“If I could steal back and get the drop on you, Midnight Jack! No! that
would not be fair after my word. He forced it from me—curse my stupid
ears that would not hear his steps! Why not go back—down into the
village and call him out? My word—ay, that's it. Golden George keeps
that!”
A moment later the hillock was deserted.
“I will go away. To-morrow is the sun-dance. Tanglefoot will tear the
mask off from Midnight Jack. I will wait for that event then Golden
George will go back.”
Not far from the hill the speaker came suddenly upon a lithe-limbed
horse, secured by a leathern tether to a young cottonwood. The cord
permitted the steed to pick at the sparse herbage that grew about the
roots of the tree, and a light whinny greeted the Sport.
From among the low hanging limbs of the cottonwood the Sport drew a
light saddle, which he speedily adjusted to the horse's back, and sprung
into the leathern seat.
“I don't like this Indian guise,” he said, vexatiously. “I'm not at home
in it, and then Golden George is not obliged to wear it in Sioux land,
anyway.”
As Golden George rode from the spot where he had found his horse, he
threw off the rough cavalry jacket which fitted his body, and drew a
soft hat from his bosom; then a little water from the canteen that was
hidden by one of the skirts of the saddle, removed the colouring from
face and hands, and as he passed the belt of timber and emerged upon a
little open country, lit up by the rising moon, he was Golden George,
the Sport, not the mock Indian of the Sioux town.
“Hist!”
The horse stopped suddenly, and threw his slender ears erect.
“A horn, by my life!” ejaculated the Sport, a look of surprise in his
eyes. “It sounds like a military bugle; but there are no troops in these
parts. I'm near no Government station. They have wild stories about
Deadwood, that the ghost of Custer's bugler haunts this Indian land; but
that's all bosh—old women's twaddle. A horn it is—not a trumpet—there it
goes again! Ghost or not, that trumpet belongs to some regiment.”
Still puzzled, but determined to solve the mystery, the Sport galloped
ahead again, crossed the valley, penetrated the timber, and saw the
moonlight on the waves of the swift little river that rushed toward the
broad bosom of the Missouri.
He turned his horse's head up the stream to whose bank he had ridden,
and the animal was already obeying the pressure of the spurs, when
Golden George suddenly drew rein.
Another moment and he was on the ground, holding in his hand a beautiful
silver bugle on whose shining surface could be seen the inscription,
“Seventh Cavalry, U. S. A.” The mystified look in the Sport's eyes was
complete.
“I'll blow a blast,” he thought. “Maybe it will bring the ghost back.”
Then a musical call, weird but beautiful, came from the mouth of the
historic bugle, and Golden George listened with a smile at the echoes
that came back from the wood.
But another sound accompanied them. It made the Sport snatch the bugle
from his own lips and turn about.
“Here!” came a voice from a spot not far away. “You are white, and to me
you must be a friend. Heaven must have directed you to the trumpet. My
weak hands could hold it no longer.”
Golden George was advancing with rapid strides upon the as yet unseen
speaker, and almost suddenly he came upon a girlish figure.
“I am a friend to the helpless,” he said. “What! a girl, by my life!
Heaven must have guided me hither.”
The next moment they met, and Golden George took the outstretched hands
of the suddenly-discovered one.
“Ah! your face is white!” cried the girl, with joy, as he bore her
toward his horse waiting for him in the moonlight. “I blew with the
faint hope that a friend would hear, and you came. Oh! many thanks for
this deliverance. I am not to go back to the Indian lodges. I have a
protector now. No! I am not an Indian girl. They dyed my skin—they—”
“I know you!” he interrupted, looking down upon her. “You are the little
lady who stole the hearts of the young blue-coats at Fort Sully a few
days ago.”
“Mr. Antill—”
“They call me Golden George beyond the Missouri—I mean west of the
river.”
A cry of despair welled from Dora's heart.
With a powerful effort she started back, but Golden George pounced upon
her like an eagle, and the next moment his eyes were flashing like a
triumphant demon's above her.
But let us to another scene.
Gopher Gid, bewildered by the sudden termination of the sun-dance, found
himself comparatively unnoticed. All eyes were directed upon Midnight
Jack, now known to the boy.
“Back to yer lodge, boy!” said a voice at his ear. “Don't try to git
away of your own accord. We'll be arter ye to-night.”
