IIBILLY'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. Thelatter 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 trunkjust 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 ahogto 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.
"Fight?" said Billy, wondering. "Fight? Co'se not. Hank don't plundermenone. He jest ambles along an' helps himself, and leaves th' dust fer it every time. I jest lays low an' lets him operate. I never has nodealin'swith him, understand. He jest nat'rally waltzes in an' plants his grub-hooks on what he needs.Idon't know nothin' about it.I'mdead asleep."
He bestowed a shadowy wink on the stranger
Below, the outlaws moved here and there.
"Billy!" shouted a commanding voice, "Billy Knapp!"
The hotel-keeper looked perplexed.
"Now, what's he tollin'mefor?" he asked of the man by his side.
"Billy!" shouted the voice again, "come down here, you Siwash. I want to palaver with you!"
"All right, Hank," replied Billy.
He went to his "room," and buckled on a heavy belt; then descended the steep stairs. The bar-room was lighted and filled with men. Some of them were drinking and eating; others were strapping provisions into portable form. Against the corner of the bar a tall figure of a man leaned smoking—a man lithe, active, and muscular, with a keen dark face, and black eyebrows which met over his nose. Billy walked silently to this man.
"What is it?" he asked, shortly. "This yere ain't in th' agreement."
"I know that," replied the stranger.
"Then leave yore dust and vamoose."
"My dust is there," replied Black Hank, placing his hand on a buckskin bag at his side, "and you're paid, Billy Knapp. I want to ask you a question. Standing Rock has sent fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks to Spotted Tail. Themessenger went through here to-day. Have you seen him?"
"Nary messenger," replied Billy, in relief. "Stage goes empty."
Charley had crept down the stairs and into the room.
"What in hell are yo' doin' yere, yo' ranikaboo ijit?" inquired Billy, truculently.
"That thar stage ain't what you callsempty," observed Charley, unmoved.
A light broke on Billy's mind. He remarked the valise which the stranger had so carefully guarded; and though his common-sense told him that an inoffensive non-combatant such as his guest would hardly be chosen as express messenger, still the bare possibility remained.
"Yo're right," he agreed, carelessly, "thar is one tenderfoot, who knows as much of ridin' express as a pig does of a ruffled shirt."
"I notes he's almighty particular about that carpet-bag of his'n," insisted Charley.
The man against the counter had lost nothing of the scene. Billy's denial, his hesitation, his half-truth all looked suspicious to him. With one swift, round sweep of the arm he had Billy covered. Billy's hands shot over his head without the necessity of command.
The men ceased their occupations and gathered about. Scenes of this sort were too common to elicit comment or arouse excitement. They knew perfectly well thelaissez-fairerelations which obtained between the two Westerners.
"Now," said Black Hank, angrily, in a low tone, "I want to know why in hell you tried that monkey game!"
Billy, wary and unafraid, replied that he had tried no game, that he had forgotten the tenderfoot for the moment, and that he did not believe the latter would prove to be the sought-for express messenger.
One of the men, at a signal from his leader, relieved Billy's heavy belt of considerable weight. Then the latter was permitted to sit on a cracker-box. Two more mounted the stairs. In a moment they returned to report that the upper story contained no human beings, strange or otherwise, except the girl, but that there remained a small trunk. Under further orders, they dragged the trunk down into the bar-room. It was broken open and found to contain nothing but clothes—of the plainsman's cut, material, and state of wear; a neatly folded Mexican saddle showing use, and a raw-hide quirt.
"Hell of a tenderfoot!" said Black Hank, contemptuously.
The outlaws had already scattered outside to look for the trail. In this they were unsuccessful, reporting, indeed, that not the faintest sign indicated escape in any direction.
Billy knew his man. The tightening of Black Hank's close-knit brows meant but one thing. One does not gain chieftainship of any kind in the West without propping his ascendency with acts of ruthless decision. Billy leaped from his cracker-box with the suddenness of the puma, seized Black Hank firmly about the waist, whirled him into a sort of shield, and began an earnest struggle for the instant possession of the outlaw's drawn revolver. It was a gallant attempt, but an unsuccessful one. In a moment Billy was pinioned to the floor, and Black Hank was rubbing his abraded fore-arm. After that the only question was whether it should be rope or bullet.
Now, when Billy had gone downstairs, the stranger had wasted no further time at the window. He had in his possession fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks which he was to deliver as soon as possible to the Spotted Tail agency in Wyoming. The necessary change of stage lineshad forced him to stay over night at Billy Knapp's hotel.
