THE
Phantom Rider;
OR,
THE GIANT CHIEF’S FATE.
A Tale of the Old Dahcotah Country.
BY MARO O. ROLFE,
Author of Pocket Novel No. 47, “The Man Hunter.”
NEW YORK.
BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS,
98 WILLIAM STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
FRANK STARR & CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
CONTENTS
I Vinnie’s Peril 9
II Clancy Vere and His Trouble 14
III Vinnie’s Stratagem 19
IV The Phantom Warrior 25
V The Maybob Twins 30
VI Out in the Storm 36
VII Over the Precipice! 41
VIII The giant’s Story 48
IX Lost in the Forest 56
X A Baffled Vengeance 61
XI A Welcome Visitor 67
XII The Forest Rose 75
XIII The Face at the Window 78
XIV Vinnie a Prisoner 81
XV What the Scouts Found 87
XVI The Phantom Rider! 91
XVII A Reunion of Hearts 95
XVIII Conclusion 100
THE PHANTOM RIDER;
OR,
THE GIANT CHIEF’S FATE.
CHAPTER I.
VINNIE’S PERIL.
The scene of our story is laid in the great North-west.
It was a bleak, windy day in November. The shrill blasts wailed through
the forest trees like the last despairing cry of a lost spirit, and gust
after gust beat and roared around the little log cabin standing so
silent and lonely, half buried in the midst of the Titanic oaks that
spread their long branches protectingly over its low roof, and whose
sturdy trunks environed it, seeming to keep silent and untiring guard
over its four rough walls.
The scene within the cabin was in striking contrast with the wild aspect
without.
It was a rude but homelike place, and despite the chinked walls and
rough furniture, there was such an air of plain comfort as one might
expect to see in the abode of the sturdy western pioneer.
A young girl sat by a table engaged in embroidering a broad strip of
dressed deer-skin with fancifully colored beads and quills—a blue-eyed,
slender-looking little woman with shining masses of golden-brown hair
falling unconfined about her small, shapely head, and down over her
shoulders until it reached the waist of her dress, which fitted her
willowy form to perfection, and whose ample folds half concealed, half
disclosed a small, neatly-clad foot and well-turned ankle.
Her sunny blue eyes held a soft, loving light, and a bright smile played
continually upon her dainty face and around her rosy little mouth, with
its ripe lips half parted from the rows of small white teeth.
But the azure eyes could flash with courage and determination, and the
pretty mouth could be hard and stern with its strawberry lips tightly
drawn and its tiny, gleaming teeth hard-set.
The settler’s daughter was very lovely, and she possessed a nerve and
courage far beyond her sex.
A tall, powerfully-made man of fifty stood near the great wide-mouthed
fire-place, in which a ruddy blaze leapt and glowed fantastically,
shedding a pleasant radiance over the homely place that could not but be
grateful to one who, like Emmett Darke, was preparing to leave it and go
out into the wind and cold of the chill November day. But the settler,
long used to the perils of border life, thought little of this.
His sharp gray eye and firm through pleasant mouth bespoke indomitable
courage and strength of will; and as he stood there in the red glow of
the dancing firelight, buckling on his deer-skin belt in which he thrust
the borderman’s trusty companion, a long, keen-edged hunting-knife, with
a brace of heavy pistols, he looked the personification of the ideal
hunter of the far western wilds.
A huge blood-hound lay on the floor at his feet—a large, red-eyed
creature with white, gleaming teeth—a brute that might be a true and
faithful friend, but could not but be a terribly dangerous enemy.
The object in the room most likely to attract the attention of a casual
observer was a small square box of polished wood, standing on the table.
Besides the tall clock ticking in a corner, this casket was the only
visible thing that bore evidence of having been made by hands more
skilled than those of the settler, or with tools other than those common
implements ever ready at the pioneer’s grasp, the ax and the auger.
What this curious little box contained, will appear hereafter.
Soon the hunter’s preparations were completed, and slinging a long
rifle, which he had taken down from its place on three pegs in the wall,
across his shoulders, he turned to his daughter who had wound the soft
deer-skin belt, upon which she had wrought innumerable fancy devices,
gracefully about her waist and shoulders, and stood regarding him with a
merry light sparkling in her blue eyes.
“How do I look, papa?” she asked. “Like some dusky forest princess?”
And she finished by placing a jaunty turban in which were fastened
several bright-colored plumes, which drooped down until they touched her
beautiful golden hair, coquettishly on her head.
“More like a regular angel, wings and all!” he exclaimed, admiringly:
for Emmett Darke loved his beautiful motherless child more than his
life. “That hair and those eyes of yours don’t look very Injiny.
