Buffalo Bill had spoken a truer word than he thought. A great deal may
happen in thirty minutes, and the Border King, as he separated from his
brother scout, was unconsciously approaching a series of startling and
perilous happenings.
The moment the darkness had wiped Judd out of sight the wary scout
turned eastward from the trail. The brush was thick and hung heavy with
the dew of the mountains--and that might as well be rain. Every twig he
touched communicated to its parent branch a shiver that showered him
like a patent bath. He kept the lock of his magazine rifle under his
armpit, pulled down the brim of his sombrero to shield his face, and
walked swiftly on for some few yards. Yet he made wonderfully little
noise.
Having begun to climb rising ground, he here bore off toward the gorge,
or cañon. If Oak Heart had laid an ambush there, the reds would be
hiding in the brush, behind logs, and sheltered by boulders, all along
the sidehills for some hundreds of yards. Buffalo Bill proposed to make
a wide enough détour to get well behind the ambushed foe.
By chance, however, he came suddenly upon a slope of gravel and sand,
and stepped upon it before he realized the shifting nature of the soil.
A stream of small pebbles began rattling down the hill!
Instantly Buffalo Bill learned that his suspicions had been well
founded. The Indians were there.
He heard a startled grunt below him. Then in Sioux a voice asked a
brief question.
“Bear?” returned a second Indian.
There was a sound as though one of the speakers had risen from his
place. Buffalo Bill cast his mind quickly over the situation. The
suggestion that a bear might be lurking about the sidehill seemed the
most reasonable. A bear is notably a blundersome beast, and the wind
was not from the ambushed redskins. The scout grasped the idea.
He sent another small avalanche of gravel down the slope, and then
floundered a bit in the brush. His ability to imitate the voices of
birds and animals was very keen; but it is not easy to imitate the
gruff, startled “woof!” of the marauding bear. However, he essayed it
and then stamped away up the hill through the brush, making a deuce of
a clatter till he reached an open space. He hoped that the reds would
take his play-acting in good faith; yet he could not help having his
doubts. He considered that, had he been in their place, he would have
felt strong doubt regarding the validity of the sound, and would have
investigated.
Therefore he slipped behind an enormous tree trunk at the edge of this
opening and waited to see if the supposed bear would be followed.
Minute after minute passed, and a deathlike silence reigned upon
the hillside. Buffalo Bill was wasting time, but he was too wary to
approach closer to the Indians--near enough to learn their numbers
at least--until he was assured that his first mistake had not borne
perilous fruit.
Sharp as his hearing was, however, he did not hear a footfall, or a
breath; yet of a sudden a figure was silhouetted before him against the
open space in the forest. An Indian stood there with folded arms, his
back to the scout, and facing the clearing!
One of the reds whom Cody had disturbed was not satisfied with the
imitated retreat of the frightened “bear.” He had come to investigate
and stood now almost within striking distance of the scout. But the
latter feared to shoot him, of course; nor did he trust to a fling of
his tomahawk, or knife. There were too many uncertainties about either
of those methods of removing the redskin. To steal from behind the tree
and spring upon him was another difficult thing, for the ground was
strewn with rustling leaves and twigs, and the scout feared to announce
his approach.
To his disgust, too, the Indian turned and began searching about the
edge of the forest. Cody saw him step cautiously behind two trees
and stick the muzzle of the old-fashioned musket he bore into a
brush-clump. The red was trying to learn if the creature that had made
all that “catouse” was still in the vicinity.
Instantly the scout glanced about in the gloom for a means of hiding
himself more surely. In a minute the red would come his way.
Directly above his head he saw a branch. He slipped the strap of his
rifle over his head and shoulder, thus leaving his hands free, seized
the branch, and drew himself up carefully as an acrobat does when
he “chins” the horizontal bar. Without a sound, or the rattle of a
button or an accouterment, the scout drew himself into the tree. Three
branches sprang from the butt low down, so furnishing him a splendid
nest.
He removed his gun and stood it upright, wedged in a niche. Then he lay
down along the lower branch, his body in the darkness merely adding
a darker shadow to it, and watched and listened. No mountain cat was
better ambushed for a foe. His guns he loosened in their scabbards, and
then, drawing his bowie, he stuck it softly into the branch within
easy reach of his hand.
At that instant there was a soft rustling in the leaves which covered
the ground below. Cody craned his neck to see. The Indian in a stooping
posture came into view. He halted directly under the limb on which the
scout lay. It seemed too dark for him to see any mark that the scout
might have left, yet he seemed wonderfully interested in the tree and
the ground beneath it.
Cody could see the outline of his figure very well indeed. How much
sharper the red’s vision might be he did not know; but he was not
taking any chances. He noted that the red scamp faced the tree trunk
and was apparently examining the rough bark for recently broken
places. Was it possible that the fellow was really stumbling upon the
truth--that a man had climbed this tree? Or was he feeling for the
marks of a bear’s claws?
