DROPPING THE MASK.
While Dave Farrell was deploying his forces for an attack upon the pass,
he heard behind him the rattle of advancing hoofs, and quickly drew his
men back into the shelter of the trees, for it might be an enemy. But,
to his delight, the first man who rode out of the pass was Whirlwind,
the Blackfoot, and behind him a hundred picked men of his nation. They
had followed the outlaws after the repulse at the trapper camp, and
attacked their rear, but they had taken shelter in one of the passes and
had driven the Indians back. But, hearing the sound of the combat,
Whirlwind, who was on his way to join his forces with those of Dave
Farrell, at once turned back and now came on eager for the fray.
The reinforcement was needed, for the trappers were somewhat worn by the
battles and skirmishes of the day. Dave rode out to meet the chief and
greeted him warmly.
“My brother has fought well,” said the warrior, reproachfully; “but, why
did he not wait for the Blackfeet, who seek revenge upon the Modoc Sioux
and their friends?”
“We did not know where you were, chief,” replied Dave; “but we’ll give
you fighting enough before we have done with this business, that I tell
you. There is the enemy, but if you join us, you must fight as I tell
you.”
“Whirlwind is not ashamed to fight under the Beaver Captain,” replied
the chief. “He will listen to the words of wisdom.”
“Dismount your men and picket the horses here behind the woods. Five men
will do to guard them.”
The order was promptly obeyed, and the Blackfeet advanced on foot. They
were an active-looking, stalwart body of men, and Dave was delighted
with their appearance.
“We are here,” cried Whirlwind. “Let the Beaver Captain tell us what to
do, and we are ready.”
“Good!” replied Dave, adopting the laconic manner of the Indians.
“Remember that Short Legs is a prisoner among our enemies, and be
careful to do him no harm. Speak to your men and tell them this.”
The chief did so, and then drawing him aside, Dave gave him instructions
how to proceed. His plan was to separate the Indians and send them up
the hills to drive out the two parties detached by Rafe Norris to guard
the flanks of his forces, and then assail them from the cliff, while the
trappers attacked the front.
The Indian, pleased with the duty assigned him, quickly separated his
men, placing one half under the command of a man whom he could trust,
and then, keeping under cover of the strip of woods, marched to the
right and left until they reached the confines of the valley, and began
to steal up through the dark defiles, climbing from rock to rock, toward
the place where the flanking-parties lay.
It was some time before these men understood the movement, but when they
did so, every thing was done which men could do to make their position
good. But the savages, sheltering themselves in every conceivable way,
gradually closed in until scarcely a hundred yards separated them, when
they rose from the cover and rushed in with hatchet and knife to do the
work assigned them. A desperate struggle followed, hand to hand and foot
to foot; but numbers triumphed, and of the twenty-two men who had been
appointed to guard the flanks, only eight, and three of these wounded,
reached the level where their comrades stood.
These had their hands full, for the trappers were advancing, firing as
they ran, and a large party had already effected a lodgment among the
scattered bowlders which lay about the mouth of the pass, while the
Blackfeet were raining down every possible missile on the heads of the
astounded British.
The Sioux, unable to stand the attack, were falling back in confusion,
with great loss, and the whites opened to permit them to pass through,
while they closed in sullenly to cover the retreat. Sadly thinned in
numbers, the band showed a gallant front still, and walked calmly back,
pausing now and then to take a shot at the Blackfeet on the rocks, who
showed themselves at times, shaking the scalps they had taken in the
air, and waking the echoes with their shouts of triumph.
“Look hyar; some one is going to git hurt if this goes on. You’d better
let me loose,” Old Pegs said.
“I’ll see you skulped first,” roared Jim Diggs.
“Good-by, then,” replied Old Pegs, tauntingly, as he flung himself out
of the saddle suddenly and sprung into a deep fissure which ran close
beside the road. “I’m off!”
“Shoot him, durn ye, shoot!” yelled Diggs, as he emptied his revolver
into the fissure up which the old hunter was climbing, his form scarcely
distinguishable. A volley rattled upward and Old Pegs who had reached a
ledge at least twenty feet above them threw up his hands and fell upon
the ledge out of sight.
