laugh. "Sorry to spoil his story. Was it a good one?"
"It might have been if you hadn't spoiled it," answered the girl,
flicking her horse's ears mischievously. The animal danced. "What did
you do it for?"
"Oh, just to see him squirm. He'll think about that all the rest of the
afternoon, and will hardly dare look you in the face next time you
meet."
"I know. Isn't he funny? The other morning he came around the corner of
the wagon and caught me with my hair down. I _wish_ you could have seen
him!"
She laughed gayly at the memory.
"Let's get ahead of the dust," she suggested.
They drew aside to the firm turf of the prairie and put their horses to
a slow lope. Once well ahead of the canvas-covered schooners they slowed
down to a walk again.
"Alfred says we'll see them to-morrow," said the girl.
"See what?"
"Why, the Hills! They'll show like a dark streak, down past that butte
there--what's its name?"
"Porcupine Tail."
"Oh, yes. And after that it's only three days. Are you glad?"
"Are you?"
"Yes, I believe I am. This life is fun at first, but there's a certain
monotony in making your toilet where you have to duck your head because
you haven't room to raise your hands, and this barrelled water palls
after a time. I think I'll be glad to see a house again. People like
camping about so long----"
"It hasn't gone back on me yet."
"Well, you're a man and can do things."
"Can't you do things?"
"You know I can't. What do you suppose they'd say if I were to ride out
just that way for two miles? They'd have a fit."
"Who'd have a fit? Nobody but Alfred, and I didn't know you'd gotten
afraid of him yet! I say, just _let's_! We'll have a race, and then come
right back." The young man looked boyishly eager.
"It would be nice," she mused. They gazed into each other's eyes like a
pair of children, and laughed.
"Why shouldn't we?" urged the young man. "I'm dead sick of staying in
the moving circle of these confounded wagons. What's the sense of it
all, anyway?"
"Why, Indians, I suppose," said the girl, doubtfully.
"Indians!" he replied, with contempt. "Indians! We haven't seen a sign
of one since we left Pierre. I don't believe there's one in the whole
blasted country. Besides, you know what Alfred said at our last camp?"
"What did Alfred say?"
"Alfred said he hadn't seen even a teepee-trail, and that they must be
all up hunting buffalo. Besides that, you don't imagine for a moment
that your father would take you all this way to Deadwood just for a
lark, if there was the slightest danger, do you?"
"I don't know; I made him."
She looked out over the long sweeping descent to which they were coming,
and the long sweeping ascent that lay beyond. The breeze and the sun
played with the prairie grasses, the breeze riffling them over, and the
sun silvering their under surfaces thus exposed. It was strangely
peaceful, and one almost expected to hear the hum of bees as in a New
England orchard. In it all was no sign of life.
"We'd get lost," she said, finally.
"Oh, no, we wouldn't!" he asserted with all the eagerness of the amateur
plainsman. "I've got that all figured out. You see, our train is going
on a line with that butte behind us and the sun. So if we go ahead, and
keep our shadows just pointing to the butte, we'll be right in their
line of march."
He looked to her for admiration of his cleverness. She seemed convinced.
She agreed, and sent him back to her wagon for some article of invented
necessity. While he was gone she slipped softly over the little hill to
the right, cantered rapidly over two more, and slowed down with a sigh
of satisfaction. One alone could watch the directing shadow as well as
two. She was free and alone. It was the one thing she had desired for
the last six days of the long plains journey, and she enjoyed it now to
the full. No one had seen her go. The drivers droned stupidly along, as
was their wont; the occupants of the wagons slept, as was their wont;
and the diminutive Alfred was hiding his blushes behind clouds of dust
in the rear, as was not his wont at all. He had been severely shocked,
and he might have brooded over it all the afternoon, if a discovery had
not startled him to activity.
On a bare spot of the prairie he discerned the print of a hoof. It was
not that of one of the train's animals. Alfred knew this, because just
to one side of it, caught under a grass-blade so cunningly that only the
little scout's eyes could have discerned it at all, was a single blue
bead. Alfred rode out on the prairie to right and left, and found the
hoof-prints of about thirty ponies. He pushed his hat back and wrinkled
his brow, for the one thing he was looking for he could not find--the
two narrow furrows made by the ends of teepee-poles dragging along on
either side of the ponies. The absence of these indicated that the band
was composed entirely of bucks, and bucks were likely to mean mischief.
