CHAPTER IX
The foray of the Indians at the Spider Water Bridge proved, as BobScott had feared, only a forerunner of active hostilities. Casementhad already taken all necessary measures of defence. His constructioncamp was moved steadily westward, though sometimes inside the picketlines of troops, despite the warring Indians and the difficulties ofhis situation. Alarms, however, were continual and the graders, manyof whom were old soldiers, worked at all times with their musketsstacked on the dump beside them. In the construction camp Bucks sawalso many negroes, and at night the camp-fires of their quarters werealive with the singing and dancing of the old plantation life in theSouth.
While waiting for Stanley's inspection of the grading and track-laying,Bucks relieved at times the camp operator, whose principal businesswas the rushing of emphatic demands to Omaha for material andsupplies.
During other intervals Bucks found a chance to study the system thatunderlay the seemingly hopeless confusion of the construction work.The engineers moving far in advance had located the line, andfollowing these came the graders and bridge- and culvert-builders,cutting through the hills, levelling the fills, and spanning thestreams and water-ways with trestles and wooden bridges, miles inadvance of the main army. Behind these came Casement's own big campwith the tiemen, the track-layers, and the ballast gangs.
Every Eastern market was drawn upon for materials, and when thesereached Omaha, trains loaded with them were constantly pushed to thefront. The chief spiker of the rail gang, taking a fancy to Bucks,invited him to go out with the rail-layers one day, and Bucks took atemporary commission as spike-dropper.
To do this, he followed Dancing up the track past a long constructiontrain in which the men lived. The big box-cars contained sleeping-bunks,and those men who preferred more air and seclusion had swungsleeping-hammocks under the cars; others had spread their beds on topof the cars. Climbing a little embankment, Bucks watched the sturdy,broad-shouldered pioneers. A light car drawn by a single, gallopinghorse was rushed to the extreme end of the laid rails. Before it hadfairly stopped, two men waiting on either side seized the end of a railwith their trap and started forward. Ten more men, following in twos, ata run, lifted the two rails clear of the car and dropped them in place onthe ties. The foreman instantly gauged them, the horse moved ahead, andthirty spikers armed with heavy mauls drove the spikes furiously andregularly, three strokes to the spike, into the new-laid ties. Thebolters followed with the fish-plates, and while Bucks looked therailroad was made before his eyes.
The excitement of the scene was unforgettable. In less than sixtyseconds four rails had gone down. The moment a horse-car was emptiedit was dumped off one side of the track, and a loaded car with itshorse galloping to the front had passed it. The next instant the"empty" was lifted back on the rails, and at the end of a sixty-footrope the horse, ridden by a hustling boy, was being urged back towhere the rails were transferred from the regular flat cars. The clangof the heavy iron, the continuous ring of the spike mauls, theshouting of the orders, the throwing of each empty horse-car from thetrack to make way for a loaded one, these things were all new andstimulating to Bucks. The chief spiker laughed when the young operatortold him how fine it was. He asked Bucks to look at his watch and timethe work. In half an hour Bucks looked at his watch again. In theinterval the gang had laid eight hundred feet of track.
"I don't see how you can work so fast," declared Bucks.
"Do you know how many times," demanded the spiker, "those sledges haveto swing? There are eighteen ties and thirty-six spikes to every rail,three hundred and fifty-two rails to every mile, and eighteen hundredmiles from Omaha to San Francisco--those sledges will swingsixty-eight million times before the rails are full-spiked--they haveto go fast."
The words were hardly out of the chief spiker's mouth when a cry ofalarm rang from the front. Bucks, looking eagerly, saw in the west acloud of dust. At the same time he saw the tie gang running in dozensfor their lives from the divide where they were working toward thecamp. The men beyond them on the grade had scrambled into the wagons,dumped any ties they might contain helter-skelter to the ground, andwere clinging to the wagon boxes. In these, the drivers standing up,lashed their horses with whip and line for life, and death, whileeverywhere beside and behind them other men on foot were racing backto safety.
New clouds of dust rose along the grade from the flying wagon wheels,the horses tore madly on, and as the heavy wagons jolted over theloose stones, the fugitives, yelling with excitement and alarm andclinging to one another as they bounced up and down, looked anxiouslybehind.
There was no uncertainty as to the cause of the panic. "Indians!" wasthe cry everywhere. Every man in camp had dropped his workingimplement and was moving somewhere on the double-quick. Every one, itseemed to Bucks, was shouting and running. But above the confusion ofthe surprise and the babel of voices, Bucks heard the sharp tones ofJack Casement giving orders.
