CHAPTER IV.

  Away to the left of the little command tore the quarry and the chase.Out on the rolling prairie, barely four hundred yards from where theambulance and mules were backed into a tangle of traces and whiffletreesand fear-stricken creatures, another buffalo had dropped in a heap; aswarthy rider had tumbled off his pony, cut a slash or two withever-ready knife, and then, throwing a bead bedizened left leg over hiseager little mount, had gone lashing away after his fellows, not withouta jeering slap at the baited soldiery. Then, in almost less time than ittakes to tell it, the pursued and pursuers had vanished from sight overa low ridge a mile to the north. "Only a hunting party!" said one or twonervous recruits, with a gulp of relief. "Only a hunting party," gaspedBurleigh, as presently he heaved himself up from the floor, "and Ithought I'd never find that damned gun of mine. All this fuss fornothing!" he continued, his lips still blue and quivering. "That greenyoungster up there in front hasn't learned the first principles ofplains-craft yet. Here, Brooks," he added loudly, "it's high time youwere looking after this sub of yours," and Brooks, despite his illness,was indeed working out of the back door of his yellow trundle bed at themoment, and looking anxiously about. But the engineer stood pale andquiet, coolly studying the flustered growler, and when Burleigh'sshifting eyes sought that young scientist's face, what he readthere--and Burleigh was no fool--told him he would be wise to change thetune. The aid had pushed out in front of the troop and was signaling toDean, once more in saddle and scanning through his glass the big bandafar down the valley.

  "Take my horse, sir," said the sergeant, dismounting, and the officerthanked him and rode swiftly out to join the young commander at thefront. Together they gazed and consulted and still no signal came toresume the advance. Then the troopers saw the staff officer make a broadsweep with his right arm to the south, and in a moment Dean's hat wasuplifted and waved well out in that direction. "Drop carbine," growledthe sergeant. "By twos again. Incline to the right. Damn the Sioux, Isay! Have we got to circle five miles around their hunting ground forfear of hurting their feelings. Come on. Jimmy," he added to the driverof the leading wagon. Jimmy responded with vigorous language at theexpense of his lead mules. The quartermaster and engineer silentlyscrambled in; the ambulance started with a jerk and away went the partyoff to the right of the trail, the wagons jolting a bit now over theuneven clumps of bunch grass.

  But once well up at the summit of the low divide the command reined infor a look at the great Indian cavalcade swarming in the northeastwardvalley, and covering its grassy surface still a good mile away. Out fromamong the dingy mass came galloping half a dozen young braves, followedby as many squaws. The former soon spread out over the billowy surface,some following the direction of the chase, some bounding on south westward as though confident of finding what they sought the moment theyreached the nearest ridge; some riding straight to the point where laythe carcasses of the earliest victims of the hunt. Here in full view ofthe soldiery, but vouchsafing them no glance nor greeting whatever, twoyoung warriors reined in their lively ponies and disdainfully turnedtheir backs upon the spectators on the divide, while the squaws, withshrill laugh and chatter, rolled from their saddles and began thedrudgery of their lot--skinning and cutting up the buffalos slaughteredby their lords.

  "Don't you see," sneered Burleigh, "it's nothing but a village out for ahunt--nothing in God's world to get stampeded about. We've had all thisshow of warlike preparation for nothing." But he turned away again as hecaught the steady look in the engineer's blue eyes, and shouted to hismore appreciative friend, the aide-de-camp: "Well, pardner, haven't wefooled away enough time here, or have we got to wait the pleasure ofpeople that never saw Indians before?"

  Dean flushed crimson at the taunt. He well knew for whom it was meant.He was indignant enough by this time to speak for himself, but theaide-de-camp saved him the trouble.

  "I requested Mr. Dean to halt a few moments, Burleigh. It is necessary Ishould know what band this is, and how many are out."

  "Well, be quick about it," snapped the quartermaster, "I want to get toReno before midnight, and at this rate we won't make it in a week."

  A sergeant who could speak a little Sioux came riding back to the camp,a grin on his sun-blistered face. "Well, sergeant, what'd he say?" askedthe staff officer.

  "He said would I plaze to go to hell, sorr," was the prompt response.

  "Won't he tell who they are?"

  "He won't, sorr. He says we know widout askin', which is thrue, sorr.They're Ogallallas to a man, barrin' the squaws and pappooses, wid ouldRed Cloud himself."

  "How'd you find out if they wouldn't talk?" asked the staff officerimpatiently.