He pushed ahead of the whole party, his eyes fixed earnestly on the
ground. At the top of the hill he encountered the young Easterner. The
latter looked puzzled, in a half-humourous way.
"I left Miss Caldwell here a half-minute ago," he observed to Alfred,
"and I guess she's given me the slip. Scold her good for me when she
comes in--will you?" He grinned, with good-natured malice at the idea of
Alfred's scolding anyone.
Then Alfred surprised him.
The little man straightened suddenly in his saddle and uttered a fervent
curse. After a brief circle about the prairie, he returned to the young
man.
"You go back to th' wagons, and wake up Billy Knapp, and tell him
this--that I've gone scoutin' some, and I want him to _watch out_.
Understand? _Watch out!_"
"What?" began the Easterner, bewildered.
"I'm a-goin' to find her," said the little man, decidedly.
"You don't think there's any danger, do you?" asked the Easterner, in
anxious tones. "Can't I help you?"
"You do as I tell you," replied the little man, shortly, and rode away.
He followed Miss Caldwell's trail quite rapidly, for the trail was
fresh. As long as he looked intently for hoof-marks, nothing was to be
seen, the prairie was apparently virgin; but by glancing the eye forty
or fifty yards ahead, a faint line was discernible through the grasses.
Alfred came upon Miss Caldwell seated quietly on her horse in the very
centre of a prairie-dog town, and so, of course, in the midst of an area
of comparatively desert character. She was amusing herself by watching
the marmots as they barked, or watched, or peeped at her, according to
their distance from her. The sight of Alfred was not welcome, for he
frightened the marmots.
When he saw Miss Caldwell, Alfred grew bashful again. He sidled his
horse up to her and blushed.
"I'll show you th' way back, miss," he said, diffidently.
"Thank you," replied Miss Caldwell, with a slight coldness, "I can find
my own way back."
"Yes, of course," hastened Alfred, in an agony. "But don't you think we
ought to start back now? I'd like to go with you, miss, if you'd let me.
You see the afternoon's quite late."
Miss Caldwell cast a quizzical eye at the sun.
"Why, it's hours yet till dark!" she said, amusedly.
Then Alfred surprised Miss Caldwell.
His diffident manner suddenly left him. He jumped like lightning from
his horse, threw the reins over the animal's head so he would stand, and
ran around to face Miss Caldwell.
"Here, jump down!" he commanded.
The soft Southern _burr_ of his ordinary conversation had given place to
a clear incisiveness. Miss Caldwell looked at him amazed.
Seeing that she did not at once obey, Alfred actually began to fumble
hastily with the straps that held her riding-skirt in place. This was so
unusual in the bashful Alfred that Miss Caldwell roused and slipped
lightly to the ground.
"Now what?" she asked.
Alfred, without replying, drew the bit to within a few inches of the
animal's hoofs, and tied both fetlocks firmly together with the
double-loop. This brought the pony's nose down close to his shackled
feet. Then he did the same thing with his own beast. Thus neither animal
could so much as hobble one way or the other. They were securely
moored.
Alfred stepped a few paces to the eastward. Miss Caldwell followed.
"Sit down," said he.
Miss Caldwell obeyed with some nervousness. She did not understand at
all, and that made her afraid. She began to have a dim fear lest Alfred
might have gone crazy. His next move strengthened this suspicion. He
walked away ten feet and raised his hand over his head, palm forward.
She watched him so intently that for a moment she saw nothing else. Then
she followed the direction of his gaze, and uttered a little sobbing
cry.
Just below the sky-line of the first slope to eastward was silhouetted a
figure on horseback. The figure on horseback sat motionless.
"We're in for fight," said Alfred, coming back after a moment. "He won't
answer my peace-sign, and he's a Sioux. We can't make a run for it
through this dog-town. We've just got to stand 'em off."
He threw down and back the lever of his old 44 Winchester, and softly
uncocked the arm. Then he sat down by Miss Caldwell.
From various directions, silently, warriors on horseback sprang into
sight and moved dignifiedly toward the first-comer, forming at the last
a band of perhaps thirty men. They talked together for a moment, and
then one by one, at regular intervals, detached themselves and began
circling at full speed to the left, throwing themselves behind their
horses, and yelling shrill-voiced, but firing no shot as yet.
"They'll rush us," speculated Alfred. "We're too few to monkey with this
way. This is a bluff."