The messenger seized his bag and softly ran along through the canvas-partitioned room wherein Billy slept, to a narrow window which he had already noticed gave out almost directly into the pine woods. The window was of oiled paper, and its catch baffled him. He knew it should slide back; but it refused to slide. He did not dare break the paper because of the crackling noise. A voice at his shoulder startled him.
"I'll show you," whispered the red-cheeked girl.
She was wrapped loosely in a blanket, her hair falling about her shoulders, and her bare feet showed beneath her coverings. The little man suffered at once an agony of embarrassment in which the thought of his errand was lost. It was recalled to him by the girl.
"There you are," she whispered, showing him the open window.
"Thank you," he stammered, painfully, "I assure you—I wish——"
The girl laughed under her breath.
"That's all right," she said, heartily, "I owe you that for calling old whiskers off his bronc," and she kissed him.
The messenger, trembling with self-consciousness, climbed hastily through the window; ran the broad loop of the satchel up his arm; and, instead of dropping to the ground, as the girl had expected, swung himself lightly into the branches of a rather large scrub-oak that grew near. She listened to the rustle of the leaves for a moment as he neared the trunk, and then, unable longer to restrain her curiosity in regard to the doings below, turned to the stairway.
As she did so, two men mounted. They examined the three rooms of the upper story hastily but carefully, paying scant attention to her, and departed swearing. In a few moments they returned for the stranger's trunk. Nell followed them down the stairs as far as the doorway. There she heard and saw things, and fled in bitter dismay to the back of the house when Billy Knapp was overpowered.
At the window she knelt, clasping her hands and sinking her head between her arms. Women in the West, at least women like Nell, do not weep. But she came near it. Suddenly she raised her head. A voice next her ear had addressed her.
She looked here and there and around, but could discover nothing.
"Here, outside," came the low, guarded voice, "in the tree."
Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred from his first alighting-place.
"Beg yore pardon, ma'am, fer startling you or fer addressing you at all, which I shouldn't, but——"
"Oh, never mind that," said the girl, impatiently, shaking back her hair. So deprecating and timid were the tones, that almost without an effort of the imagination she could picture the little man's blushes and his half-sidling method of delivery. At this supreme moment his littleness and lack of self-assertion jarred on her mood. "What're you doin' there? Thought you'd vamoosed."
"It was safer here," explained the stranger, "I left no trail."
She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of this.
"But, ma'am, I took the liberty of speakin' to you because you seems to be in trouble. Of course, I ain't got no right toask, an' if you don't care to tell me——"
"They're goin' to kill Billy," broke in Nell, with a sob.
"What for?"
"I don't jest rightly make out. They's after someone, and they thinks Billy's cacheing him. I reckon it's you. Billy ain't cacheing nothin', but they thinks he is."
"It's me they's after, all right. Now, you know where I am, why don't you tell them and save Billy?"
The girl started, but her keen Western mind saw the difficulty at once.
"They thinks Billy pertects you jest th' same."
"Do you love him?" asked the stranger.
"God knows I'm purty tough," confessed Nell, sobbing, "but I jest do that!" and she dropped her head again.
The invisible stranger in the gloom fell silent, considering.
"I'm a pretty rank proposition, myself," said he at last, as if to himself, "and I've got a job on hand which same I oughta put through without givin' attention to anything else. As a usual thing folks don't care fer me, and I don't care much fer folks. Women especial. They drives me plumb tired. I reckon I don't stack up very high in th' blue chips when it comes to cashin' in with the gentle sex, anyhow; but in general they gives me as much notice as they lavishes on a doodle-bug. I ain't kickin', you understand,nary bit; but onct in a dog's age I kind of hankers fer a decent look from one of 'em. I ain't never had no women-folks of my own, never. Sometimes I thinks it would be some scrumptious to know a little gal waitin' fer me somewhere. They ain't none. They never will be. I ain't built that way. You treated me white to-night. You're th' first woman that ever kissed me of her own accord."
The girl heard a faint scramble, then the softpatof someone landing on his feet. Peering from the window she made out a faint, shadowy form stealing around the corner of the hotel. She put her hand to her heart and listened. Her understanding of the stranger's motives was vague at best, but she had caught his confession that her kiss had meant much to him, and even in her anxiety she felt an inclination to laugh. She had bestowed that caress as she would have kissed the cold end of a dog's nose.
The men below stairs had, after some discussion, decided on bullet. This was out of consideration for Billy's standing as a frontiersman. Besides, he had stolen no horses. In order not to delay matters, the execution was fixed for the present time and place. Billy stood with his back to the logs of his own hotel, his hands and feetbound, but his eyes uncovered. He had never lost his nerve. In the short respite which preparation demanded, he told his opponents what he thought of them.