  "'Twas the bucks wouldn't talk--except in swear wurruds. I wasted notime on them, sorr. I gave the first squaw the last hardtack in mesaddle-bags and tould her was it Machpealota, and she said it was, andhe was wid Box Karesha--that's ould Folsom--not six hour ago, an'Folsom's gone back to the cantonment."

  "Then the quicker we skip the better," were the aide-de-camp's words."Get us to Reno fast as you can, Dean. Strike for the road again as soonas we're well beyond their buffalo. Now for it! There's something behindall this bogus hunt business, and Folsom knows what it is."

  And every mile of the way, until thick darkness settled down over theprairie, there was something behind the trooper cavalcade--severalsomethings--wary red men, young and wiry, who never let themselves beseen, yet followed on over wave after wave of prairie to look to it thatno man went back from that column to carry the news of their presence tothe little battalion left in charge of the new post at Warrior Gap.

  It was the dark of the moon, or, as the Indians say, "the nights themoon is sleeping in his lodge," and by ten P. M. the skies wereovercast. Only here and there a twinkling star was visible, and onlywhere some trooper struck a light for his pipe could a hand be seen infront of the face. The ambulance mules that had kept their steady jogduring the late afternoon and the long gloaming that followed stillseemed able to maintain the gait, and even the big, lumbering wagon atthe rear came briskly on under the tug of its triple span, but in theintense darkness the guides at the head of the column kept losing theroad, and the bumping of the wagons would reveal the fact, and a haltwould be ordered, men would dismount and go bending and crouching andfeeling their way over the almost barren surface, hunting among the sagebrush for the double furrow of the trail. Matches innumerable wereconsumed, and minutes of valuable time, and the quartermaster waxedfretful and impatient, and swore that his mules could find their waywhere the troopers couldn't, and finally, after the trail had been lostand found half a dozen times, old Brooks was badgered into telling Deanto let the ambulance take the lead. The driver shirked at once.

  "There's no tellin' where we'll fetch up," said he. "Those mules can'tsee the trail if a man can't. Take their harness off and turn 'em loose,an' I suppose they can find their way to the post, but sure as you turnthem loose when they've got somethin' on 'em, or behind 'em, and thedoggone cussedness of the creatures will prompt them to smash things."

  But the quartermaster said he'd tried it with those very mules, betweenEmory and Medicine Bow a dozen times, and he'd risk it. The driver couldget off his seat if he wanted to, and run alongside, but he'd stay wherehe was.

  "Let me out, please," said the engineer, and jumped to the ground, andthen the cavalcade pushed on again. The driver, as ordered by anemployer whom he dare not disobey, let the reins drop on the mules'backs, the troopers falling behind, the yellow ambulance and the bigbaggage wagon bringing up the rear.

  Then, with a horseman on each side, the mules were persuaded to push onagain, and then when fairly started Burleigh called to the troopers tofall back, so that the mules should not, as he expressed it, "beinfluenced." "Leave them to themselves and they can get along allright," said he, "but mix them up with the horses, and they want them totake all the responsibility."

  And now the command was barely crawling. Brooks, heavy, languid withsplitting headache, lay
in feverish torpor in his ambulance, asking onlyto be let alone. The engineer, a subaltern as yet, felt that he had noright attempting to advise men like Burleigh, who proclaimed himself anold campaigner. The aide-de-camp was getting both sleepy and impatient,but he, too, was much the quartermaster's junior in rank. As for Dean,he had no volition whatever. "Escort the party," were his orders, andthat meant that he must govern the movements of his horses and men bythe wishes of the senior staff official. And so they jogged alongperhaps twenty minutes more, and then there was a sudden splutter andplunge and stumble ahead, a sharp pull on the traces, a marvelouslyquick jerk back on the reins that threw the wheel team on theirhaunches, and thereby saved the "outfit," for when men and matches werehurried to the front the lead mules were discovered kicking andsplashing in a mud hole. They were not only off the road by a dozenyards, but over a bank two feet high.

  And this last pound broke the back of Burleigh's obstinacy. It wasnearly midnight anyway. The best thing to be done was unhitch, unsaddleand bivouac until the gray light of dawn came peering over the eastwardprairie, which in that high latitude and "long-day" month would be soonafter three. Then they could push on to Reno.

