THE SKY MIRROR.
With the aid of torches, an effort was made to pick up the trail
close by the fort.
The scouts found some hoofmarks, and from them gained what they
believed to be the general direction of Barlow’s flight.
It was known, however, that Barlow was shrewd, and the chances were
good that he would change his course after leaving the fort some
distance behind him.
When daylight came nothing was to be seen by the scouts but the broad
expanse of prairie grass lying before them.
In that section of country the grass is not the tall prairie grass
of better-watered regions; but it is the short “buffalo grass,”
growing but an inch or two high. It is fine and mossy in texture and
of a gray-green in color, and when the land is clothed with it the
traveler looks out on a gray-green expanse that widens before him
like a limitless carpet.
Here and there a few “groves,” or patches of mesquite, a bush of the
size of a small peach tree, broke the otherwise illimitable sweep of
the eye.
Besides these breaks of mesquite there were, as the scouts knew,
innumerable swales and “draws.” These were low land, some being
grassy depressions but a few yards in diameter, others of much
greater extent. In addition, and resembling them, were the old
“buffalo wallows,” depressions which the buffaloes had gouged out
with their heads and horns in the rainy seasons in their efforts to
rid themselves of mosquitoes and other insects.
The two scouts and their young companion sat quietly on their horses
and saw the sun rise out of this grassy sea like a ball of red fire.
It was truly a glorious sight.
“Nothing down Panhandle way,” said Wild Bill, as he looked southward
into Texas--that portion of Texas known as the “Panhandle.”
“And nothing over toward No Man’s Land,” said Buffalo Bill.
“No Man’s Land,” it may be said, is that extension of the Indian
Territory stretching between the Panhandle of Texas and western
Kansas. It was formerly a possession of the Cherokee Indians, and was
called the “Cherokee Outlet,” or “The Neutral Strip.” Over it the
Cherokees were privileged to pass from their reservation eastward to
the hunting grounds of the West. In later years, being a neglected
and forsaken country, with little pretensions to an exercise of legal
authority, it became the resort of desperadoes of all sorts and
degrees, and was known as “No Man’s Land.” In it were a few towns
with no recognized legal standing, some cattle companies that were
really lawbreakers by being there, and certain Indians herded on
reservations. To these must be added outlaws and “bad men” generally
of the kind that infested the frontier.
But when Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill looked out on its peaceful
surface that morning, with the red sun rising in the east as if it
were a disk of red gold which some giant hand was pushing up out of
the ground, there was nowhere a suggestion of anything unlawful, of
any bloodshed, or red ruins of the border.
Not an outlaw, not an Indian, not a soldier, was in sight; nothing
was visible except the three horsemen, who sat their horses as if
they were carved images and who looked, with their horses, like
figures in bronze, as the gold of the sunlight fell on them.
“Nothing anywhere,” said Stevens, struggling inwardly with despair
and suspense.
He was a handsome fellow, this young cowboy, with tanned face, clear,
flashing blue eyes, muscular body, and broad shoulders, with thick
brown hair curling under his wide-brimmed hat. He was such a man as a
woman would quickly learn to love.
“Nothing anywhere in sight, anyhow,” said Wild Bill; “but that don’t
prove that there ain’t any number of redskins, or outlaws, or maybe
peaceful folk, within no more than a mile of us, hiding in some of
the hollows and draws.”
As if to show that this region was not wholly devoid of life, at
that moment a band of antelopes broke from a ravine less than a mile
away and went gamboling over the short grass, furnishing as pretty
a picture as the eye could wish to see. The white patches on their
flanks glistened in the sunlight.
“No, Injuns, or other kind of cattle, over there,” commented Wild
Bill, when he saw them. “Or, if there are, they’re lying too still
for the antelopes to see them.”
The antelopes swept on across the level land and disappeared in
another depression a mile or more away.
“The thing we’ll have to do is to separate and look for the trail,”
said Buffalo Bill. “We can cover a good deal of country in a couple
of hours, and then we can come together and compare notes.” He
glanced around again. “You see the mesquite grove straight ahead,
with the tall mesquite growing in the center of it like a sentinel?
What do you say for that as our rendezvous?”
“Good enough!” assented Wild Bill. “We’ll meet there in two hours and
compare notes.”
“And if we strike the trail, either of us, let a pistol shot announce
the fact,” said Stevens; “and then the others can join him.”
He was anxious to be in motion again--to be doing something. His
haggard face told how he had suffered mentally during the night.
When this was agreed to, the three separated, riding in different
directions, each with eyes on the ground, searching for the lost
trail.
It was plain that Barlow, in his flight, had not stuck to the
direction he had taken in setting out, yet it was likely, or
possible, that he had merely deviated from a direct line to baffle
pursuit, and was really keeping on in the same general direction.
An hour after this separation Buffalo Bill heard a distant shot.
“The signal!” he said. “And it’s from Hickok. He has struck the
trail.”