"Proud?" he concluded a long soliloquy as if to the reflector of the lamp. "Proud?" he repeated, reflectively. "This yere Hank's jest that proud he's all swelled up like a poisoned pup. Ain't everyone kin corall a man sleepin' and git fifty thousand without turnin' a hair."
Black Hank distributed three men to do the business. There were no heroics. The execution of this man was necessary to him, not because he was particularly angry over the escape of the messenger—he expected to capture that individual in due time—but in order to preserve his authority over his men. He was in the act of moving back to give the shooters room, when he heard behind him the door open and shut.
He turned. Before the door stood a small consumptive-looking man in a light check suit. The tenderfoot carried two short-barrelled Colt's revolvers, one of which he presented directly at Black Hank.
"'Nds up!" he commanded, sharply.
Hank was directly covered, so he obeyed. The new-comer's eye had a strangely restless quality.Of the other dozen inmates of the room, eleven were firmly convinced that the weapon and eye not directly levelled at their leader were personally concerned with themselves. The twelfth thought he saw his chance. To the bewildered onlookers there seemed to be a flash and a bang, instantaneous; then things were as before. One of the stranger's weapons still pointed at Black Hank's breast; the other at each of the rest. Only the twelfth man, he who had seen his chance, had collapsed forward to the floor. No one could assure himself positively that he had discerned the slightest motion on the part of the stranger.
"Now," said the latter, sharply, "one at a time, gentlemen. Drop yore gun," this last to Black Hank, "muzzle down. Drop it! Correct!"
One of the men in the back of the room stirred slightly on the ball of his foot.
"Steady, there!" warned the stranger. The man stiffened.
"Next gent," went on the little man, subtly indicating another. The latter obeyed without hesitation. "Next. Now you. Now you in th' corner."
One after another the pistols clattered to the floor. Not for an instant could a single inmateof the apartment, armed or unarmed, flatter himself that his slightest motion was unobserved. They were like tigers on the crouch, ready to spring the moment the man's guard lowered. It did not lower. The huddled figure on the floor reminded them of what might happen. They obeyed.
"Step back," commanded the stranger next. In a moment he had them standing in a row against the wall, rigid, upright, their hands over their heads. Then for the first time the stranger moved from his position by the door.
"Call her," he said to Billy, "th' girl."
Billy raised his voice. "Nell! Oh, Nell!"
In a moment she appeared in the doorway at the foot of the stairs, without hesitation or fear. When she perceived the state of affairs, she brightened almost mischievously.
"Would you jest as soon, ma'am, if it ain't troubling you too much, jest nat'rally sort of untie Billy?" requested the stranger.
She did so. The hotel-keeper stretched his arms.
"Now, pick up th' guns, please."
The two set about it.
"Where's that damn ol' reprobate?" inquired Billy, truculently, looking about for Charley.
The patriarch had quietly slipped away.
"You kin drop them hands," advised the stranger, lowering the muzzles of his weapons. The leader started to say something.
"You shut up!" said Billy, selecting his own weapons from the heap.
The stranger suddenly picked up one of the Colt's single-action revolvers which lay on the floor, and, holding the trigger back against the guard, exploded the six charges by hitting the hammer smartly with the palm of his hand. In the thrusting motion of this discharge he evidently had design, for the first six wine-glasses on Billy's bar were shivered. It was wonderful work, rattling fire, quicker than a self-cocker even. He selected another weapon. From a pile of tomato-cans he took one and tossed it into the air. Before it had fallen he had perforated it twice, and as it rolled along the floor he helped its progression by four more bullets which left streams of tomato-juice where they had hit. The room was full of smoke. The group watched, fascinated.
Then the men against the wall grew rigid. Out of the film of smoke long, vivid streams of fire flashed toward them, now right, now left, like the alternating steam of a locomotive's pistons.Smash, smash!Smash, smash! hit the bullets with regular thud. With the twelfth discharge the din ceased. Midway in the space between the heads of each pair of men against the wall was a round hole. No one was touched.
A silence fell. The smoke lightened and blew slowly through the open door. The horses, long since deserted by their guardians in favour of the excitement within, whinnied. The stranger dropped the smoking Colts, and quietly reproduced his own short-barrelled arms from his side-pockets, where he had thrust them. Billy broke the silence at last.
"That'sshootin'!" he observed, with a sigh.
