BUFFALO BILL SAVES TEN.
During the darkness and excitement of the expected attack, while the
Sioux were pulling themselves together, the prisoners were forgotten.
Price managed to slip his bonds, and released Bloody Ike; not that he
had any particular love for the ex-miner, but because misery loves
company, and rogues cling together in adversity.
The pair found some blankets and arms, and mingling with the braves
worked down the stream until they came to the motte of timber at the
river bank. They preferred to remain prisoners among the Indians to
being captured by the soldiers, which they momentarily expected to
charge on the Indian encampment.
The Indians, too, believed that U. S. Cavalry only awaited daylight to
charge. That explained why the red men had failed to follow Cody and
his party.
Scouts were hurriedly sent out to investigate the position and number
of the enemy, and reported that they could not find any troops.
Daylight revealed the great plain, instead of bristling with U. S.
soldiery, as barren as the evening before.
The Indians were mystified. They had heard the bugle call, the giving
of orders, and the galloping of officers’ horses. Spies, too, had
been in the camp by the dozen, according to the reports of those who
had come in contact with Cody, and the ponies had been stampeded and
scattered over the plain.
The Indians felt great relief that the army had vanished, but they held
a superstitious presentiment that the paleface riders and walkaheaps
might drop from the clear sky, or arise out of the ground at any moment.
Braves were sent out to round up the ponies, and a council of the
chiefs decided that it would be better to move to the hills and find
some spot where such a surprise would be impossible.
Price and Bloody Ike hid in the timber until they heard the Sioux move
away; then they came out and searched the camp ground for food. Some
pieces of buffalo meat were found and broiled over the coals, and eaten
without salt.
“Pretty tough lug for you and me, Ike.”
Ike growled his discontent. He felt that if he had refused to mix up
with Price he would not be in such desperate circumstances. To be
landed in the middle of a hostile country, with nothing but enemies on
all sides, was no joke. To be there without a mount was doubly serious.
Although the distance to the hills looked short, these men knew that it
was a long and tiresome journey to those unfamiliar with pedestrianism.
Price noted that the Sioux traveled in a southeasterly direction; he
decided to proceed west, hoping to be able to find a remote ranch, from
which they could steal food and horses. Almost any horse would be a
relief from this leg-wearying march.
And thus it came about that late that night two tired and hungry men,
searching for a hiding and resting place among the bluffs and gashes
of the ever-changing hills, came over the rim of a basin, to see a
cheerful fire at its bottom and a group of men sitting around it.
“Good!” almost shouted Price. “A party of gold seekers, who have
crossed from the Black Hills. They are prospecting these hills and
are no doubt well supplied with provisions and horses. Perhaps we can
annex--with your knowledge of mining and my knack of tickling human
nature.”
“Safer to steal it and keep away from these fellows. If they lose a
couple of horses and some duffle, they’ll lay it to the Indians.”
“But this doesn’t look like an easy place to sneak out of, with a horse
attached.”
“That’s so, but in that case we’d better annex the grub, an’ wait for
a better show. If ye mingle with these fellows it is just so many more
who know where we are, and if any soldiers meet up with them and ask
for you, they’ll connect.”
“You’re right, Ike, but I’m so hungry I don’t believe I can wait to
make a good steal.”
“Leave that to me. You stay up here in the rocks an’ chew your boot
leg, while I go down to look things over. I hope I get a grab at the
powder supply.”
Bloody Ike crept over the rocks and around the pitfalls of the broken
buttes, and slowly made the descent toward the flickering camp fire. He
wondered how horses ever had been landed where he could see them beyond
the fire. In his opinion such horses must have wings. Ike, himself, had
no flying machine, and he was minus much cuticle from his head to his
heels.
The ex-miner was weary and half famished, and with the slipping and
sliding among the jagged corners he would have looked, in daylight,
like a candidate for a hospital. He was “Bloody” Ike, indeed.
But he was bent on mischief, and determined to accomplish it. He cared
naught who these men were, or what they represented--it was their food
he was after, their horses, if possible, and last, but not least, their
powder, if they had any.
He crept close to the peaceful camp where ten men sat around a cheerful
blaze, smoking their pipes and relating stories of the trail and the
mines. The party was made up of Buffalo Bill and his pards, Avery and
the boy, and three miners with whom the scout had connected in the
foothills. The miners were glad to meet English-speaking men, after
several months in the wilds, where the only human beings they had seen
were Indians.
Buffalo Bill was glad to avail himself of the knowledge these men had
of this part of the country.
The rock-bound fastness of the camping place recommended itself to
him as a headquarters while in that part of the world, and combined
good water supply and grazing for the horses, where they could not be
stampeded. The miners had six mounts, and had improvised a trap at the
only entrance to the high-walled “dip,” where a horse could enter or
depart.
A man could scale the cliffs, if he had his nerve with him, but no
animal with hoofs, unless it be a mountain goat, could expect to enter
or leave by any other source.
In other ages great clefts of rock had dropped from the cliffs above
and formed dark caverns and numerous hiding places, where one familiar
with them might defy an army to dislodge him. Here the miners had
arranged their lodges and had little fear of attack by Indians.
As Bloody Ike stole nearer and nearer, he gasped with surprise. He
recognized Buffalo Bill and some of his pards. Several times in the
past he had made use of the most devilish means he could devise to put
them out of the way, and he had yearned for one more opportunity.