When he looked in the direction from which the sound had come a blue,
sealike expanse seemed to float before him.
They had been numerous, those lakelike illusions, and he knew what
they were--the deceptive mirage of the dry lands of the high plains.
That blue “sea,” and a sort of heatlike shimmer that hovered above
it, made it impossible now for him to see a mile in the direction
of the shot, whereas before those deceptive things appeared the eye
could range to the very limit of vision. While trying to look through
that blue illusion he fancied he heard the distant trampling of hoofs.
Instantly he dropped from the saddle to the ground and laid an ear
against the turf, to aid his hearing.
A confused trampling of hoofs reached him now, and he thought he
heard a yell, followed by another shot, and then a volley.
Lying prone on the ground, the scout looked again across the sealike
levels of grass. Then he beheld something that almost frightened him.
In the sky over that level grass land the picture of a tragedy was
thrown by that strange refractive power of light which produces the
mirage. The sky for the moment had been changed to a mirror there,
and in that mirror was shown a scene that was being enacted on the
ground below.
A number of Indians were rushing on a white man. He had evidently
fired the cartridges out of his revolver and stood now at bay. The
Indians, who were Cheyennes, judging by their general appearance,
rushed upon the man with knives and struck him down.
Buffalo Bill stared, helpless, fascinated, by that terrible scene.
“It is Wild Bill!” he groaned; “and they have killed him!”
Buffalo Bill knew that he was looking at a scene in a mirage, yet he
knew as well that the mirage pictured something that was happening at
the moment. He knew, too, that he was too far from it to be of any
immediate help to his old friend. Yet he jumped up from the ground
and leaped to the back of his horse. Whether there were ten or a
hundred of the red devils, he was going to the aid of Wild Bill.
He drove his heels into the flanks of the horse and sent it on
with great bounds that bore it over the level land with almost the
fleetness of the wind.
Where Ben Stevens was at the moment he did not know and had not time
to inquire. All he knew was that ahead of him somewhere Wild Bill was
in peril of his life, if not dead.
The blue heatlike shimmer before him still held up its concealing
veil, and the lakelike illusion still continued.
It was as if he were galloping toward a wide reach of smoky blue
water, yet this “water” fled ever before him as he galloped on.
He knew he could never come up with it, for it was of that miragy
character which has more than once lured thirsty travelers to death,
as they followed the blue vision, in the belief that it was a lake
of real water.
Mile after mile, until three were cast behind the hoofs of his horse,
did the scout ride on in that wild way; the mirage changing its
appearance constantly, so that at one time it seemed a wide lake with
islands, and at other times a stream broken into innumerable rivulets.
Then he rode down into a grassy swale, and there saw trampled grass
showing hoof marks.
He jumped from the saddle and bent over them.
“Just as I thought; Cheyennes!”
He stared about as if he half expected to see a feathered head close
by. He could not see far because of the smoky haze that still lay on
everything.
Soon he remounted, and began to follow that trail.
Two horses, or Indian ponies, had passed along. They were unshod, and
the scout was certain they were Cheyenne ponies. Soon other trails
joined these two.
“Ah, here is where they first saw him!”
Other hoof marks had come in there; after which there were evidences
that all of the ponies had started in a sudden burst of speed.
To the experienced eye of Buffalo Bill this was as plain as the print
in a primer. The Cheyennes had here seen Wild Bill and had charged on
him.
A few hundred yards beyond, the scout came to the scene of the
fight--the scene he had seen pictured so clearly in the sky mirror.
He looked the ground over.
“Here is where he made his stand,” he said, “for here are the empty
cartridge shells from his revolver; and here is where they rushed
on him, and captured or killed him. It was hot work; for here are
bloodstains, and indications that somebody was killed, and perhaps
more than one. Of course, the Cheyennes would carry away their dead
and wounded. And it will go hard with Hickok, for I guess he wiped
out one or more of them.”
He followed along, reading the signs, plain as print to one as
skilled as he.
“Here I think they set him on a horse, for the hoof marks of this
pony begin right here to sink deeper into the ground, showing that an
extra weight was put on its back. Yes, they tied him here, for here
are the ends of rawhide cut from the thongs they put on him.”
The great scout and trailer stood up, his face brighter and more
hopeful. He had feared that soon he would behold Wild Bill’s dead
body.
“That proves that he wasn’t killed, and also shows that he was not
so badly injured but that they thought they must tie him. Hickok
forever! It’s hard to down you, old pard of mine!”
Buffalo Bill’s voice thrilled with the pride he felt in the ability
and achievements of his old and true friend of the border.
“Yes, and they went in that direction. This is a body of a young
Cheyenne buck, I judge, which is proof that they belong to the
desperate young herd that broke away from the reservation. They are
not returning to the reservation, though, but are heading toward the
southwest. What does that mean? What is in that direction?”