The old soldiers in the working gang needed no further discipline. Thetimid and the skulkers scurried for the box-cars and the dugouts. Onthe other hand, the soldiers ran for the dumps where the arms werestacked, and seizing their muskets hurried back and, trained for theemergency, fell into line under their foremen.
Casement, musket in hand, taking the largest company of men as theyformed in fours behind him, started forward at the double-quick,yelling now for the moral effect, to protect the retreat of thewagons. The men, scattering as they reached the edge of the camp,dropped into every spot of shelter, and at the same moment Stanley,mounted and alive with the vim and fire of the soldier, led a smallerbody of men rapidly back to guard the rear of the camp, deploying hislittle force about the box-cars and flat cars as they hastened on. Inan instant the construction camp had become a fortress defended by athousand men.
It was none too soon. Stirring the yellow plain with the fury of awhirlwind, a band of Sioux warriors rode the fleeing railroadersfuriously down. They appeared phantom-like out of every slip andcanyon, and rode full-panoplied from behind every hill. The horizonthat had shown five minutes before only the burning sunshine and thedull glare of the alkali sinks, danced now with the flying ponies ofthe Indians, and the hills echoed with ominous cries.
Without a word of warning, the few fleeing men who had been workingtoo far from camp to reach it in safety were mercilessly cut down.Their comrades under arms, with an answering cry of defiance poured avolley of cartridge balls into the thin, black circle that rode evercloser and closer to the muzzles of the muskets. Jack Casement and hisbrother Dan recklessly urged their men to the most advanced posts ofdefence, and from behind scrapers, wagons, flat cars, and friendlyhillocks the railroad men poured a galling fire into their activefoe.
The Indians, seeking with unerring instinct the weakest point in thedefence, converged in hundreds upon the long string of box-cars thatmade up the construction train at the rear of the camp, where Stanley,extending his few men in a resolute skirmish line, endeavored toprevent the savages from scalping the non-combatant cooks and burningthe sleeping-cars. Bucks saw, conspicuous in the attack, a slenderSioux chief riding a strong-limbed, fleet pony with a coat ofburnished gold and as much filled with the fire of the fight as hismaster was. Riding hither and thither and swinging a long, heavymusket like a marshal's baton, the Sioux warrior, almost everywhere atonce, urged his men to the fighting, and the fate of the few white menthey were able to cut down or scalp before Stanley could cover theline of box-cars seemed to add vigor to their onslaught.
Stanley himself, attacked by ten braves for every man he could musterat that point with a gun, dashed up and down the old wagon roads alongthe right of way, a conspicuous target for the Indians. His hat, inthe melee, had disappeared, and, swinging a heavy Colt's revolver,which the Indians shrank from with a healthy instinct of danger, hepressed back the hungry red line again and again, supported only bysuch musketry fire as the men crouching under, within, and between thebox-cars could offer.
Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, b
ut they closed inconstantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows,succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose fromthe circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. Stanley, wheeling likea flash, gave chase to the incendiary. The Sioux rode for his life,but his pony's pace was no match for the springing strides ofStanley's American horse.
For an instant the attention of the whole fight in the rear of thecamp was drawn upon the rash brave and his pursuer. Bucks, withstraining eyes and beating heart, awaited the result. He saw Stanleysteadily closing the gap that separated him from his fleeing enemy.Then the revolver was thrown suddenly upward and forward, and smokeflashed from the muzzle. The echo of the report had hardly reachedBucks's ears when the revolver, swung high again to balance the rhythmof the horse's flight, was fired again, and a third time, at thedoomed man.
The Indian, bending forward on his horse, caught convulsively at hismane, then rising high in his seat plunged head-foremost to theground, and his riderless horse fled on. His pursuer, wheeling, threwhimself flat in his saddle to escape the fire bent upon him frombehind as he rode back. At that moment Dan Casement and his menhurried up on the double-quick. With him came Bucks, who had secured arifle and fallen in. Some men of the welcome reinforcement were set atputting out the fire. Others strengthened Stanley's scattered skirmishline.
Convinced by the determined front now opposed to him of theimpossibility of rushing the camp, the Sioux chief gave the signal toretire.
As if the earth had opened to swallow them up, the warriors meltedaway, and as suddenly as the plain had borne them into life it nowconcealed their disappearance. In twenty minutes they had come andgone as completely as if they had never been. But in that shortinterval they had left death and consternation in their wake.