“Done fur!” said Jim, coolly. “He _would_ hev it, ye see. Jump up thar,
Boston Jake, and lift his ha’r.”
The man was about to obey, but at this moment the trappers burst in upon
them and Boston Jake was forced to go with the rest, and in some haste,
for the bullets of the trappers, “deadly aimed and hot,” rattled through
the crowded ranks. The slow retreat turned almost to a rout, long before
they reached the mouth of the ravine, but at this moment, wild eyed and
savage, Rafe Norris broke a way through the ranks of his own men and
reached the front.
“Turn, curse you, turn!” he screamed, striking one of his own men a
furious blow which brought him to the ground. “Turn, cowards and dogs!
Never let it be said that you fled from such as these.”
There was certainly personal magnetism about this man, for those who
were to all outward seeming beaten beyond recall, turned at his
slightest word and for a moment bore back the rushing tide of the
trappers. But the Blackfeet, creeping from ledge to ledge, again reached
a place from which they could rain destruction on the heads of their
enemies, who were again forced to retire, but sullenly, contesting every
foot of ground.
“That cursed Blackfoot has ruined us, Jim,” groaned Rafe, looking up at
the cliffs. “But for him they never could have broken through.”
“The boys fought like devils, I tell ye,” said Jim Diggs. “Oh, I forgot
to tell ye thet ‘Old Pegs’ tried to leg it and we had to pop him over.”
“Let him go,” replied Rafe, quietly. “If it had been Dave Farrell I
would have felt better, and yet the old man has done me wrong. Look
out!”
A great rock hurled from the hand of Whirlwind, struck Jim Diggs on the
head and brought him to the earth with a hollow groan, while a wild
triumphant yell pealed up from the throat of Whirlwind as he noted the
result of the throw. The last and most unscrupulous of the lieutenants
of Rafe Norris had gone to his last home. Rafe shook his clenched hand
at the Indians on the cliff, and ordered his men to fall back to the
mouth of the pass which opened into the Spirit Spring Valley, resolved
to hold it to the last.
The Modoc Sioux, greatly thinned by the battles of the last two weeks,
sullenly took their stations behind the bowlders, ready to die in their
tracks if need be. The whites looked over their cartridges, saw to it
that every weapon was in order, and stood ready to obey the commands of
their chief.
“I’d like to revenge myself on them, boys,” hissed Rafe Norris. “If it
did not look like deserting you, I have a way yet if it would suit you.”
“Let’s hear it, Cap,” said Boston Jake. “We’ll do any thing for you.”
“I don’t doubt it, Jake. Come with me and I’ll tell you my plan.”
The two stood in close conference for a moment and then Jake passed to
and fro among the men, telling them what the captain meant to do and
they agreed to it at once. Then leaving them to keep off the forces of
Dave Farrell as long as possible, Norris stepped hastily to the side of
Myrtle.
“Come, my darling,” he said, mockingly. “It is time that we were on the
way.”
“I am not going anywhere with you,” was the answer.
“Really, you do yourself wrong by such conduct as this. You _are_ going
somewhere with me and at once.”
“I will not.”
“I have no time to waste. Will you go with me quietly or shall I call
some of the Indians to carry you? They are not very courteous knights,
and perhaps—”
“I will go with you,” she said, quickly, “but woe to you if you cherish
any evil thought against me, for with the first weapon I can reach I
will kill you.”
He made no answer but took her hand and led her at a rapid pace up the
little valley until he reached the south end. Two Indians bearing a
number of new lariats accompanied them and they stopped at the base of
the almost perpendicular cliff and began to climb like cats until they
reached a ledge fifty feet above the bottom of the canon. Then they sent
down the ends of a doubled lariat which was formed into a sort of chair
at the bottom, and at a sign from Rafe, Myrtle took her place in it and
was raised to the ledge above. The rope was lowered again and Rafe came
up, hand over hand, and reached the ledge panting for breath. The
Indians slid down the lariats, which Rafe flung down to them and the two
departed, leaving Rafe and Myrtle standing on the ledge.