"Them fifty thousand is outside," clicked the stranger. "Do you want them?"
There was no reply.
"I aims to pull out on one of these yere hosses of yours," said he. "Billy he's all straight. He doesn't know nothin' about me."
He collected the six-shooters from the floor.
"I jest takes these with me for a spell," he continued. "You'll find them, if you look hard enough, along on th' trail—also yore broncs."
He backed toward the door.
"I'm layin' fer th' man that sticks his head out that door," he warned.
"Stranger," said Black Hank as he neared the door.
The little man paused.
"Might I ask yore name?"
"My name is Alfred," replied the latter.
Black Hank looked chagrined.
"I've hearn tell of you," he acknowledged.
The stranger's eye ran over the room, and encountered that of the girl. He shrank into himself and blushed.
"Good-night," he said, hastily, and disappeared. A moment later the beat of hoofs became audible as he led the bunch of horses away.
For a time there was silence. Then Billy, "By God, Hank, I means to stand in with you, but you let that kid alone, or I plugs you!"
"Kid, huh!" grunted Hank. "Alfred a kid! I've hearn tell of him."
"What've you heard?" inquired the girl.
"He's th' plumb best scout on th' southern trail," replied Black Hank.
The year following, Billy Knapp, Alfred, and another man named Jim Buckley took across to the Hills the only wagon-train that dared set out that summer.
IIITHE TWO CARTRIDGES
This happened at the time Billy Knapp drove stage between Pierre and Deadwood. I think you can still see the stage in Buffalo Bill's show. Lest confusion arise and the reader be inclined to credit Billy with more years than are his due, it might be well also to mention that the period was some time after the summer he and Alfred and Jim Buckley had made their famous march with the only wagon-train that dared set out, and some time before Billy took to mining. Jim had already moved to Montana.
The journey from Pierre to Deadwood amounted to something. All day long the trail led up and down long grassy slopes, and across sweeping, intervening flats. While climbing the slopes, you could never get your experience to convince you that you were not, on topping the hill, about to overlook the entire country for miles around. This never happened; you saw no farther than the next roll of the prairie. Whilehurtling down the slopes, you saw the intervening flat as interminably broad and hot and breathless, or interminably broad and icy and full of arctic winds, according to the season of the year. Once in a dog's age you came to a straggling fringe of cottonwood-trees, indicating a creek bottom. The latter was either quite dry or in raging flood. Close under the hill huddled two buildings, half logs, half mud. There the horses were changed by strange men with steel glints in their eyes, like those you see under the brows of a north-country tug-boat captain. Passengers could there eat flap-jacks architecturally warranted to hold together against the most vigorous attack of the gastric juices, and drink green tea that tasted of tannin and really demanded for its proper accommodation porcelain-lined insides. It was not an inspiring trip.
Of course, Billy did not accompany the stage all of the way; only the last hundred miles; but the passengers did, and by the time they reached Billy they were usually heartily sick of their undertaking. Once a tenderfoot came through in the fall of the year, simply for the love of adventure. He got it.
"Driver," said he to Billy, as the brakes set for another plunge, "were you ever held up?"
Billy had been deluged with questions like this for the last two hours. Usually he looked straight in front of him, spat accurately between the tail of the wheel-horse and the whiffle-tree, and answered in monosyllables. The tenderfoot did not know that asking questions was not the way to induce Billy to talk.
"Held up?" replied Billy, with scorn. "Young feller, I is held up thirty-seven times in th' last year."
"Thunderation!" exclaimed the tenderfoot. "What do you do? Do you have much trouble getting away? Have you had much fighting?"
"Fight nothin'. I ain't hired to fight. I'm hired to drive stage."
"And you just let them go through you?" cried the tenderfoot.
Billy was stung by the contempt in the stranger's tone.
"Go through nothin'," he explained. "They isn't touchin'menone whatever. Put her down fer argument that I'm damn fool enough to sprinkle lead 'round some, and that I gets away. What happens? Nex' time I drives stage some of these yere agents massacrees me from behind a bush. Whar do I come in? Nary bit!"
The tenderfoot, struck by the logic of thisreasoning, fell silent. After an interval the sun set in a film of yellow light; then the afterglow followed; and finally the stars pricked out the true immensity of the prairies.
"He'sthe feller hired to fight," observed the shadowy Billy, jerking his thumb backward.
The tenderfoot now understood the silent, grim man who, unapproachable and solitary, had alone occupied the seat on top of the stage. Looking with more curiosity, the tenderfoot observed a shot-gun with abnormally short barrels, slung in two brass clips along the back of the seat in front of the messenger. The usual revolvers, too, were secured, instead of by the regulation holsters, in brass clips riveted to the belt, so that in case of necessity they could be snatched free with one forward sweep of the arm. The man met his gaze keenly.