Gopher did not look into the speaker's face; he recognised the voice of
Rube Rattler, and, saying, “I will trust you,” he glided away, and crept
into the lodge which he had lately left as Timon Moss's prisoner.
The sun went down, the darkness came, and at last a slight noise drew
Gopher to the curtains.
At that moment a dark figure sprung into the lodge, and the little
trapper went down before it. He felt the naked arm of an Indian about
him, and the next moment the wigwam was filled with an unseen, jabbering
crowd.
Resistance was in vain; the boy was overpowered, and almost before he
could recover his scattered thoughts, he found himself dragged
unceremoniously through the street. The figures of his captors, as he
saw them in the starlight, were those of boys of his own age. There were
sixty or more, and their savage delight knew no bounds.
But Gopher Gid saw more than that during that enforced journey. For each
boy there seemed at least two dogs. There were canines of all species,
sizes and conditions—the mangy cur, the gaunt bull-hound, the
deer-slayer. They resembled a pack of wolves, leaping over one another,
snapping, snarling, and actually biting, all the time making night
hideous with their yelps. Gopher Gid was hurried toward a fate which
Indian ingenuity had devised.
On, on went the Indian torture-boys with their helpless victim. Two of
the stoutest—real little athletes—griped the young trapper's arms, and
at a rapid pace he was jerked over logs and rattled across the open
space, until at last the torture-band came to a halt.
In the midst of the boy's conjectures as to the fate in store for him,
he was jerked to his feet and lashed to the tree under whose
wide-spreading branches he had been released.
Gopher Gid's arms were left free, but cords secured his legs to the
stately cottonwood.
And the boy laughed grimly, and his eyes flashed with delight, as a long
stick, green and stout, was thrust forward.
“Boy fight the dogs!” said the leader of the torturers in tolerable
English. “If he kill 'em all Indians let 'im go, mebbe. White boy afeard
to meet 'em?”
The crowd drew back, and the boy saw that the largest dogs were now held
in leash with buffalo-cords, a reserve, probably, for the climax of the
torture.
A semicircle was formed before the little trapper, and one of the
scarlet imps suddenly picked up a cur and tossed him at the captive. But
the quiet eyes of the trapper anticipated the dog's destination, and
down came the club while he was yet in mid-air.
“Heaven help me!” cried the little trapper. “What can I do with fifty
bloodthirsty Indian dogs?”
The reserve did not shrink from the combat, but sprung like famished
wolves at the boy. The foremost received a blow that smashed his skull,
and stretched him lifeless among his smaller companions.
Then blow after blow was dealt in rapid succession, the savages pressing
up with their torches and urging on the dogs, which had entered with
glee into the mad conflict.
It was a terrible battle, such as was never seen before in the heart of
Sioux land. With bloodless lips firmly pressed together, and eyes
flashing, but not with anticipated victory, Gopher Gid struggled against
the mad dogs.
Up went that bloody cudgel for the last desperate struggle, but it did
not descend.
Something seemed to have caught it among the branches of the tree.
Astonished, Gopher Gid looked up, and the sight that greeted his eyes
caused him for the nonce to forget the army of dogs that were charging
down upon him to finish the contest.
What did he see?
A naked arm thrust through the foliage from above, and his cudgel griped
by a great white hand!
The stick slipped from his fingers, and hung suspended from that ghostly
hand.
The dogs rushed upon him.
One wolfish animal sprang upon his breast, but he seized the brute by
the throat, and flung him snarling and mad among his companions.
“Back dogs!” suddenly cried the leader of the Sioux youths, in his own
tongue. “White boy's club catch among the limbs. He shall have it to
fight with.”
Gopher Gid did not reply. The battle with the dogs had exhausted him.
There was blood on his hands, his face; and his nether garments were
hanging in threads upon his limbs. The brutality of his captors had
almost extinguished his life. He could but look at the boy who stood
before him, and point to the stick dangling over his head, and still
griped by the spectral hand.
The young savage lifted his eyes, and stared aghast at the apparition.
“The Evil Spirit catch boy's stick! It reaches clear down from the sky!
Look! look, my brothers!”
The remaining youths, full of curiosity, not unmixed with fear, came
forward. Torches blazed for a moment about Gopher Gid, and then
retreated suddenly, their holders uttering cries of terror.
But all did not immediately fly from the Evil Spirit. The leader sprung
forward again, but did not glance at the hand. He now had no dogs to
beat back; the animals were flying with their owners, glad to escape
from the death-dealing club.
