CHAPTER XVI.
A GOOD SHOT--THE WHITE HORSE--APPROACHING HELP--ONLY A FLEA-BITE--A SHOUT OF JOY--RAISING THE SIEGE--AN INDIAN PANIC--THE PURSUIT--RECOVERING MY SENSES--FOR THE LAST TIME--A BEAD AND NO POWDER--BARE FEET AND THE SHARP "SHALE"--HEROIC SELF-SACRIFICE--A RAPID AND DASHING RESCUE.
The hour of suspense which followed their having left the camp, wasterrible. Every moment of it passed so slowly, that it appeared to bewinged with lead. Each instant we were expecting to hear the crack offire-arms, or the sound of a fierce struggle--not for life, but death.As the minutes passed slowly away, at length we began to realize thefact that they might have succeeded in passing undetected through themidst of the slumbering Indians. This belief gradually ripened into apositive certainty.
Brighton Bill was the first of us who found sufficient hardihood to givevoice to this. Bringing down his hand with a ringing slap upon histhigh, he blurted out:
"May H'i be blamed, hif pluck don't pay hafter h'all. The boys haresafe."
"I'll bet they are," said Stanaford with a round oath. "The red skunkshaven't nabbed 'em."
And so, that night, for the first time in three days, I was able to getsome few hours of slumber, and woke with something akin to hope stirringin my bosom.
This day the Indians conducted themselves much as they had before done.We, however, were more prudent, and wasted no more ammunition save whenwe were sure of one of them. They, also, when they saw this, grew morecautious. Possibly, they were reasoning on our condition from the samestand-point we did ourselves. Seeing we wasted no more powder, they wereprobably reckoning that it was getting smaller in quantity, and thoughtit useless to run any more risk, until we were starved into making adash for the open.
About the middle of the day, however, they began to tire of waiting.
A party of them would ride from their camp, and endeavor, by insultinggestures and exclamations of derision, to induce us to come out. Thiswas always out of rifle-range. At length one of them, more daring thanthe rest, approached us within a hundred yards, and repeated theirtaunts. Stanaford, who was near me, said:
"I'll pick that red devil off, anyhow."
No sooner had he said this, than he dropped his cheek to his rifle, andin another moment the Bannock fell from his horse. Scarcely had he seenthe Indian tumble, than, dropping his gun, he leapt out of the trench,in whose cover he was lying, singing out as he did so:
"I'll have his darned hair."
Jennings and the rest of us shouted for him to come back. This was of nouse. He had reached the dead Indian and scalped him, before the otherBannocks realized what he was doing.
One of them, who was mounted on a beautiful white horse, and whom we hadnoticed on the preceding day, with a fancy that he must be someprominent chief, rushed towards Stanaford. Dropping on my knee, I wastaking dead aim, when Jennings sang out:
"Hold on! Let me have a shot at him."
"Don't you be ha blamed fool!" roared out Brighton Bill. "H'if the Capdon't 'it 'im, you can take my wig." Then he added, "D'idn't Hi say so?"
The last question was caused by the chief's falling backward anddropping to the ground, while his horse made straight for our camp. LikeStanaford, I was bound to take his scalp, and ran to get it. This was,nevertheless, close work. We had been right in imagining the fallenbrave to be a chief. Almost as soon as he had dropped, and I was inclear view, some dozen or more of the red-skins made a rush for me.
Had they been a moment speedier, I should have exchanged my own hair forthat I had taken.
The loss of their chief seemed to have excited them almost to madness.Every few minutes they would dash at us, shaking their clinched hands,brandishing their rifles, and yelling out taunts, which we were unableto comprehend, save from the beastly gestures with which they wereaccompanied. Their latter experience of our skill as marksmen,nevertheless, prevented them from getting within range of our guns.
The afternoon was rapidly passing away, when Arnold called my attentionto some dust in the east. It was moving rapidly down the side of a smallhill.
"White help!" he curtly said.
"Please Heaven! it may be, Hank!" I answered, as I watched theapproaching cloud intently.
In a few moments, we were able to detect the forms of some fourteenhorsemen coming straight toward us, at a rapid rate.
"They are a mere flea-bite for the red devils," he exclaimed,querulously. "However, we may make a better show, with them to help us."
The whole of our companions were now watching them, as also were theIndians, who commenced a movement, from our right and left, towards theapproaching party.
"We must go to their assistance," I said to Harry.
"H'in course we must," cried Brighton Bill, making a step to the spotwhere our horses were.