"Them Hills ain't fur now," vouchsafed Billy, as a cold breeze from the west lifted the limp brim of his hat, and a film of cloud drew with uncanny and silent rapidity across the stars.
The tenderfoot had turned again to look at the messenger, who interested him exceedingly, when the stage came to a stop so violent as almost to throw him from his seat. He recovered his balance with difficulty. Billy, his foot bracedagainst the brake, was engaged in leisurely winding the reins around it.
"Hands up, I say!" cried a sharp voice from the darkness ahead.
"Meanin' you," observed Billy to the tenderfoot, at the same time thrusting his own over his head and settling down comfortably on the small of his back. "Time!" he called, facetiously, to the darkness.
As though at the signal the night split with the roar of buckshot, and splintered with the answering crackle of a six-shooter three times repeated. The screech of the brake had deceived the messenger as to the whereabouts of the voice. He had jumped to the ground on the wrong side of the stage, thus finding himself without protection against his opponent, who, firing at the flash of the shot-gun, had brought him to the ground.
The road-agent stepped confidently forward. "Billy," said he, pleasantly, "jest pitch me that box."
Billy climbed over the seat and dropped a heavy, iron-bound case to the ground. "Danged if I thinks anybodykingit Buck, thar," he remarked, in thoughtful reference to the messenger.
"Now, drive on," commanded the road-agent.
Three hours later Billy and the sobered tenderfoot pulled into Deadwood. Ten minutes taught the camp what had occurred.
Now, it must be premised that Deadwood had recently chosen a sheriff. He did not look much like a sheriff, for he was small and weak and bald, and most childlike as to expression of countenance. But when I tell you that his name was Alfred, you will know that it was all right. To him the community looked for initiative. It expected him to organise a posse, which would, of course, consist of every man in the place not otherwise urgently employed, and to enter upon instant pursuit. He did not.
"How many is they?" he asked of Billy.
"One lonesome one," replied the stage-driver.
"I plays her a lone hand," announced Alfred.
You see, Alfred knew well enough his own defects. He never could make plans when anybody else was near, but always instinctively took the second place. Then, when the other's scheme had fallen into ruins, he would construct a most excellent expedient from the wreck of it. In the case under consideration he preferred to arrange his own campaign, and therefore to work alone.
By that time men knew Alfred. They made no objection.
"Snowin'," observed one of the chronic visitors of the saloon door. There are always two or three of such in every Western gathering.
"One of you boys saddle my bronc," suddenly requested Alfred, and began to examine his firearms by the light of the saloon lamp.
"Yo' ain't aimin' to set out to-night?" they asked, incredulously.
"I am. Th' snow will make a good trail, but she'll be covered come mornin'."
So Alfred set out alone, at night, in a snowstorm, without the guidance of a solitary star, to find a single point in the vastness of the prairie.
He made the three hours of Billy and the tenderfoot in a little over an hour, because it was mostly down hill. So the agent had apparently four hours the start of him, which discrepancy was cut down, however, by the time consumed in breaking open the strong-box after Billy and the stage had surely departed beyond gunshot. The exact spot was easily marked by the body of Buck, the express messenger. Alfred convinced himself that the man was dead, but did not waste further time on him: the boys would take care of the remains next day. He remounted and struck out sharp for the east, though, according to Billy's statement, the agent had turned north.
"He is alone," said Alfred to himself, "so he ain't in that Black Hank outfit. Ain't nothin' to take him north, an' if he goes south he has to hit way down through the South Fork trail, which same takes him two weeks. Th' greenbacks in that plunder is numbered, and old Wells-Fargo has th' numbers. He sure has to pike in an' change them bills afore he is spotted. So he goes to Pierre."
Alfred staked his all on this reasoning and rode blindly eastward. Fortunately the roll of the country was sufficiently definite to enable him to keep his general direction well enough until about three o'clock, when the snow ceased and the stars came out, together with the waning moon. Twenty minutes later he came to the bed of a stream.
"Up or down?" queried Alfred, thoughtfully. The state of the weather decided him. It had been blowing all night strongly from the northwest. Left without guidance a pony tends to edge more or less away from the wind, in order to turn tail to the weather. Alfred had diligently counteracted this tendency all night, but he doubted whether, in the hurry of flight, the fugitive had thought of it. Instead of keeping directly east toward Pierre, he had probablyfallen away more or less toward the south. "Down," Alfred decided.