The Indian boy leaped to the foot of the tree.
“Wachetoc, the Bad Spirit, cannot set the white boy free,” he said,
showing the knife that glistened in his right hand. “He has fought well;
he shall live, but he must go away.”
Then the knife cut the cords that bound the boy's legs to the
cottonwood, and as he tottered forward like a drunken man, the
liberator, with a horrified glance at the ghostly hand overhead,
snatched up his torch and ran away.
“I am free!” exclaimed Gopher Gid. “The hole in the hill shall see me
yet. That devilish hand has saved me. Now if Midnight Jack and Rube were
here! Hark! what was that?—the club has fallen down!”
“It is Tanglefoot's hand!” he suddenly cried.
Eager to set his doubts at rest, Gopher Gid stood on tiptoe, but could
scarcely touch the fingers. He then drew the carcasses of several of the
dogs out of the fallen brutes to the spot, and mounted the pile with
better success.
But the next moment a piercing cry welled from his throat, and starting
back he slipped from the carcass to find himself hanging in mid-air,
caught in the strongest of man-traps. His touch had quickened the
hanging hand into life, and before he could withdraw his fingers he was
in the power of the ghastly trap.
The fingers are getting cold. Is Tanglefoot really dead?
“I will end this!” he cried. “If I cannot pull my dead foe down, I will
climb up to him. Who ever was caught by a dead man before?”
He swung himself against the tree, then he caught a limb with his only
free hand and drew his body over it. But the other wrist was still
griped by the deadly fingers!
The bloated but white face of Timon Moss was turned to the little
trapper. His revolver was still stuck in his belt, and it was soon in
Gopher Gid's hands. He leaned over the hand that grasped his wrist, and
thrust the muzzle of the revolver against the lifeless pulse and touched
the trigger. There came a flash, a dull report, and the boy jerked his
hand loose!
“Goodbye, Tanglefoot, forever,” he said, as he leaped to the ground.
“Now I'll see the hill again. They are over there in the camp. And
Midnight Jack's sister is yonder—that girl for whom Gopher Gid would
risk his life if he has never seen her!”
A moment later the boy was gliding from the scene of his exciting
adventures; but he ceased abruptly, for not twenty feet away an Indian
was drinking from a spring that bubbled from the ground. Gopher Gid
cocked the revolver in his hand, to see the savage leap to his feet and
seize a repeating rifle.
“Setting Sun!” ejaculated the little trapper, and then he touched the
trigger, but the hammer fell with a sharp click upon the empty
cartridge.
“I'll try again,” said Gopher—and then came the clear, ringing report of
a rifle, which awoke the echoes of the romantic little valley.
Setting Sun's rifle was dashed from his grasp, and the chief sprung back
with a tigerish cry of rage. In his right hand he held a knife, whose
long blade glittered in the light of the moon.
It was Midnight Jack who had come thus timely upon the scene, and the
Sioux chief recognised him and made a singular motion with his left
hand, which caused a halt.
“By the gold of Ophir!” was the response. “You don't mean it?”
The sign was repeated, and Gopher Gid stood amazed to see the two men
shaking hands on the spot where he hoped to have seen Setting Sun fall
in the agonies of death.
The chief and Midnight Jack drew aside, and left Gopher alone, but he
saw Setting Sun's hand point to the south-east, and heard him say—
“She will be found there; that road is the broadest to her.”
Midnight Jack then approached the boy, and told him they had met a
friend, and that he now knew the trail that would lead to his sister.
Armed with his favourite revolvers, which ingenuity had lately returned
to him in the Sioux camp, he glided toward a rocky hill, and soon passed
from Gopher Gid's vision. The sudden cracking of firearms roused his
mettle, and snatching from his belt old Tanglefoot's pistol, which the
road-agent had filled with loaded cartridges, our young white brave
bounded forward to the assistance of his friend.
But Midnight Jack did not need help. He stood erect upon a boulder,
pistol in each outstretched hand, fire in his eye, and below him the
bodies of three Indians. Here Rube rode up, saying—
“We heard yer shots and hurried up. Yonder ar the hosses, but we hed a
time. Thar war wolves around the corral, and Injuns, too.”
Rube was surprised to see Gopher, but led the couple to three
strong-limbed horses, whose rope halters were held by a young Indian.