"See!" cried Arnold, with a shout of irrepressible joy, "the red skunksare trapped."
When he uttered this, he pointed to one side of the knoll. At the sameinstant, Stanaford grasped my shoulder and called my attention to theother. Our attention had hitherto been so engrossed by the approach ofthis party, that we had not detected the advance upon either side, oftwo much larger bodies. These reckoned, as we subsequently learned, morethan two hundred each. Gardner and Jasper had done their work well, anddeserved all gratitude for the courage and speed with which they hadcarried through the work they had entered upon.
Moreover, the attention of the Bannocks had been engrossed with theapproach of that party of our fellow-countrymen which I had, the verymoment before, in company with Harry Arnold, noticed.
When they heard the rolling thunder of our shout of joy, and knew thatwe were mounting our horses, they gazed round upon either side. In aninstant, they became aware of the manner in which they had been trapped.There was a moment of hurried consultation. After this, they seemed tobe stricken with perfect dismay. The presence of our friends had smittenthem with a thorough panic. A telling volley had been poured in upontheir shrinking figures, when we charged upon them.
It was with the yell of a band of tigers.
Shouting, clubbing, striking, and stabbing, we broke in, upon all wecame across.
For the time, we were in a complete delirium of savage rage. So much so,indeed, that no incident of the struggle can be in any way recalled byme, for the next two hours.
At the close of these, my recollection had come back. I was far to thenorth of our camping-ground. Noon was waning into evening. The blue skyof the morning was seamed and blurred with rushing cloud. The horse Iwas mounted on was urged by me, in a headlong chase, after two flyingfigures. In the commencing shadow of the evening, I was enabled to seethat they were Indians.
Did I not recognize one of them?
What if I did do so? Was I not maddened with the long siege I hadendured? Was I not wild from my lengthy imprisonment on the mound, andeager upon the work of death? Suddenly, one of their horses stumbled andfell. Its rider was thrown under the body of the fallen animal. With awild scream of delight, I urged my own steed up to them.
When I did so, the other Indian had dismounted, and was standing betweenme and the fallen red-skin, in a queenly and defiant posture.
It was a Mahala.
"The white chief has killed the husband of Clo-ke-ta. Let him now, if hewills it, take the life of her father."
Par-a-wau was stretched upon the dry earth, crushed under the motionlessbody of the animal he had been riding.
For a moment, I gazed upon the two. My brain seemed to whirl in a wilddance, as I did this. Then it was stilled, and, without a word of reply,I leapt from the back of my horse. With some little difficulty Iextracted the Cheyenne chief from beneath the dead body of the animal hehad been mounted upon. The gallant little beast had been stricken,earlier, by one of our balls. It had passed through its hind quarter.Yet, in spite of the loss of blood and the weakness gradually growing onit from this, it had carried the Cheyenne thus far.
Although bruised severely by the fall, when I raised him, Par-a-wau wasab
le to stand erect.
Neither of us spoke.
He, very evidently, supposed that it was my intention to make him aprisoner. In all probability, he had too much Indian pride to make anyentreaty. Very possibly, he believed white blood might run in as hardveins as that of the red-skin. I led my own horse toward him.
"Will Par-a-wau mount the horse of his brother?"
Without a word of answer, he obeyed me. Then, I raised his rifle, whichwas still upon the ground, and placed it in his hands.
After this, I turned to the Mahala. She had been standing motionless,watching every movement which I had made. Touching her widowed brow withmy parched lips, dry and smeared as they were with the grime of battle,I lifted her into the saddle of her pony, which had been standing nearus, saying:
"Clo-ke-ta will sometimes think of the brother who has never forgottenher!"
As I quitted her side, I heard the same cry of anguish, which had beenuttered by her, when I refused to obey her counsel and fly from the menwith whom my lot was at the moment cast. My heart throbbed fiercely, yetI would not turn to her. Haply, she was thinking of the husband whom Ihad slain--perchance, she may momentarily have recalled the long-quelleddream of her youth. What was it to me what she was thinking of?Resolutely, I commenced my return.
In a few seconds after, I heard the tramp of the horse which had borneme, as well as that upon which I had placed Clo-ke-ta, ringing upon theplain behind me. Par-a-wau had breathed a few words to his daughter, asshe passed from my hearing, in their own tongue. It almost seemed to me,as though a portion of my life had been torn from me.
Treading rapidly along the plain, I was buried in the mingled gloom ofthe present and the past.
Yes! This was the end. My hand had widowed the woman, for whom I hadonce been so sorely tempted to forswear civilization.