He dismounted from his horse and began to lead the animal parallel to the stream, but about two hundred yards from it, first taking care to ascertain that a little water flowed in the channel. On discovering that there did, he nodded his head in a satisfied manner.
"He doesn't leave no trail till she begins to snow," he argued, "an' he nat'rally doesn't expect no mud-turkles like me a followin' of him eastward.Consequentlyhe feeds when he strikes water. This yere is water."
All of which seemed satisfactory to Alfred. He walked on foot in order to discover the trail in the snow. He withdrew two hundred yards from the bank of the stream that his pony might not scent the other man's horse, and so give notice of approach by whinnying. After a time he came across the trail. So he left the pony and followed it to the creek-bottom on foot. At the top of the bluff he peered over cautiously.
"Well, you got nerve!" he remarked to himself. "If I was runnin' this yere game, I'd sure scout with my blinders off."
The fugitive evidently believed himself safe from pursuit, for he had made camp. His twoponies cropped browse and pawed for grass in the bottom land. He himself had prepared a warm niche and was sleeping in it with only one blanket over him, though by now the thermometer was well down toward zero. The affair had been simple. He had built a long, hot fire in the L of an upright ledge and the ground. When ready to sleep he had raked the fire three feet out from the angle, and had lain down on the heated ground between the fire and the ledge. His rifle and revolver lay where he could seize them at a moment's notice.
Alfred could stalk a deer, but he knew better than to attempt to stalk a man trained in the West. Instead, he worked himself into a protected position and carefully planted a Winchester bullet some six inches from the man's ear. The man woke up suddenly and made an instinctive grab toward his weapons.
"Drop it!" yelled Alfred.
So he dropped it, and lay like a rabbit in its form.
"Jest select that thar six-shooter by the end of the bar'l and hurl her from you some," advised the sheriff. "Now the Winchester. Now stand up an' let's look at you." The man obeyed. "Yo' don't really need that other gun, under th'circumstances," pursued the little man. "No, don't fetch her loose from the holster none; jest unbuckle th' whole outfit, belt and all. Good! Now, you freeze, and stay froze right whar you are."
So Alfred arose and scrambled down to the bottom.
"Good-mornin'," he observed, pleasantly.
He cast about him and discovered the man's lariat, which he picked up and overran with one hand until he had loosened the noose.
"You-all are some sizable," he remarked, in conversational tones, "an' like enough you eats me up, if I gets clost enough to tie you. Hands up!"
With a deft twist and flip he tossed the open noose over his prisoner's upheld wrists and jerked it tight.
"Thar you be," he observed, laying aside his rifle.
He loosened one of his revolvers suggestively and approached to tie the knot.
"Swing her down," he commanded. He contemplated the result. "Don't like that nohow—tied in front. Step through your hands a whole lot." The man hesitated. "Step, I say!" said Alfred, sharply, at the same time pricking the prisoner with his long knife.
The other contorted and twisted awkwardly, but finally managed to thrust first one foot, then the other, between his shackled wrists. Alfred bound together his elbows at the back.
"You'll do," he approved, cheerfully. "Now, we sees about grub."
Two flat stones placed a few inches apart improvised a stove when fire thrust its tongue from the crevice, and a frying-pan and tin-cup laid across the opening cooked the outlaw's provisions. Alfred hospitably ladled some bacon and coffee into their former owner.
"Not that I needs to," he observed, "but I'm jest that tender-hearted."
At the close of the meal, Alfred instituted a short and successful search for the plunder, which he found in the stranger's saddle-bag, open and unashamed.
"Yo're sure a tenderfoot at this game, stranger," commented the sheriff. "Thar is plenty abundance of spots to cache such plunder—like the linin' of yore saddle, or a holler horn. Has you any choice of cayuses for ridin'?" indicating the grazing ponies.
The man shook his head. He had maintained a lowering silence throughout all these cheerful proceedings.
Alfred and his prisoner finally mounted and rode northwest. As soon as they had scrambled up the precipitous side of the gully, the affair became a procession, with the stranger in front, and the stranger's second pony bringing up an obedient rear. Thus the robber was first to see a band of Sioux that topped a distant rise for a single instant. Of course, the Sioux saw him, too. He communicated this discovery to Alfred.
"Well," said Alfred, "they ain't hostile."
"These yere savages is plenty hostile," contradicted the stranger, "and don't you make no mistake thar. I jest nat'rally lifts that pinto offen them yisterday," and he jerked his thumb toward the black-and-white pony in the rear.