The quartette were speedily mounted, Gopher Gid being seated behind
Mouseskin, the Indian boy, who, for fear of being denounced as the
slayer of Feel-the-Sky, had united his fortunes with those of our
friends, and was leaving the Indian village—never to return? We shall
see.
All at once a strange sound fell upon the ears of all.
“The horn!” exclaimed Rube. “There it goes again! Look! the red imp is
goin' to run off. He's mad! crazy! bewitched! Catch 'im Mid—thar! he's
gone!”
The Screamin' Eagle had spoken truly, for the young Sioux, with one
sweep of his right arm had flung Gopher Gid to the ground, and dashed in
the direction from which the bugle-blast had proceeded.
It was near the close of the day that followed the startling blast from
Custer's bugle, when a handsome white man emerged from a cave in one of
the deep canyons of Sioux land, and looked up at the dark high cliffs.
“Don't I know every foot of this old place,” he murmured. “I've been
here before. The girl's in the best quarters. She's a veritable tigress,
but I'll make a lamb of her before I make her Mrs. Golden George.”
With his mind on Dora, he began to climb the narrow stairway, with a
cocked revolver in his hand. He thought alone of his antagonist of
bygone days, and not of the man who, lying on the ground above, was
waiting for his coming. The dark eyes that looked through a clump of
bushes at the top of the fissure flashed with triumph, as they knew the
man who was slowly ascending. It was Golden George, who saw his enemy
and started back, while his revolver fell from his hand and rolled down
the stony way. There was another at his head—behind it the devilish eye
of Midnight Jack, who seeing the road-agent's pointed revolver, quick as
a flash, he flung his arms up, knocked it aside, and threw his body
back.
A terrible scene followed between the two deadly enemies. Struggling
desperately with each other, they rolled together down the steep ravine,
to the amazement of a brace of persons who suddenly appeared above.
But they soon disappeared from view, for they had grappled like bears,
and had evidently rolled to the bottom. Rube and Gopher, somewhat
surprised at the sudden disappearance of the two, ventured down the
fissures, believing that the antagonists had swept around a bend.
They heard voices inside a stupendous wall a long way down the ravine.
“Are you ready, Golden George?”
“Ready, Midnight Jack.”
For a moment Rube stared at the wall, or rock, with a natural hollow,
like a man bereft of his senses.
“This is the devil's work, Gopher!” he gasped. “How did they get in
thar? How? Why the rock opened and swallowed 'em, and they're goin' to
fight to the death! Think what a fight it will be!”
The boy found himself dragged to the foot of the stony pathway by the
excited hunter, and the next minute the two were ascending.
“Midnight Jack,” said Golden George, who lay on the ground vanquished
and dying, “this tussle has been to the death. Where are you?”
“Here,” and the victor crept forward till he bent over his foe—till he
clasped the hand of the dying man, who feebly said—
“Your sister is in the canyon. Follow the bed westward to the petrified
trunk of a tree. The cave is there. I left her safe.”
All was over.
“He found his own tomb and died in it,” reflected Midnight Jack.
“Goodbye, Golden George! We were bound to fight to the death!”
The road-agent now turned his attention to escape from the cavern, and
all at once he heard a voice.
“This must be the hole, and Screamin' Eagle will drop into it.”
Midnight Jack uttered a cry of delight, and then the friends met!
* * * * *
“Look to the north, Dora. Yonder is Sioux land. Would you go there?”
“Yes, to find the brother I have sought. Jack, if they had killed me—”
“I would not be here within sight of Fort Sully. What did I write on the
wagon which I loaded with dead Indians?—that I would exterminate the
Sioux nation! But you live, Dora. I thank Heaven I had not your death to
avenge! Now farewell forever to the road!”
When Midnight Jack rode boldly into Fort Sully, he was at once put under
arrest by the commandant. But a sweet face, and a sweeter voice, pleaded
for his release, and Jack dared the colonel to point to one loyal
citizen whom he had plundered. Then came the story of the father's
curse—the exile—the stirring scenes we have witnessed in the course of
this narrative, and—the release.
Time has rolled on. The soldier father is dead—Midnight Jack a
prosperous man—and the little trapper's love been rewarded by Dora's
hand.
Rube Rattler is back on the frontier, relating all about the sun-dance.
[THE END.]
_READ_
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PUBLISHED BY
JAMES JACKSON.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in curly
braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.