SURROUNDED AND CAPTURED.
The trail of the Redskin Rovers became difficult to follow in the
hills, and Buffalo Bill lost much time.
Night was approaching, and he had the feeling that the Indians were
far ahead of him, a feeling which produced a lack of caution, when he
suddenly found himself surrounded.
The place was a little glade in the hills, with rock walls about it.
The scout had ridden into it, with head bent down and eyes searching
the trail, when Nebuchadnezzar gave a quick jump of alarm, and with
head up and eyes rolling in alarm, tried to stampede. The wise old
brute had been taught to fear Indians, and even the scent of Indians
frightened him. Only the fact that the wind was blowing strong from
him to them had kept the horse from smelling them before it was too
late.
Buffalo Bill knew that Indians were near when Nebuchadnezzar began
his capering; and then he saw them on the rocks about him.
The redskins were well armed with rifles and bows, and Buffalo Bill
recognized the futility of fighting or flight. Though he might slay
a few of them, there was no doubt that they could kill him before
he could get out of the glade. Hence he elevated his hands, palms
outward, in token of friendship, while the Indians swarmed down the
rocks upon him.
The old horse snorted angrily and rushed at the redskin who first
tried to get hold of the bridle.
“Give gun!” said one of the Indians, in a commanding tone.
It was hard to do; but the scout surrendered his weapons, retaining,
however, inside his hunting shirt, a little revolver, which he always
kept there concealed. More than once it had escaped detection, and
now again it escaped.
The only weapons left him were that small revolver, a small knife
hidden in one of his boots, and a fine, thin saw embedded in the wide
rim of his hat.
He handed over the other weapons with apparent cheerfulness. Then he
saw in the midst of the crowding redskins the one who had attacked
him the day before, and whose mustang he had killed. This Indian
gave him a black look, and the scout knew that he would prove an
implacable and treacherous foe.
The presence of this Indian explained, it seemed, the attack on
Latimer’s house. It was hostility to Buffalo Bill, fomented by the
rage of this redskin, which had brought it about. Buffalo Bill
himself was the object of the attack.
The excited cries of the redskins showed full well that they
understood the importance of their capture.
“Fortunately, the Indian whose mustang I killed isn’t a chief,” was
the scout’s reflection. “He would have me burned at the stake!”
With feelings of uneasiness, he allowed himself to be bound and led
away.
Nebuchadnezzar still snorted and showed his dislike of Indians; yet
he was forced to go along, and he received on his rough hide some
heavy blows and kicks as the reward of his protests.
The distance which the Indians traversed was not great. They had a
camp not far off, and to it they conveyed the scout, who was not
greatly surprised, on arriving there, to find prisoners in the camp
before him. Latimer was there, together with Nick Nomad and Pizen
Kate.
Latimer maintained a gloomy silence; but Nomad received Buffalo
Bill with sundry cackles, and Pizen Kate in a manner befitting her
previous performances.
“That is what comes of a husband runnin’ away from the wife of his
bosom,” Pizen Kate declared, with a snapping of her eyes. “If he had
stayed to home, dutiful and kind, as he ort, this would never ’a’
come about; but he had to leave me alone, forlorn and forsaken, and
this is the result of it. I’ve been givin’ him a piece of my mind
about it, too.”
“Buffler,” said Nomad, “I’m glad to see ye, and likewise I ain’t glad
to see ye. Seems a singular statement, don’t it? But I don’t need to
explain.”
“I think I should like to have _you_ do some explaining,” said the
scout.
“About drappin’ through thet hole in the floor?” said Nomad. “Waal,
thet war cur’us, and no mistake. I run into the room, and the floor
jes’ yawned fer me, and I went through. I fell so durn hard, landin’
on the sharp p’int of my spine, that I didn’t know anything fer about
a day, seemed ter me.
“When I come to myself better it war dark in there--darker’n a stack
o’ black cats. I crawled along, and crawled along, and by and by I
tumbled out of the hole kerplunk into ther river. I come nigh about
bein’ drownded then. When I went under I swallered enough water, I
reckon, ter float a boat, and I come near going down and stayin’ thar.
“The river is purty swift, as mebbe ye know, and it kerried me down
considerable. When I got out, I didn’t know where I war, fer a fac’.