"And you camps!" cried Alfred, in pure astonishment. "You must be plumb locoed!"
"I ain't had no sleep in three nights," explained the other, in apology.
Alfred's opinion of the man rose at once.
"Yo' has plumb nerve to tackle a hold-up under them circumstances," he observed.
"I sets out to git that thar stage; and I gits her," replied the agent, doggedly.
The savages appeared on the next rise, barely a half-mile away, and headed straight for the two men.
"I reckon yere's where you takes a hand," remarked Alfred simply, and, riding alongside, he released the other's arms by a single slash of his knife. The man slipped from his horse and stretched his arms wide apart and up over his head in order to loosen his muscles. Alfred likewise dismounted. The two, without further parley, tied their horses' noses close to their front fetlocks, and sat down back to back on the surface of the prairie. Each was armed with one of the new 44-40 Winchesters, just out, and with a brace of Colt's revolvers, chambering the same-sized cartridge as the rifle.
"How you heeled?" inquired Alfred.
The stranger took stock.
"Fifty-two," he replied.
"Seventy for me," vouchsafed Alfred. "I goes plenty organised."
Each man spread a little semicircle of shells in front of him. At the command of the two, without reloading, were forty-eight shots.
When the Indians had approached to within about four hundred yards of the white men they paused. Alfred rose and held his hand toward them, palm outward, in the peace sign. His response was a shot and a chorus of yells.
"I tells you," commented the hold-up.
Alfred came back and sat down. The savages, one by one, broke away from the group and began to circle rapidly to the left in a constantly contracting spiral. They did a great deal of yelling. Occasionally they would shoot. To the latter feature the plainsmen lent an attentive ear, for to their trained senses each class of arm spoke with a different voice—the old muzzle-loader, the Remington, the long, heavy Sharp's 50, each proclaimed itself plainly. The mere bullets did not interest them in the least. Two men seated on the ground presented but a small mark to the Indians shooting uncleaned weapons from running horses at three or four hundred yards' range.
"That outfit is rank outsiders," concluded Alfred. "They ain't over a dozen britch-loaders in the lay-out."
"Betcher anything you say I drops one," offered the stranger, taking a knee-rest.
"Don't be so plumb fancy," advised Alfred, "but turn in and help."
He was satisfied with the present state of affairs, and was hacking at the frozen ground with his knife. The light snow on the ridge-tops had been almost entirely drifted away. The stranger obeyed.
On seeing the men thus employed, the Indians turned their horses directly toward the group and charged in. At the range of perhaps two hundred yards the Winchesters began to speak. Alfred fired twice and the stranger three times. Then the circle broke and divided and passed by, leaving an oval of untrodden ground.
"How many did you get?" inquired Alfred, with professional interest.
"Two," replied the man.
"Two here," supplemented Alfred.
A commotion, a squeal, a thrashing-about near at hand caused both to turn suddenly. The pinto pony was down and kicking. Alfred walked over and stuck him in the throat to save a cartridge.
"Move up, pardner," said he.
The other moved up. Thus the men became possessed of protection from one side. The Indians had vented a yell of rage when the pony had dropped. Now as each warrior approached a certain point in the circle, he threw his horse back on its haunches, so that in a short time the entire band was once more gathered in a group. Alfred and the outlaw knew that this manœuvre portended a more serious charge than the impromptu affair they had broken with such comparativeease. An Indian is extremely gregarious when it comes to open fighting. He gets a lot of encouragement out of yells, the patter of many ponies' hoofs, and the flutter of an abundance of feathers. Running in from the circumference of a circle is a bit too individual to suit his taste.
Also, the savages had by now taken the measure of their white opponents. They knew they had to deal with experience. Suspicion of this must have been aroused by the practised manner in which the men had hobbled their horses and had assumed the easiest posture of defence. The idea would have gained strength from their superior marksmanship; but it would have become absolute certainty from the small detail that, in all this hurl and rush of excitement, they had fired but five shots, and those at close range. It is difficult to refrain from banging away for general results when so many marks so loudly present themselves. It is equally fatal to do so. A few misses are a great encouragement to a savage, and seem to breed their like in subsequent shooting. They destroy your own coolness and confidence, and they excite the enemy an inch nearer to that dead-line of the lust of fighting, beyond which prudence gives place to the furyof killing. An Indian is the most cautious and wily of fighters before he goes mad: and the most terribly reckless after. In a few moments four of their number had passed to the happy hunting-grounds, and they were left, no nearer their prey, to contemplate the fact.
