THE INDIAN PATROL.
"Halt! who comes there?" rang out sharp and stern the challenge of the
sentinel on the outskirts of General Brooke's camp, followed quickly by
the startling words, as the rider drew rein suddenly:
"Hold! don't fire, sentinel! I am a woman and bear dispatches to
General Brooke from Colonel Crandall."
"A woman, and bearing dispatches? What does this mean!" and the officer
of the day advanced quickly, while riding into the glare of a camp-fire
Emma Foshay slipped from her saddle and sprang toward an officer, who
was advancing.
"Father!"
"Emma! my child! what does this mean?" cried the startled cavalry
captain.
In a few terse words the young girl explained all that had occurred,
and she was taken at once to her father's quarters, while the
dispatches and the tidings she brought were placed before the general.
"Order out two troops at once, adjutant, to go to the rescue of that
gallant fellow, Carey--if not too late," said the general, quickly.
"It shall not be too late to avenge him if he has fallen," sternly said
Captain Foshay, whose troop was ordered at once to mount and away.
Off dashed the gallant troopers in the darkness, Captain Foshay in
command, and they had gone but half a dozen miles from camp when in a
voice that brought them to a sudden halt, came the challenge:
"Halt!"
Then quickly followed the words:
"I am Lieutenant Kit Carey of the Seventh."
A cheer followed his words, and springing forward to where Kit Carey
sat upon his Indian pony, Captain Foshay seized his hands, while he
said, earnestly:
"My noble Carey, I have heard all from Emma, and was going to rescue
you, or avenge you."
"No need of either now, Captain Foshay, though I thank you for your
coming; but Sitting Bull remembered a service I once rendered him when
I was a mere boy, and he professed friendship, and released me."
"Sitting Bull away from his camp?" said Captain Foshay, anxiously.
"Yes, sir; but returning to it now."
"The red scamp is away plotting mischief, for we know now that he is
at the bottom of this Messiah craze, and is fomenting trouble among
all the tribes who acknowledge his leadership. You are just the man,
Lieutenant Carey, whom the general wishes, and if I am not mistaken you
will start at once upon a mission that will either bring peace or war."
"I wish I could feel that I could use such influence, captain,"
responded Kit Carey.
"There is no doubt, Carey, but that you have more influence among
the Sioux than any officer in the service, and if you accomplish the
mission you are to be sent on, untold good will come of it; but let
me tell you that your last gallant act of self-sacrifice to save my
daughter has shown that the peace we have had on the border has not
dulled either your courage or your gallantry. That my loved daughter
and myself will ever remember it you may feel assured."
"I am glad to know that Miss Foshay arrived in safety."
"Oh, yes, she came to camp all right, though she said it was cowardly
to desert you."
"That she could not help, sir, for the horse she rode has an iron jaw,
and no man could have checked him."
They were returning to camp now at a trot, and the moment the troopers
arrived, Captain Foshay led the gallant young officer to the quarters
of the general, who welcomed him most heartily, complimented him upon
his escape, and, hearing his story, said:
"Now, Lieutenant Carey, General Miles has ordered that Sitting Bull be
arrested in his camp and brought here. He had sent upon the mission
Buffalo Bill, a man of unbounded influence with the chief and others
of his tribe, but for some reason the President countermanded those
orders, and you are the one now named to carry out the instructions of
General Miles in regard to the arrest. Are you willing to undertake
this most perilous mission, as you must know it to be?"
"I am sir," was the firm reply of Kit Carey.
"That you have seen Sitting Bull secretly away from his camp proves
that he is visiting other chiefs to foster trouble, and General Miles
has knowledge that the old fellow is at the bottom of all the present
trouble. Now, when will Sitting Bull return to his camp, think you?"
"By morning, sir, for I waited to see what trail he took from the
ridge."
"And you can start----"
"At once, sir."
"You have had a long ride, Carey, so need rest for a few hours. But you
can start early in the morning, and more, you are to command the Indian
police."
"Yes, sir, they are known to me," was the modest reply.