He followed the trail, keen-eyed and wary, leading his horse by its
bridle. He had no way of knowing but that Cheyennes, eager for his
blood, awaited him in some grassy hollow, and would shoot him when he
came in range, or jump out upon him unawares and tomahawk him. He was
taking no more chances than he was forced to. Yet he kept straight
on, dragging at the reins of his horse and keeping his eyes on the
trail, spelling out its meaning as he advanced.
Looking ahead, he saw that the blue mirages were disappearing; the
advance of the sun into the higher sky was driving them away.
“The Cheyennes will have me in sight soon, if they’re near; and
they’re not so very far, that’s sure!”
He came to a hollow. Fortunately it was two or three feet deep, and
before it grew some mesquite bushes.
He stopped in this hollow, and there picketed his horse with his
lariat, driving an iron pin into the ground with his boot heel, and
attaching to the pin the lariat end.
He had no more than done so when the blue mirage vanished.
It was a singular thing. A fog lifts or falls slowly, and does not
disappear for some time. But this was almost uncanny in the quickness
with which it disappeared. At one time the blue sea of the mirage lay
before him, with the shimmery-heat appearance above its surface. Five
minutes later it was not there. It had not gone anywhere--neither up
nor down--but it simply was no more to be seen. Where that blue sea,
or lake, had seemed to be, stretched now the level grasslands, just
as in the earlier hours of the morning, when the rising sun shone on
them, and the eye could penetrate now to the limits of the horizon.
Buffalo Bill ducked behind the screen of the mesquite bushes, and he
was glad he had taken the precaution to conceal his horse. For there,
two or three miles away, was a band of mounted Indians.
The sun glistened on the tips of their spears and tomahawks, and
glittered on their gun barrels. Feathers floated from the manes and
tails of their ponies, and feathers floated from the plumed headgear
of the warriors.
The scout unslung the field glass he usually carried, and leveled
it, lying again prone in the grass and looking out from behind the
mesquite.
The powerful glass drew the Indians well within range of his eyes.
“Yes, Cheyennes,” he said, “and young bucks from the reservation; and
they’ve got Hickok, more’s the pity! Those young rascals are out for
scalps and plunder. When they get ‘good’ again, they’ll hurry back to
the reservation, slip in some dark night, and swear that they have
never been away from it a minute.”
Wild Bill rode upright and seemed not to be seriously hurt, as
Buffalo Bill was glad to observe.
Buffalo Bill even fancied that with the glass he could see the proud
and defiant look that he knew was on the face of Wild Bill.
The Cheyennes saw neither Buffalo Bill nor his horse.
The scout swept the surrounding country with the glass, looking for
Ben Stevens, but saw nothing of him; those Indians were the only
things moving, or visible.
“Perhaps he has seen them and has got under cover, just as I have,”
was Buffalo Bill’s thought. He knew that Stevens, as a cowboy, was
not inexperienced. He was a good borderman and understood Indian
ways, and what to do in emergencies. The cowboy life makes one quick
of thought, and it does not breed weaklings.
Buffalo Bill lay behind the screen of the mesquite, watching the
young Cheyennes until they were out of sight. He saw that they were
heading steadily toward the Southwest, and that they were hurrying.
Apparently they feared a pursuit of troopers from the fort; and for
that reason, though they probably knew that Wild Bill was not the
only white man out on those level grasslands, they feared to tarry or
go after those others.
The troops of the government inspired a good deal of fear and respect
in the minds of the Indians, and not even bloodthirsty young bucks,
who usually were ready for any deviltry or bloodshed, cared to meet
them.
“Heading straight southwest. Oh, yes, there is another band of
Cheyennes on the border of the Territory of New Mexico! Perhaps they
are intending to join them. The thing is likely. And then they’ll
stir up trouble on that border. I wish I could get word of this to
the fort.”
The important thing now was to follow the trail of the Cheyennes and
see what could be done to effect the rescue of Wild Bill. Yet Buffalo
Bill knew that it would but jeopardize the chances if he began an
open pursuit, or showed himself so that the Cheyennes would see him.
Nevertheless, it was tedious and wearing work to lie there and see
those young Indians riding out of sight with his old friend.
“I’ll have to meet Stevens at the agreed rendezvous, and then
together we’ll strike the Cheyenne trail and hold it until we do
something. Or if he won’t go on, I’ll have to go alone. But there’s
that rascally lieutenant and the girl to find. If I were about a
dozen men just now I think I wouldn’t be too many for the need.”
The Cheyennes were now out of sight behind a roll in the land, and
the scout drew the picket pin, and mounting, set out for the point
where the three friends had promised to meet.
He set the horse at a sharp gallop, for he was anxious to follow the
Cheyennes.
“If he isn’t there I’ll leave written word for him, so posted that he
can’t fail to see it when he comes, and then I’ll push on after the
Indians,” was his conclusion, as he thus rode forth.