Wouldn’t that red lover of yours go wild if he saw you now? I don’t
wonder he’s half-crazy and calls you ‘Sun-Hair!’ How about that
youngster, Clancy Vere, eh, Vinnie? Has he an eye to beauty?”
The maiden blushed rosy red; but the laughing eyes became thoughtful in
a moment.
“Do you know, papa, that I often think of him—the Indian? Oh, if he
should come some day when you are gone! He is wild and bloodthirsty and
his passions are ungovernable. He has taken a solemn vow to make me his
wife!”
“He shall never fulfill that vow!” cried the old man, with a dangerous
light in his cold gray eyes. “I’ll have his life, first! If he comes
here again I’ll give him a free pass to the happy hunting-grounds!”
Emmett Darke’s face was almost white with rage, and he brought the heavy
stock of his long rifle down on the floor with a sharp bang.
“Just so sure as that red devil has the misfortune to be caught anywhere
near my cabin, I will shoot him down like the coward he is! My daughter
is never to become a squaw, eh, Vinnie?”
“Never, father! Never will I become the Indian’s wife! I would sooner
shed my own heart’s blood!”
She spoke so calmly and yet determinedly that her father half-shuddered.
He knew that she meant every word, and he breathed an inward prayer that
God would watch over his lonely child and guard her from all peril
during his absence.
The hunter stood silent and motionless for a few moments, thinking
intently. Arousing himself at length, he said, turning to the
blood-hound, who was on his feet in an instant, running around him and
licking his hands:
“Come, Death! We must go.”
In a few minutes they had passed out, and were walking rapidly and
silently through the forest.
As Darke went away, a face appeared among the thick bushes close by the
cabin—a red face, hideously daubed with black and yellow paint, with
long, coarse black hair, hanging down the sunken jaws, and fierce black
eyes flashing triumph and exultation as the hunter disappeared from
view. Darke did not see this face, and the bushes closed over it in a
moment, concealing it as suddenly as it had appeared.
After her father was gone, Vinnie went and stood before the fireplace,
looking down into the red mass of leaping flames.
She was deeply buried in thought, and she heard no sound save the
hissing of the fire and the wailing of the wind around the corners of
the cabin, and through the bare branches of the great oaks outside.
She little thought what a lovely picture she made as she stood thus,
silent and motionless—one might almost imagine breathless—with a dreamy,
far-off look in her soft eyes, and the glancing blaze lighting up her
fair face till she looked, in fantastic guise, like some beautified
Fairy queen, some incomparable silvan goddess.
Rarely, radiantly lovely she appeared, strangely out of place in that
homely room.
She was unconscious of this—unconscious, also, of another presence in
the cabin until the back-log fell suddenly with a dull thud, throwing
out a shower of red sparks and arousing her on the instant from the fit
of abstraction into which she had fallen.
With a quick start, she turned her head and saw a tall form close behind
her—so near that it might easily have touched her.
It was the form of an Indian, powerful and massive. The face was the
same that had peered through the shrubbery at Emmett Darke a few minutes
before.
There was a strange light glowing in the fierce eyes fixed so steadily
on the lovely face before him—a look of wild passion as dangerous as it
was intense.
The savage did not speak nor even stir; but the hard, cruel lines on his
forehead and about his mouth relaxed a little as he tried to twist his
ugly visage into the semblance of a smile—a semblance that was even more
loathsome than its habitual scowl—that was nearer the leer of an
exultant fiend than the smile of a human being.
Vinnie’s face was deathly pale, and her heart seemed for a moment to lay
still in her bosom; but she tried to meet the gaze of those devilish
eyes calmly. She stood quite still, looking into the cruel face, but she
dared not trust her voice.
The Indian spoke at length, in a tone harsh and rasping, like the snarl
of some wild animal:
“Ku-nan-gu-no-nah has come for his squaw. Sun-Hair is very beautiful.
Ku-nan-gu-no-nah is a mighty warrior. He has always loved the white
maiden since he met her in the forest many moons ago. The great chief’s
heart has been burning for Sun-Hair. He has prepared his wigwam. It is
hung around with the scalps of his slain foes. Sun-Hair will be a queen.
The Indian women will bow down their heads in shame before the beautiful
Sun-Hair! Is she ready? Will she go with the great chief? His warriors
are waiting to see their queen!”
For a moment Vinnie did not speak, then the words came clear and sharp
from her white lips:
“No! I will never go!”
The chief’s face was fairly demoniac in an instant—the sickish leer was
gone, and the savage teeth shone through the drawn lips in two white,
gleaming rows. He advanced with a quick motion, and laid his hand
roughly on her arm.
“Come!” said the harsh voice, “Sun-Hair must go!”