In spite of the excitement of the last few hours, my thoughts were forthe moment with the past, when they were suddenly brought back by avoice, whose tones I had recently become more than well acquainted with.They were characterized by a somewhat coarse and insolent surprise.
"Wall! I swar, if this don't beat all. It's Buckskin Mose."
This exclamation was followed by the heartier and more energeticutterance of Brighton Bill.
"Hi'm blamed, Cap, hif you weren't lucky; we 'adn't no more powder."
"Whar's yer horse?"
"May Hi be blamed hif h'it hain't nabbed by them thieving Hingins.Nare' a matter, Mose; 'ang me hif Hi don't get h'it back for you."
Bill's horse was already plunging by me, when my grasp was on itsbridle.
"You won't, Bill!"
"What d' you mean?"
"What I say!"
Jennings, the man who had been with Bill when the two had caught sightof me, was already some ten yards from the place where I was standing.
"Come back!"
Glancing over his shoulder at me, he saw me drawing a bead upon him. Notknowing I also was out of powder as well as himself, he thought it bestto pull in and return, swearing at what he considered my stupidity. Theopinion of Brighton Bill was, however, of greater importance in myestimation. This, the more especially, when I found out he evidently hadsettled my conduct as an undoubted example of temporary insanity. At anyrate, I saw him, when he fancied my glance was turned away, looking atJennings, and touching his forehead in a very significant manner.
"What are you thinking of, Bill?" I asked him, suddenly.
"Nothing, Cap! Hi'll be blamed hif Hi am. H'only hit's queer."
And so, I can scarcely doubt, it seemed to him. Returning to the camp onfoot, I neither explained in what way I had lost my horse--whether ithad been shot, stolen, or run away. Nor did I in any way allude to myshare in the battle. My questions were, however, numerous enough duringour return. The Bannocks had, indeed, been completely routed. SavingColonel Connor's defeat of the Indians on Bear River, it was the mostterrible defeat the red-skins had met with, since I had taken up myresidence in this portion of the country. As I afterwards learned, somefour hundred of them had been slain, and almost as large a number ofhorses had been captured.
By the bye, I may mention that the white animal previously mentioned,subsequently was known as one of the fleetest race-horses in all Idaho.
On our way back to Boice City, the party who had come to our rescuerelated to us the adventures and sufferings of the two brave fellows whohad succeeded in carrying them intelligence of our position.
After quitting the knoll upon which we were besieged they had commencedtheir stealthy advance through the Indian lines, crawling flatly uponthe earth, like a serpent. Each of them had taken a different direction.Frequently they passed close to a slumbering Indian. But for the gravenecessity which imposed every precaution upon him to avoid detection,Gardner said more than once, he was tempted to knife some of the reddevils, who had reduced him and the rest of us to so sore a strait.However, feeling that if he did so the struggle he might possibly causewould rouse the camp, he had wisely enough refrained from doing so.
After they had passed their enemies and were some mile or more beyondthem, each rose to his feet.
Jasper had followed a small creek for some distance, and then struckacross the rock and shale of the mountains until he reached Boice City.His body was scratched and cut by the brush he had stricken against inthe commencement of the route, while the flesh had been actually tornfrom his feet by the jagged shale he had passed over. When he arrivedin the city, those who first saw him fancied he had just made his escapefrom the Indians, who had been amusing themselves by torturing him.Gardner had struck in a more northerly direction for Idaho City. His wayhad been nearly as bad, and he was almost dead when he arrived there. Itshould be mentioned that the former of these two unrecorded heroes diedwithin a short time, after reaching Boice City. He had, voluntarily, asGardner had also done, exposed himself to the almost sure risk of death,on behalf of his companions. Peace be with the gallant fellow, in thatlong sleep, for which we shed tears of blood!
No sooner had his information been given than Jake Jordan leapt upon hishorse, and stopping at every house, called for volunteers. Every horsewas placed in requisition. They were even taken from the teams that werestanding in the main street, and mounted by those who were eager to jointhe expedition, whether their owners or not.
A well-equipped party soon after came in from Idaho City, and joinedthem.
When everything was in readiness, and not a moment had been lost bythem, they placed themselves under the command of Jordan, and took theroad. Nor did they slacken rein, even for an instant, until they had sobravely opened the doors of the trap into which we had unfortunatelyfallen. It was one of the most rapid and dashing rescues I ever rememberin the West, and does infinite credit to him who carried it through, inevery particular, with such complete success.