The circle about the two was now complete. After watching the whirl of
figures a few minutes, and the motionless landscape beyond, the eye
became dizzied and confused.
"They won't have no picnic," went on Alfred, with a little chuckle.
"Dog-hole's as bad fer them as fer us. They don't know how to fight. If
they was to come in on all sides, I couldn't handle 'em, but they always
rush in a bunch, like _damn_ fools!" and then Alfred became suffused
with blushes, and commenced to apologise abjectly and profusely to a
girl who had heard neither the word nor its atonement. The savages and
the approaching fight were all she could think of.
Suddenly one of the Sioux threw himself forward under his horse's neck
and fired. The bullet went wild, of course, but it shrieked with the
rising inflection of a wind-squall through bared boughs, seeming to come
ever nearer. Miss Caldwell screamed and covered her face. The savages
yelled in chorus.
The one shot seemed to be the signal for a spattering fire all along the
line. Indians never clean their rifles, rarely get good ammunition, and
are deficient in the philosophy of hind-sights. Besides this, it is not
easy to shoot at long range in a constrained position from a running
horse. Alfred watched them contemptuously in silence.
"If they keep that up long enough, the wagon-train may hear 'em," he
said, finally. "Wisht we weren't so far to nor-rard. There, it's
comin'!" he said, more excitedly.
The chief had paused, and, as the warriors came to him, they threw their
ponies back on their haunches, and sat motionless. They turned, the
ponies' heads toward the two.
Alfred arose deliberately for a better look.
"Yes, that's right," he said to himself, "that's old Lone Pine, sure
thing. I reckon we-all's got to make a _good_ fight!"
The girl had sunk to the ground, and was shaking from head to foot. It
is not nice to be shot at in the best of circumstances, but to be shot
at by odds of thirty to one, and the thirty of an out-landish and
terrifying species, is not nice at all. Miss Caldwell had gone to pieces
badly, and Alfred looked grave. He thoughtfully drew from its holster
his beautiful Colt's with its ivory handle, and laid it on the grass.
Then he blushed hot and cold, and looked at the girl doubtfully. A
sudden movement in the group of savages, as the war-chief rode to the
front, decided him.
"Miss Caldwell," he said.
The girl shivered and moaned.
Alfred dropped to his knees and shook her shoulder roughly.
"Look up here," he commanded. "We ain't got but a minute."
Composed a little by the firmness of his tone, she sat up. Her face had
gone chalky, and her hair had partly fallen over her eyes.
"Now, listen to every word," he said, rapidly. "Those Injins is goin' to
rush us in a minute. P'r'aps I can break them, but I don't know. In that
pistol there, I'll always save two shots--understand?--it's always
loaded. If I see it's all up, I'm a-goin' to shoot you with one of 'em,
and myself with the other."
"Oh!" cried the girl, her eyes opening wildly. She was paying close
enough attention now.
"And if they kill me first"--he reached forward and seized her wrist
impressively--"if they kill me first, you must take that pistol and
shoot yourself. Understand? Shoot yourself--in the head--here!"
He tapped his forehead with a stubby forefinger.
The girl shrank back in horror. Alfred snapped his teeth together and
went on grimly.
"If they get hold of you," he said, with solemnity, "they'll first take
off every stitch of your clothes, and when you're quite naked they'll
stretch you out on the ground with a raw-hide to each of your arms and
legs. And then they'll drive a stake through the middle of your body
into the ground--and leave you there--to die--slowly!"
And the girl believed him, because, incongruously enough, even through
her terror she noticed that at this, the most immodest speech of his
life, Alfred did not blush. She looked at the pistol lying on the turf
with horrified fascination.
The group of Indians, which had up to now remained fully a thousand
yards away, suddenly screeched and broke into a run directly toward the
dog-town.
There is an indescribable rush in a charge of savages. The little ponies
make their feet go so fast, the feathers and trappings of the warriors
stream behind so frantically, the whole attitude of horse and man is so
eager, that one gets an impression of fearful speed and resistless
power. The horizon seems full of Indians.
As if this were not sufficiently terrifying, the air is throbbing with
sound. Each Indian pops away for general results as he comes jumping
along, and yells shrilly to show what a big warrior he is, while
underneath it all is the hurried monotone of hoof-beats becoming ever
louder, as the roar of an increasing rainstorm on the roof. It does not
seem possible that anything can stop them.