But I sized up the sitervation as well as I could, and tried ter make
back tracks. Waal, I run inter the Injuns while doin’ that, and they
took me in. And hyar I am, and I don’t like ther looks of it.”
“If you wouldn’t talk so much, Nicholas, you’d git fatter!” Pizen
Kate snapped.
That irresistible chuckle of old Nomad’s sounded.
“Katie, I don’t want ter git any fatter. A fat man can’t run; and I
reely feel ther need of runnin’, so long as you persist in pursuin’
after me.”
“We’ll all quit runnin’, seems to me, now! Seems to me we’re in fer
it. I don’t see nothin’ to laugh about, I don’t. Yit there you set
and grin like a monkey! I keep wonderin’ what I ever married you fer,
anyhow.”
“Me too!” said Nick. “And I keep wonderin’ why, havin’ found me out,
you chase me about so. See what’s happened to ye by doin’ thet! If
you’d stayed in Kansas City----”
“If _you_ had stayed in Kansas City, you mean!” she snapped. “Wasn’t
you the first one to leave there? And ain’t it the duty of a dutiful
wife to foller her husband wherever he goes? Nicholas, if I----”
“Too much talk!” one of the Indians grunted.
Pizen Kate shut up like the closing of a steel trap, but she gave the
redskin a black look.
The Redskin Rovers paid at first little attention to their captives,
after they had duly celebrated the capture of the noted Long Hair.
They were now busy in getting supper, using some of the things taken
from Latimer’s. Nevertheless, the rebuke of the Indian could not keep
either Pizen Kate or Nomad quiet very long.
“I told you I was goin’ to camp outside and watch fer things, and
that I knowed somethin’ was goin’ to happen last night,” said Pizen
Kate, addressing Buffalo Bill, whom she still persisted in calling
Persimmon Pete. “It happened, all right. But I guess I wasn’t a very
good watcher. Mebbe I cat-napped a little. Anyway, I was a pris’ner
of these red rascals almost before I knowed it.”
She seemed to have no true perception of the very serious position
she was in, although, as if to silence her, Nomad made wry faces
while she talked, and now and then retorted with some curt warning.
In the midst of the talk old Nebuchadnezzar drew attention to himself
by a shrill squeal. As he squealed he launched out with his hind
feet; and an Indian who had been standing so near him that it drew
his disapproval received the full force of the heavy kick and sat
down on the ground with a loud grunt of pain.
Nomad cackled with uproarious laughter.
“Te, he! Did ye see him, Buffler? Ole Nebby ferever! He jes’
natcherly can’t stand an Injun! They make him that mad thet he jes’
has to go fer ’em when they comes nigh him. He thinks they ain’t
human, and I’m somewhat er that opinion myself.”
The bowled-over Indian rose in a rage and proceeded to belabor the
gnarled old beast; and as a result received another kick that sent
him sprawling again.
The roars of laughter from the other Indians showed how they
appreciated the fun. Their laughter so angered the bruised redskin
that he would have shot Nebuchadnezzar dead but for the prompt
interference of a man who had but recently come into the camp.
That he was a white man, and the real leader of the Redskin Rovers,
Buffalo Bill was sure as soon as he saw him; but he was dressed as an
Indian, and his hands and face were so covered with paint that one
not closely attentive would have been sure he was an Indian.
This leader caught the wrathy redskin by the throat and thrust him
back when he picked up a rifle and would have shot the old horse,
and the language he used, though in the Indian tongue, told Buffalo
Bill even more clearly that he was a white man, for it was imperfect,
showing that he had not fully mastered it.
“Thet’s a white man, Buffler,” said Nomad; “and he’s an outlaw, I
reckon, and is pertendin’ thet he’s an Injun. Them things I never
could stand. Still, it does sorter warm me up and make me feel
kinder good toward him ter have him chip in thet way in behalf of
ole Nebby.”
“The question that’s troublin’ me,” said Pizen Kate, who was
apparently not interested in either the exploits or the safety of
Nebuchadnezzar, “is, now that we’re here, how we’re goin’ to git away
from here? Aire we ever goin’ to git away?”
It was a question that also troubled the other prisoners.