
“I got ter git out o’ this!” was his startled thought.
Apparently it was a conclusion taken none too soon.
He began to crawfish away from the lodge, almost flat on the ground,
keeping out of the way of the Indians, who rushed in what seemed the
probable direction taken by Gorilla Jake.
The Gamecock moved rapidly, now that he had made up his mind.
There was another lodge, into whose shadow he got; then he began
to crawl round it, intending to get on the other side, where the
darkness lay heaviest, and then perhaps make a dash to get safely out
of the village.
“I reckon that Gorilla Jake has gone under,” he was thinking, “and
that this climate is gittin’ mighty unhealthy fer Tim Benson. It’ll
be also plum malarious fer me if I don’t move out of it. A sudden
change of base looks mighty good fer my health right now.”
Then he stopped--not his words only, but his motions.
Right before him he saw a blanketed figure hugging the ground.
“Wow! An Injun! Jest when I was gittin’ shet of ’em!”
The “Injun” discovered by him moved with surprising suddenness.
The blanket lifted, and the man under it jumped at him, clutching the
Gamecock by the throat before he could get back or get out a weapon.
Betts was a powerful man, and was never known to surrender readily,
so he began to put up the best fight he could. He partly broke the
strangle hold on his throat, and reached for his knife, gurgling out
a panting exclamation at the same time.
That gurgling exclamation, unintentional though it was, proved a
mighty lucky happening for Jim Betts right then. The clutch on his
windpipe, which was closing again, dropped away; then a voice sounded:
“Who are you?”
“Wow! Who air you?”
Jim Betts fell back, gasping and gurgling.
“I’m Buffalo Bill!”
“Wow! I’m Jim Betts!”
The man drew himself together, pulling the blanket over him.
“I beg your pardon,” he whispered: “I thought you were an Indian.”
“An’ I thought you must be the devil the way you got holt o’ me.”
“Get under this blanket quick, and lie low. Some of the Utes are
coming over this way.”
Betts, helped by the scout, slid under the gray covering, so that,
as both men lay flat, the blanket covering them looked like a dark
shadow against the ground.
“Wow!” Betts was breathing, filled with amazement. “Cody! Wow!
Buffalo Bill! I wonder if my thinkin’ machinery ain’t slipped its
gearin’? Cody can’t be here.”
“What’s happening?” the scout asked in a whisper, lowering his head.
He had been peering out, with the blanket drawn close about his eyes.
“I reckon that Gorilla Jake has gone under.”
“I was guessing as much.”
“You seen him?”
“I heard him.”
“And the Utes!”
“No one could help hearing them.”
“You didn’t see Matt Shepard, the sheriff?”
“I didn’t; reckon he has gone under,” said Betts. “What you doin’ in
hyer, anyhow?”
“And you? We supposed you were on your way to Blossom Range.”
Betts began an explanation, but the scout cut him short.
“Hist! Not now. The Utes are near, some of them!”
Betts and the scout lay snugly under the blanket, and the running
Utes passed on and away.
Buffalo Bill began to talk again in cautious whispers.
“I came in here to look round, thinking that perhaps I might be able
to capture Benson.”
“And I come in hyer to look round, thinkin’ maybe I might be able to
capture Gorilla Jake.”
“But why didn’t you go on to Blossom Range?”
“That’s why. I wanted to capture Jake. I seen him outside of the
village when I fust set out, and turned in hyer after him. I might
have got him, but the Utes chipped in, and I reckon Jake has seen his
finish.”
“You saw Benson?”
“Yes. He was in the lodge with Jake, but he cut and run when the
Utes pounced on Jake, so I don’t know what become of him.”
“I think we’d better try to get out of this.”
“It’s dangerous hyer right now.”
“Almost as dangerous as death itself. If the Utes find us we’re
gone. I never saw Indians so crazy. I’ve seen them drunk, but never
anything like this. If Gorilla Jake has been killed by them I guess
he brought it on himself, for he and Benson must have fired them up
with whisky.”
“Old forty-rod, if it’s filled with drugs and dope to make it go fur,
will knock out a white man, and make a lunatic of a red; I’ve seen it
before.”
“I never saw Indians as wild as these are to-night.”
“I couldn’t understand anything the Utes said, but I jedge they was
crazy mad because Jake and Benson couldn’t furnish ’em no more old
redeye. Deprive a red of whisky, after he’s been havin’ some, and it
turns him into a wild man. Benson and Jake was shore playin’ with
fire, and they’d ought to have knowed it. I reckon it finished Jake.”
“We’ll crawl off in this direction, in the shadow of the lodge; be
sure to keep the blanket over you,” said the scout. “Be careful, too,
that you move slowly and cautiously. I shouldn’t have risked my life
in here if I had fully understood the situation. I’m glad I met you.”
Jim Betts coughed out a low, wheezing laugh.
“My achin’ throat don’t echo that sentiment,” he said; “it’d feel a
heap easier if I hadn’t met you. I never met up with a man had a grip
like that; I thought my neck was bein’ crushed in.”
The scout did not echo the laugh; at this distance the thing looked
too serious.
“I might have killed you, Betts,” he said. “I saw you getting that
knife, and----”
“Then I ripped out somethin’ in purty plain English, and you tumbled.
It’s all right now. But I reckon my throat will ache fer a week. When
I have a heap of time I’m goin’ ter see if you can’t choke an iron
bolt so that it will holler.”
They crept along under the blanket, slipping it over the ground,
until they had cautiously crossed an open space; then found
themselves within the shadow of another lodge.
They were moving away from the centre of disturbance and apparently
increasing their chances.
“Whar did ye leave the rest o’ the boys?” Betts asked, as they stood
up in the shadow of this lodge.
“Where they were when you left us.”
“They knowed you had come?”
“Yes.”
“Brother Bill would be surprised, I reckon, if he knowed I was here.
He says I allus take too big risks. Shall we make a run fer the aidge
o’ the village now? The distance ain’t more’n a hundred feet. Thar’s
a heap o’ noise goin’ on, and I reckon we could make a lot of racket
without bein’ heard by the crazy Utes.”
“I think your brother Bill is right in saying that you are inclined
to take unnecessary risks. If we make a dash to get out of here we
may be seen and might be shot. Caution still stands us in hand, I
think.”
The scout stooped again, and, clinging to the shadow of the lodge as
long as he could, he worked his way toward the outer circle of lodges.
Jim Betts followed him.
Fortunately, interest in another quarter kept them from being seen.