"And you are well known to them, Carey. But you are to have a support
follow you, in case of trouble, which I fear will follow. As Captain
Foshay of the --th is compelled to escort his daughter to the railroad,
Captain Fechet, with two troops of cavalry, and Colonel Dunn, with
three companies of infantry and two machine guns, will follow you up
closely, to be within call should you need aid. The Indian police are
to be wholly under your command, and all is left to your judgment
in the matter; but Sitting Bull is to be arrested and brought here,
whether there is resistance offered or not."
"I think I understand, sir," was the response of Kit Carey, and after
a short conversation with the general, the young officer departed to
arrange for the dangerous mission he had been selected to perform.
As he was going to the quarters of a brother officer he suddenly saw a
fair form step out of a tent and bar his way.
It was Emma Foshay, and she was all ready to start under an escort,
which her father commanded, to go to the nearest railway station.
"After your strange escape, of which I have just heard, do they intend
to send you to your death?" she asked, earnestly.
"It is a soldier's duty to obey, Miss Foshay, and to die for his
country; but I hope it will not be so bad as that. Good-by."
She grasped his hand, sought to speak, but without a word turned away.
Two hours after Kit Carey was mounted upon a fresh horse, and riding at
the head of a score of Indian police, while following came the cavalry
support, under the dashing Captain Fechet, and the infantry under the
gallant Colonel Dunn, with the two machine guns bringing up the rear.
Having received his orders, Kit Carey was not one to lose time in their
execution, and he rode rapidly on in the early dawn.
At last the camp of the great chief was reached near Grand River, and a
glance told the experienced young Indian fighter that they were not a
moment too soon, for the whole village was getting ready to move, and
that meant that Sitting Bull was about to seek the Bad Lands and open
hostilities.
To wait there for the soldiers Lieutenant Carey dared not, so he at
once gave a few orders in their own language to his redskin cavalrymen,
and a dash was at once made for the tepee of the great chief.
As they drew up in a circle around his home, Kit Carey leaped from his
horse, and the chief and the young officer met face to face in the door.
Quickly fell the words of the officer, spoken in the Sioux language:
"The great chief, Tatanka Yotanke, has broken faith with the Great
White Chief Father, for his people even now are starting on the
war-path. Sitting Bull is my prisoner. He must go with me dead or
alive."
The eyes of the Sioux chief blazed in their fury, and his hands
dropped, one upon a revolver, the other on a knife in his belt; while
from his lips came a few fierce words.
But the revolver of the commander of the Indian cavalry was covering
his heart, and he dared not move.
Then came a quick command, and the Sioux chief was seized, disarmed,
and fairly thrown upon the back of a pony, for the whole camp was wild
with excitement now.
Leaping into his saddle, Kit Carey seized the rein of Sitting Bull's
horse, and cried:
"Come!"
As the daring redskin soldiers, under their dashing young commander,
closed in around the captive, a yell of fury, wild, startling,
terrible, went up from the warriors, who had been almost stunned by
the sudden capture of their chief, and then in a voice like a trumpet,
burst from the lips of Sitting Bull a ringing command.
He had called to his faithful braves to rescue him, his voice had
sounded the tocsin of war to the death, and if the Indians were to be
swept off the face of the earth they must die in a noble cause.
And that weird, wild call to rescue was heard, and responded to.
But too well did the daring lieutenant know its meaning, and driving
his spurs deep into the flanks of his own horse, he pricked the pony of
Sitting Bull with his sword, and grasping more firmly the rein, dashed
on in the flight for life.
But the Sioux braves were upon the gallant band like an avalanche of
death, an Indian police officer upon the other side of Sitting Bull
was shot through the heart, and that one crack of a rifle opened the
crash of battle.
"We must beat them back! Turn your Winchesters upon them. Fire!"
The order of the gallant soldier of the Seventh was obeyed, as the
rush of the braves was made upon the little band fighting against such
desperate odds, and then the death-knell of the mighty medicine man
rang out, for in the battle to rescue their chief, he received a bullet
in his heart.