Yet there is one thing that can stop them, if skilfully taken advantage
of, and that is their lack of discipline. An Indian will fight hard when
cornered, or when heated by lively resistance, but he hates to go into
it in cold blood. As he nears the opposing rifle, this feeling gets
stronger. So often a man with nerve enough to hold his fire, can break a
fierce charge merely by waiting until it is within fifty yards or so,
and then suddenly raising the muzzle of his gun. If he had gone to
shooting at once, the affair would have become a combat, and the Indians
would have ridden him down. As it is, each has had time to think. By the
time the white man is ready to shoot, the suspense has done its work.
Each savage knows that but one will fall, but, cold-blooded, he does not
want to be that one; and, since in such disciplined fighters it is each
for himself, he promptly ducks behind his mount and circles away to the
right or the left. The whole band swoops and divides, like a flock of
swift-winged terns on a windy day.
This Alfred relied on in the approaching crisis.
The girl watched the wild sweep of the warriors with strained eyes. She
had to grasp her wrist firmly to keep from fainting, and she seemed
incapable of thought. Alfred sat motionless on a dog-mound, his rifle
across his lap. He did not seem in the least disturbed.
"It's good to fight again," he murmured, gently fondling the stock of
his rifle. "Come on, ye devils! Oho!" he cried as a warrior's horse went
down in a dog-hole, "I thought so!"
His eyes began to shine.
The ponies came skipping here and there, nimbly dodging in and out
between the dog-holes. Their riders shot and yelled wildly, but none of
the bullets went lower than ten feet. The circle of their advance looked
somehow like the surge shoreward of a great wave, and the similarity was
heightened by the nodding glimpses of the light eagles' feathers in
their hair.
The run across the honey-combed plain was hazardous--even to Indian
ponies--and three went down kicking, one after the other. Two of the
riders lay stunned. The third sat up and began to rub his knee. The pony
belonging to Miss Caldwell, becoming frightened, threw itself and lay on
its side, kicking out frantically with its hind legs.
At the proper moment Alfred cocked his rifle and rose swiftly to his
knees. As he did so, the mound on which he had been kneeling caved into
the hole beneath it, and threw him forward on his face. With a furious
curse, he sprang to his feet and levelled his rifle at the thick of the
press. The scheme worked. In a flash every savage disappeared behind his
pony, and nothing was to be seen but an arm and a leg. The band divided
on either hand as promptly as though the signal for such a drill had
been given, and swept gracefully around in two long circles until it
reined up motionless at nearly the exact point from which it had
started on its imposing charge. Alfred had not fired a shot.
He turned to the girl with a short laugh.
She lay face upward on the ground, staring at the sky with wide-open,
horror-stricken eyes. In her brow was a small blackened hole, and under
her head, which lay strangely flat against the earth, the grasses had
turned red. Near her hand lay the heavy Colt's 44.
Alfred looked at her a minute without winking. Then he nodded his head.
"It was 'cause I fell down that hole--she thought they'd got me!" he
said aloud to himself. "Pore little gal! She hadn't ought to have did
it!"
He blushed deeply, and, turning his face away, pulled down her skirt
until it covered her ankles. Then he picked up his Winchester and fired
three shots. The first hit directly back of the ear one of the stunned
Indians who had fallen with his horse. The second went through the other
stunned Indian's chest. The third caught the Indian with the broken leg
between the shoulders just as he tried to get behind his struggling
pony.
Shortly after, Billy Knapp and the wagon-train came along.
II
BILLY'S TENDERFOOT
During one spring of the early seventies Billy Knapp ran a species of
road-house and hotel at the crossing of the Deadwood and Big Horn trails
through Custer Valley. Travellers changing from one to the other
frequently stopped there over night. He sold accommodations for man and
beast, the former comprising plenty of whiskey, the latter plenty of
hay. That was the best anyone could say of it. The hotel was of logs,
two-storied, with partitions of sheeting to insure a certain privacy of
sight if not of sound; had three beds and a number of bunks; and boasted
of a woman cook--one of the first in the Hills. Billy did not run it
long. He was too restless. For the time being, however, he was
interested and satisfied.
The personnel of the establishment consisted of Billy and the woman,
already mentioned, and an ancient Pistol of the name of Charley. The
latter wore many firearms, and had a good deal to say, but had never, as
Billy expressed it, "made good." This in the West could not be for lack
of opportunity. His functions were those of general factotum.
