THE BLACKFOOT TRAILERS.
Under cover of the screening trees, Buffalo Bill and old Nomad
watched the cañon and stream, while they talked of the threatened
Blackfoot war, and of their individual experiences since they had
last been together.
“It warn’t Blackfeet we war up ag’inst last time together, Buffler,
but road agents. Pool Clayton was with us then, you recomember? D’yer
think he’ll be in this hyar neighborhood soon?”
“I’m not expecting him this time.”
Buffalo Bill told his old mountain pard, however, that Pawnee Bill,
the famous dead shot, was to have joined him in the town below, but
had missed him there, and would no doubt follow.
“It’s just possible,” he had stated, “that he went round by way of
the Ferguson Trail, and, if so, he may have gained these hills in
advance of my coming; yet I think he is behind me.”
As the two friends talked thus, Buffalo Bill laid his hand with a
quick, firm motion on Nomad’s arm. Reaching out with the other hand,
he took his horse by the nose.
“Hist!” came from his lips.
Nomad understood, glanced at the stream, and patted the nose of old
Nebuchadnezzar to keep him still.
A Blackfoot warrior had come in sight on the other side of the
little cañon river. He was naked, save for a breechclout, and his
copper-colored body was smeared and striped with paint. He carried
a long rifle, and a knife, and hatchet. In his raven hair eagle
feathers fluttered, proclaiming him not only a warrior, but, with the
abundant paint, announcing that he was on the warpath.
He had come downstream, and he was scanning the river and its shores,
and the cañon walls, together with the wider expanses where the
little groves of trees were. But most he gave his attention to the
banks of the stream at the water’s edge.
It was plain to the experienced bordermen that if he had not tracked
the white men to the cañon and the river, he at least suspected they
had gone there, and he was looking for the point where they had
emerged. His presence was proof that other Blackfeet were near, and
no doubt a strong war party. They had chased old Nomad, and were
ready for scalps and plunder.
The concealed friends and their horses stood motionless, as the
Indian stepped with light feet along the farther shore of the little
river.
He was a magnificent specimen of the American Indian; lithe, as well
as muscular, his body straight as an arrow, his limbs sinewy, yet so
gracefully and evenly developed that they would have done as models
for a sculptor or a painter. Buffalo Bill looked at the Blackfoot
with admiration, regarding him at the moment merely as a fine
specimen of Indian manhood, forgetting in that momentary enthusiasm
what his appearance there meant, and what was denoted by the paint
and the floating feathers.
The Indian stared hard at the trees which concealed the scout
and the trapper. He neither saw nor heard anything there. On the
ground between the river and the grove there was not so much as an
indentation in the soil to suggest that horses had passed that way.
“Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye!” Nomad whispered to his horse; for
Nebby’s ears were pricked up and his big eyes were staring. Indians
frightened him, for which Nomad was responsible, for he had taught
the old horse to fear them.
“Nebby is better’n any watchdog,” was Nomad’s boast. “No Injun kin
come nigh him without him makin’ a hullabaloo.”
This tendency to make a “hullabaloo” when he saw an Indian had its
disadvantages at times, as at present; yet the whispered adjurations
of old Nomad, and the touch of his hand, kept the horse quiet as the
Blackfoot passed along. As for the scout’s horse, though it had not
Nebby’s peculiar tendency, there was, nevertheless, danger that it
would make a noise of some kind, hence the scout kept his hand on its
nose.
After staring hard at the grove, and scanning the soil by the stream,
the Blackfoot went on, and soon he was lost to sight in a bend of the
cañon.
“A close shave!” said the scout.
“And a healthy one fer thet red nigger, Buffler,” said Nomad
meaningly. “I’d hate fer him to ’a’ smelt us out hyar, fer then I’d
had to shot him. And that would ’a’ made a tarnal noise, too.”
“Yes; we’d have been in for a fight.”
“Thar’s more of ’em about, Buffler.”
“They may be a good deal scattered, though; so we may see only this
fellow.”
“I’m hopin’ it, Buffler.”
They saw another, in a very few seconds, on their side of the stream.
He was armed and painted like the one who had just disappeared, but
he was not so tall and handsome. His body was shorter and thicker,
his arms longer, his sheer physical strength greater. He could not
have run like the one who had just gone on, but in a rough-and-tumble
fight he would have been an enemy more to be feared.
He not only looked at the grove where the white men were hidden with
their horses, but he walked a few yards toward it, looking carefully
at the ground.
Once or twice he stooped down and inspected the grass; and the scout
and trapper thought then he had seen some faint indentations in the
soil, and guessed of the trick that had been played. But the redskin
retraced his way to the river, and went on, searching its shores.
“Phew, Buffler! I thought it war fight, shore thing, then!”
“I, too.”
“I reckon we’re safe hyar, unless they come back and take a notion to
look behind these trees. If they does it, thar will be dead Injuns,
and fun immediately afterward.”
The Blackfeet did not return. An hour passed, and then another, and
nothing was seen or heard; but Cody and Nomad could not be sure
that sharp eyes were not watching the cañon from some cliff or cañon
precipice; hence they remained concealed in the grove, keeping the
horses as quiet as possible, and talking only in low tones.
Not until darkness came did they venture to leave their secure
retreat. Even then they moved with the utmost caution, leading the
horses instead of riding them, and progressing so slowly that hours
elapsed before they came out into the open country below. There the
land lay broad and free before them, and the stars pointed the way.
Yet they did not ride toward the town. Instead, they turned back into
the hills; for the discovery that the Blackfeet had taken the warpath
under Crazy Snake made the scout fearful for the safety of a family
he knew, who lived just under the shadows of the big hills.