“It will trouble your good friends to follow us here,” said Rafe,
laughing. “Capital scouts they may be but I doubt if they could track us
up this cliff.”
“You will find it hard to deceive my father,” she replied, “if he once
takes your trail.”
“I don’t think he will trouble me any more,” replied Rafe, with a grim
smile, turning away his head. “Your father was a plucky and keen-witted
man, but it is out of his power to harm me now.”
“Have you murdered him?” she gasped, looking at him wildly.
“I am not a murderer,” was the calm answer. “He tried to escape from my
men while I was basking in the sunlight of your smiles, and got hit.
That is all I know about it.”
“I will remember how it was done,” cried Myrtle, with a lurid gleam in
her beautiful eyes. “But I will speak to you no more until the time
comes for you to die.”
He took her hand again and led her by wild paths across the mountain,
until she was nearly ready to sink from fatigue. Through all this, he
had shown a certain chivalrous care of her which was hardly to be looked
for after all that had happened. When he saw that she was tired, he
stopped and pulled moss from the rocks, which he spread to make her a
couch.
“Do not fear me,” he said, as she seemed to shrink from his touch. “I
would not do you a wrong, for I worship the ground your feet have trod.”
“It may be so,” she said, quietly. “Let us say that you really love me,
then. But, do you not take a strange way of showing it?”
“I will change all that,” he cried. “Look you, Myrtle Forrester—you
start at the name, do you?—I will show you that I know more of you than
you suppose. On the fourteenth of June, twelve years ago, a train was
run into by Sioux on the plain toward the Three Buttes. It was supposed
that every person was killed, but as it turned out, an old prairie-man,
known as Old Pegs, was some miles from camp, having in charge a child
six years of age, the daughter of an Indian agent named Forrester, who
was going to Bent’s Fort. These two were all who escaped, and Old Pegs
came back to find the camp in ruins, and every man and woman killed and
scalped.”
“You know all this? Will you tell me how it came to _your_ knowledge?”
“No matter; I know that it is true, and so do you. Forrester was not
quite dead, and after leaving his daughter to the care of Old Pegs, with
an injunction to guard her as his life, Forrester died. Old Pegs kept
his word, and Myrtle Forrester is now my prisoner, and destined soon to
be my wife.”
“You dare not say that my brave guardian did not keep his promise well,”
cried Myrtle. “No father could be more tender or true than he has been
to me, and I can not bring myself to think that he has been foully
murdered.”
“You still cling to that word, Myrtle. If I had been his prisoner, and
had attempted to escape, he would not have hesitated to fire at me.”
“Doubtless you are right,” she said; “but I shall not pardon you for
that. Why have you told my story to me here?”
“That you may know that I am not entirely unacquainted with your
history, and that I knew who and where you were before I came to the
Indian country. Myrtle, I came to find you and win your love!”
“You came here for that!” she cried, with dilating eyes, “Who and what
are you, then?”
“Rafe Norris, at your service! Curly-headed Ned, so called at the forts
upon Hudson Bay; and Edward Forrester within the realms of civilization.
But come—have you rested enough?”
She rose at once and followed him, but the name which he had given last
troubled her. “Curly-headed Ned” she knew by report, as a chief over one
section of the Modoc Sioux, and a man whose name was stained by a
hundred crimes. But, why did he lay claim to the name of Forrester?
“I see that you are puzzled,” he said, with a smile. “I am afraid that
you doubt that the name of Forrester is really mine. Is it not so?”
“I can not see why you claim it.”
“Because it is my right name. I have the honor to be your cousin, my
dear girl, and this will in some sort account for the affection which I
bear you.”
“You claim kindred with me, and yet seek to wrong me in the basest
manner. There—I believe that it is all false, and— Where are you taking
me? I have been in this pass before.”
He smiled in a superior sort of way, and turning a sharp angle, stepped
suddenly into the path down which she had forced Velveteens on the day
when she made him prisoner. Her captor was taking her to her former
home! A great fear came into her heart, for she knew that he would not
dare to bring her to the cabin of Old Pegs unless that brave man had
ceased to breathe.