However, Cody decided the red had gone far enough. Besides, the fellow
was temptingly near. He was a small, wiry man weighing little more than
a hundred pounds.
Cody stooped suddenly, and both his muscular hands clutched the
Indian around the neck--one before, one behind. And with this awful
grip--which cut short any attempt to breathe, let alone to cry out--he
lifted the redskin off his feet!
As was only natural, the red dropped his gun and clutched with both
hands at the hand which pinched his windpipe. He kicked vainly for
freedom. Before he could drop his hand to his knife and draw that, Cody
jerked him upward till the top of his head struck with fearful force
against the under side of the tree branch. He could actually hear the
redskin’s crown crack!
The foe’s hands dropped limply; yet Cody held on and squeezed his
throat for a minute longer. Then he dropped the fellow like a bag of
bones to the ground.
In a moment he seized his own rifle and dropped lightly beside him.
The Indian had not stirred; he was without doubt dead. Cody took his
weapons and removed his scalp, and went his way with some confidence
that there was certainly one more “good” Indian.
He dodged the gravel bank this time, and came down the side of the
cañon at another point--some rods beyond that at which he had found
the first of the reds established. There were fewer trees here, and,
looking from above, the scout was able to observe considerable of
the more open hillside. Dark as the night was, he saw several forms
crouching behind stumps and boulders.
He made a further détour, came down the hill again, and found the same
conditions. On this side of the trail the Indians were extended along
the hillside for five hundred yards and more. It was a big ambushing
party. Cody reckoned it to be no less than two hundred braves at the
least, and probably more. Captain Taylor’s command was not prepared to
meet such a foe--especially when the foe would have every advantage of
cover.
Had it not been so dark, or had Cody known the ground better, a flank
movement might have been made which would have overwhelmed the reds.
But this would have taken much time, too, and, meanwhile, the garrison
at Fort Advance was in sore need of reenforcements.
Cody returned swiftly to the rendezvous he had appointed with Judd, to
learn what that individual had discovered upon the other side of the
cañon.
Now, the warriors lay very silently indeed in their ambuscade, but
three hundred men cannot be in a small place like that together without
making some sounds. Judd, too, discovered the ambush, although he
did not know just how many Indians were awaiting the coming of the
bluecoats.
“There’s a good bunch of them. Perhaps Oak Heart has drawn off half his
gang,” said Cody. “We’ve got to fool ’em, Judd.”
They hurried back to the group of scouts, and there Cody issued his
instructions. Judd and three others were to watch the Indians as well
as possible. Meanwhile Cody proposed to ride back and meet Captain
Taylor’s command and take them, by another way, to the valley in which
Fort Advance was situated.
Cody rode back in haste and reported the danger ahead.
“We are able to handle five hundred redskins, Cody,” said the officer,
eager for a fight.
“But not when they are established on both sides of the trail and it is
dark and the forest is too thick for you to maneuver horses. No, no,
captain! Be advised by me.”
“I suppose you are right, Cody.”
“And, besides, you will be able to deliver a heavier blow to Oak
Heart’s gang if you fall upon them unexpectedly; and then, when these
ambuscaders rush in, you’ll be ready to cut them to pieces, too.”
“Right you are, scout. You are sure of the way?”
“Confident. It’s a bit rough, but I could find it with my eyes
bandaged.”
“Lead on, then, scout.”
“And no bugle-calls,” warned Cody. “Pass the word to the men. We don’t
want these reds, waiting in the cañon, to suspect that we are stealing
a march on them.”
Fortunately, the troops did not have to take the back track. The path
by which the Border King was to lead them to their destination branched
off this main trail into the hills. Over the rough way they rode, and
soon the eastern sky began to grow gray. Dawn was approaching, and the
increased light made the path vastly easier of traveling.
Buffalo Bill and Captain Taylor rode some distance ahead of the troops.
The cavalry could go only as fast as the guns and ambulances could keep
up, so the band moved necessarily slow.
They came at last almost within sight of Fort Advance. A low ridge shut
out their view of the valley. Suddenly the cool morning breeze brought
to them a great shouting and hullabaloo, intermingled with rifle-shots
and the intermittent discharge of heavy guns.
“An attack!” exclaimed the captain and the scout together, and they
spurred their horses to the top of the ridge.
It was true. Oak Heart had chosen the hour before dawn as the time to
throw his remaining warriors against the stockade. He believed that
about this time the rescue-party would be falling into the trap he had
laid for it in the cañon. He would keep both bands of white men so busy
that they could not go to each other’s rescue.
Suddenly the heavy guns ceased. There was only the occasional snapping
of rifles from the fort.
“My God, Cody! What does that mean?” gasped Captain Taylor.
“Their ammunition has run out!” cried the scout. “I adjure you,
captain, bring up your men at a double-quick. The next few minutes may
settle the question as to whether those red devils get the scalps of
every man, woman, and child in the fort! There is not an instant to
lose, sir!”