One evening Billy sat chair-tilted against the walls of the hotel
waiting for the stage. By and by it drew in. Charley hobbled out,
carrying buckets of water for the horses. The driver flung the reins
from him with the lordly insolence of his privileged class, descended
slowly, and swaggered to the bar-room for his drink. Billy followed to
serve it.
"Luck," said the driver, and crooked his elbow.
"Anything new?" queried Billy.
"Nope."
"Held up?"
"Nope. Black Hank's over in th' limestone."
That exhausted the situation. The two men puffed silently for a moment
at their pipes. In an instant the driver turned to go.
"I got you a tenderfoot," he remarked then, casually; "I reckon he's
outside."
"Guess I ambles forth and sees what fer a tenderfoot it is," replied
Billy, hastening from behind the bar.
The tenderfoot was seated on a small trunk just outside the door. As he
held his hat in his hand, Billy could see his dome-like bald head.
Beneath the dome was a little pink-and-white face, and below that
narrow, sloping shoulders, a flat chest, and bandy legs. He wore a light
check suit, and a flannel shirt whose collar was much too large for him.
Billy took this all in while passing. As the driver climbed to the seat,
the hotel-keeper commented.
"Say, Hen," said he, "would you stuff it or put it under a glass case?"
"I'd serve it, a lay Tooloose," replied the driver, briefly, and brought
his long lash 8-shaped across the four startled backs of his horses.
Billy turned to the reinspection of his guest, and met a deprecating
smile.
"Can I get a room here fer to-night?" he inquired in a high, piping
voice.
"You kin," said Billy, shortly, and began to howl for Charley.
That patriarch appeared around the corner, as did likewise the cook, a
black-eyed, red-cheeked creature, afterward counted by Billy as one of
his eight matrimonial ventures.
"Snake this stranger's war-bag into th' shack," commanded Billy, "and,
Nell, jest nat'rally rustle a few grub."
The stranger picked up a small hand-satchel and followed Charley into
the building. When, a little later, he reappeared for supper, he carried
the hand-bag with him, and placed it under the bench which flanked the
table. Afterward he deposited it near his hand while enjoying a pipe
outside. Naturally, all this did not escape Billy.
"Stranger," said he, "yo' seems mighty wedded to that thar satchel."
"Yes, sir," piped the stranger. Billy snorted at the title. "I has some
personal belongin's which is valuable to me." He opened the bag and
produced a cheap portrait of a rather cheap-looking woman. "My mother
that was," said he.
Billy snorted again and went inside. He hated sentiment of all kinds.
The two men sat opposite each other and ate supper, which was served by
the red-cheeked girl. The stranger kept his eyes on his plate while she
was in the room. He perched on the edge of the bench with his feet
tucked under him and resting on the toes. When she approached, the
muscles of his shoulders and upper arms grew rigid with embarrassment,
causing strange awkward movements of the hands. He answered in
monosyllables.
Billy ate expansively and earnestly. Toward the close of the meal
Charley slipped into place beside him. Charley was out of humour, and
found the meat cold.
"Damn yore soul, Nell," he cried, "this yere ain't fitten fer a _hog_ to
eat!"
The girl did not mind; nor did Billy. It was the country's mode of
speech. The stranger dropped his knife.
"I don't wonder you don't like it, then," said he, with a funny little
blaze of anger.
"Meanin' what?" shouted Charley, threateningly.
"You sure mustn't speak to a lady that way," replied the stranger,
firmly, in his little piping voice.
Billy caught the point and exploded in a mighty guffaw.
"Bully fer you!" he cried, slapping his knee; "struck pyrites (he
pronounced it pie-rights) fer shore that trip, Charley."
The girl, too, laughed, but quietly. She was just a little touched,
though only this winter she had left Bismarck because the place would
have no more of her.
In the face of Billy's approval, the patriarch fell silent.
About midnight the four inmates of the frontier hotel were awakened by a
tremendous racket outside. The stranger arose, fully clothed, from his
bunk, and peered through the narrow open window. A dozen horses were
standing grouped in charge of a single mounted man, indistinguishable in
the dark. Out of the open door a broad band of light streamed from the
saloon, whence came the noise of voices and of boots tramping about.
"It is Black Hank," said Billy, at his elbow, "Black Hank and his
outfit. He hitches to this yere snubbin'-post occasional."
Black Hank in the Hills would have translated to Jesse James farther
south.
The stranger turned suddenly energetic.
"Don't you make no fight?" he asked.