“Oh! for his powder and fuse!”
But there might be a chance--he could see shovels and picks leaning
against a rock near the fire. Some of these men must be miners and if
so they would be apt to make use of powder or explosive in some form.
Ike was near enough to catch some words of the conversation when the
men arose, knocked the ash from their pipes, and going back under the
side of a great leaning rock, rolled in their blankets and said good
night.
For a time--a long time, it seemed to him--Ike waited until he felt
sure the men were all asleep, and then he began a quiet investigation
of the place on his own hook.
The fire had sunk away to a few embers, the flickering blaze from which
cast fantastic and dancing shadows on the rocks and walls. Indeed, the
stealthy figure might have been mistaken for a part of the fitting
picture painted by the fire gods.
Ike found food and regaled himself and stuffed his pockets for his
guilty partner on the rim above--and then, “Eureka!” Here were two cans
of blasting powder--and a fuse! a big coil of it!
A devilish plot began to form in the abnormal gray matter of the bad
man’s brain.
Here were some of the men he hated most; here were stores of provision
and good horses. In this stronghold he and Price could hide until
search for them should be exhausted--if there were none having a prior
claim--and here, at his hand, were the means of jumping the claims of
those who came before and taking possession of all.
How easy it would be--all that seemed necessary was to attach the
fuse--so; and place the keg under the side of this pile of rocks--so;
and softly pull some of them into a position around and on top of
it--so.
The mass of loose stones and blocks of granite, that had been cleared
from the almost level floor of the camping place, lay in just the right
position to be hurled in their deadly mission, full upon the sleeping
men.
“Yes, how easy it would be!”
All he would have to do would be to find a match in his ragged
pocket--scrape it lightly over his trousers leg--so; and apply it to
the end of the fuse.
Oh, yes, his nerve had always stood him in good stead--when he lighted
a fuse he always stood over it after other men had fled, to see that
the fuse was well fired and not going out.
How easy! It lighted the first time! It was running splendidly! He had
cut a generous length of fuse to give him ample time to get well beyond
the terrific concussion, which would follow in a few seconds.
He must go.
With the agility of the experienced mountaineer he darted over the
rocks, caught up the other can of powder and some of the provision
bags, and sprang away into the shadows and disappeared among the rocks.
Buffalo Bill was restless. He was not given to visions or
presentiments, and did not believe in forerunners; but when a decaying
molar got its tantrums and began to put in the kicks of a wild horse,
it disturbed his slumbers. He bore the pain as long as possible and
then crawled out softly, that he might not disturb his companions.
The scout had determined to try the solace of his pipe.
As he approached the almost lifeless coals of the evening’s fire he was
surprised to see a man arise from the dense shadow of a pile of rock
and dart away.
He at first thought it was one of the miners, but the apparent haste
and stealthy step aroused the scout’s suspicion.
He stepped along and peered behind the rock pile to see if there might
be others.
He saw only a little sparkling point of light that would hardly have
burned a baby’s finger.
But the scout stared in horror for an instant, then bounded over the
rocks like a madman.
He tore at the spluttering spark with his bare hands, but it was
already beyond the grasp of his fingers under the rock pile.
It was crawling away rapidly, its single baleful eye snapping defiantly
at its pursuer.
Buffalo Bill plunged his hands among the rocks and tore them away with
insane fury.
He hurled them right and left, at the same time shouting:
“Turn out, boys! Get behind the rocks! A blast!”
Then he came to the powder can. He felt its rim, and he saw the fatal
spark, but where the fuse was attached he could not see.
He grasped the can with both hands and ripped it from its surroundings.
The sputtering light clung to it.
Like lightning he raised the can above his head and threw it far out
over a chasm that yawned a rod away.
A roar and blinding flash in mid-air told how near the scout had been
to being too late.
The concussion threw him and others who had jumped up at his shouts,
from their feet. But no one was injured.
Torches and lanterns were lighted and a search of the camp begun.
“It’s the work of Bloody Ike, the powder fiend,” declared Hickok, and
the others agreed with him.
“He has got away with your other can of powder and the coil of fuse,”
said the scout to the miners.
“And every can of that powder is worth a small fortune, ’way out here,”
mourned one of the men.
“I didn’t suppose there was a devil bad enough, in existence, to
attempt to kill ten men in cold blood,” said Hickok.
“If it’s Ike Pelletier, who once handled the explosives in the Bridger
range mines, he’d murder a regiment for a hundred dollars. And I’d give
twice that to get next to him for a few minutes,” said Avery.
“Well,” said the scout, “I am convinced that he is in this basin
now--he can’t be far off, for I saw the man who lighted the fuse
running away--and we must hunt the villain down and see that he pays
the penalty for his crimes.”
“That is all right from your standpoint,” said Avery. “You represent
the law. But I represent justice swift and sure, with no chance for a
slip-up. If I see Ike first, you will never take him back for trial.”
“Didn’t you see him that day at the surveyors’ shanty?” asked the scout.
“Yes, I saw both men, but I didn’t recognize either of them, yet I
thought the one with whiskers resembled some one I had known.”
“If you have a bullet for him, there must be a story behind it?”
suggested one of the miners.
“There is, but it is too long to tell to-night, besides, we’ve got to
capture the scoundrel.”