  Not until nearly eight o'clock in the morning, therefore, did they heavein sight of the low belt of dingy green that told of the presence of astream still long miles away; and here, knowing himself to be out ofdanger, the major bade the weary escort march in at a walk while hehurried on. In fifteen minutes the black-hooded wagon was twisting andturning over the powdery road a good mile ahead, its dust rising highover the sage-covered desert, while the other two, with thedust-begrimed troopers, jogged sturdily on. Loring, the young engineer,had waved a cordial good-by to his old cadet acquaintance. "See youlater, old man," he cried. Stone, the aide-de-camp, nodded and said,"Take care of yourself," and Burleigh said nothing at all. He waswondering what he could do to muzzle Loring in case that gifted younggraduate were moved to tell what the quartermaster actually did when heheard the rush and firing out at the front on the road from Warrior Gap.

  But when at last the black wagon bowled in at the stockaded quadrangleand discharged its occupants at the hut of the major commanding, therewere tidings of such import to greet them that Burleigh turnedyellow-white again at thought of the perils they had escaped.

  "My God, man!" cried the post commander, as he came hurrying out to meetthe party, "we've been in a blue funk about you fellows for two wholedays. Did you see any Indians?"

  "See any Indians!" said Burleigh, rallying to the occasion as became aman who knew how to grasp an opportunity. "We stood off the whole Siouxnation over toward Crazy Woman's Fork. There were enough to cover thecountry, red and black, for a dozen miles. We sighted them yesterdayabout four o'clock and there were enough around us to eat us alive, butwe just threw out skirmish lines and marched steadily ahead, so theythought best not to bother us. They're shy of our breech loaders, damn'em! That's all that kept them at respectful distance."

  The major's face as he listened took on a puzzled, perturbed look. Hedid not wish to say anything that might reflect on the opinions of soinfluential a man as the depot quartermaster at Gate City, but it wasplain that there was a train of thought rumbling through his mind thatwould collide with Burleigh's column of events unless he were spared theneed of answering questions. "Let me tell you briefly what's happened,"he said. "Red Cloud and his whole band are out on the warpath. Theykilled two couriers, half-breeds, I sent out to find Thornton's troopthat was scouting the Dry Fork. The man we sent to find you and give youwarning hasn't got back at all. We've had double sentries for three daysand nights. The only souls to get in from the northwest since ourfellows were run back last night are old Folsom and Baptiste. Folsom hada talk with Red Cloud, and tried to induce him to turn back. He's besetwith the idea that the old villain is plotting a general massacre alongthe Big Horn. He looks like a ghost. He says if we had five thousandsoldiers up there there'd hardly be enough. You know the Sioux havesworn by him for years, and he thought he could coax Red Cloud to keepaway, but all the old villain would promise was to hold his young menback ten days or so until Folsom could get the general to order theWarrior Gap plan abandoned. If the troops are there Folsom says it's allup with them. Red Cloud can rally all the Northern tribes, and it's onlybecause of Folsom's influence, at least I fancy so--that--that theydidn't attack you."

  "Where is Folsom?" growled Burleigh, as he shook the powdery cloud fromhis linen duster and followed the major within his darkened door, whileother officers hospitably led the aid and engineer into the adjoininghut.

  "Gone right on to Frayne. The old fellow will wear himself out, I'mafraid. He says he must get in telegraphic communication with Omahabefore he's four days older. My heaven, man, it was a narrow squeak youhad! It's God's mercy Folsom saw Red Cloud before he saw you."

  "Oh, pshaw!" said the quartermaster, turning over a little packet ofletters awaiting him in the commanding officer's sanctum. "We could havegiven a good account of ourselves, I reckon. Brooks is down with fever,and young Dean got rattled, or something like it. He's new at thebusiness and easily scared, you know; so I practically had to takecommand. They'll be along in an hour or so, and--a word in your ear. IfBrooks has to remain on sick report you'd better put somebody in commandof that troop that's had--er--er--experience."

  The post commander looked genuinely troubled. "Why, Burleigh, we've alltaken quite a shine to Dean. I know the officers in his regiment think aheap of him; the seniors do, at least."

  But Burleigh, with big eyes, was glaring at a letter he had selected,opened, and was hurriedly reading. His face was yellowing again, underthe blister of sun and alkali.

  "What's amiss?" queried his friend. "Nothing wrong, I hope. Why,Burleigh, man! Here, let me help you!" he cried in alarm, for thequartermaster was sinking into a chair.

  "You can help me!" he gasped. "Get me fresh mules and escort. My God! Imust start for Frayne at once. Some whisky, please." And the letterdropped from his trembling hands and lay there unnoticed on the floor.