The tornado moved. It swept at the top jump of ponies used to the chase of the buffalo, as sudden and terrible and imminent as the loom of a black cloud on the wings of storm, and, like it, seeming to gather speed and awfulness as it rushed nearer. Each rider bent low over his pony's neck and shot—a hail of bullets, which, while most passed too high, nevertheless shrieked and spun through the volume of coarser sound. The ponies stretched their necks and opened their red mouths and made their little feet go with a rapidity that twinkled as bewilderingly as a picket-fence passing a train. And the light snow swirled and eddied behind them.
The two men behind the dead horse were not deceived by this excitement into rising to their knees. They realised that this was the critical point in the fight, and they shot hard and fast, concentrating all the energy of their souls into the steady glare of their eyes over the sights of the smoking rifles. In a moment the foremostwarrior was trying to leap his pony at the barrier before him, but the little animal refused the strange jump and shied to the left, cannoning and plunging into the stream of braves rushing in on that side. Into the confusion Alfred emptied the last two shots of his Winchester, and was fortunate enough merely to cripple a pony with one of them. The kicking, screaming, little beast interposed a momentary but effective barrier between the sheriff and his foes. A rattling fire from one of his six-shooters into the brown of the hesitating charge broke it. The self-induced excitement ebbed, and the Indians swerved and swept on by.
On the other side, the outlaw had also managed to kill a pony within a few feet of the impromptu breastwork, and, direct riding-down being thus prevented in front, he was lying stretched on his side, coolly letting off first one revolver then the other in the face of imminent ruin. Alfred's attentions, however, and the defection of the right wing, drove these savages, too, into flight. Miraculously, neither man was more than scratched, though their clothes and the ground about them showed the marks of bullets. Strangely enough, too, the outlaw's other pony stood unhurt at a little distance whither the rushof the charge had carried him. Alfred arose and drove him back. Then both men made a triangular breastwork of the two dead horses and their saddles.
"Cyan't do that more'n once," observed the outlaw, taking a long breath.
"They don't want her more'n once," replied Alfred, sagely.
The men tried to take score. This was not easy. Out of the hundred and twelve cartridges with which they had started the fight, there remained sixty-eight. That meant they had expended thirty-nine in the last charge alone. As near as they could make out, they had accounted for eight of the enemy, four in the mêlée just finished. Besides, there were a number of ponies down. At first glance this might seem like poor shooting. It was not. A rapidly moving figure is a difficult rifle-mark with the best of conditions. In this case the conditions would have rendered an Easterner incapable of hitting a feather pillow at three yards.
And now began the most terrible part of this terrible day. A dozen of the warriors dismounted, made a short circle to the left, and disappeared in a thin growth of dried grasses, old mulliens, and stunted, scattered brush barely sixinches high. There seemed hardly cover enough to hide a man, and yet the dozen were as completely swallowed up as though they had plunged beneath the waters of the sea. Only occasionally the top of a grass tuft or a greasewood shivered. It became the duty of Alfred and his companion to shoot suddenly and accurately at these motions. This was necessary in order to discourage the steady concealed advance of the dozen, who, when they had approached to within as few yards as their god of war would permit, purposed to rush in and finish their opponents out of hand. And that rush could never be stopped. The white men knew it perfectly well, so they set conscientiously to work with their handful of cartridges to convince the reds that it is not healthy to crawl along ridge-tops on an autumn day. Sundry outlying Indians, with ammunition to waste, took belly and knee rests and strengthened the thesis to the contrary.
The brisk fighting had warmed the contestants' blood. Now a cold wind penetrated through their woollens to the goose-flesh. It was impossible to judge of the effect of the shots, but both knew that the accuracy of their shooting was falling off. Clench his teeth as he would, hold his breath as steadfastly as he might, Alfred couldnot accomplish that steady, purposeful, unblinking pressure on the trigger so necessary to accuracy. In spite of himself, the rifle jerked ever so little to the right during the fall of the hammer. Soon he adopted the expedient of pulling it suddenly which is brilliant but uncertain. The ground was very cold. Before long both men would have felt inclined to risk everything for the sake of a little blood-stimulating tramp back and forth. The danger did not deter them. Only the plainsman's ingrained horror of throwing away a chance held them, shivering pitiably, to their places.
Still they managed to keep the dozen at a wary distance, and even, they suspected, to hit some. This was the Indians' game—to watch; to wait; to lie with infinite patience; to hitch nearer a yard, a foot, an inch even; and then to seize with the swiftness of the eagle's swoop an opportunity which the smallest imprudence, fruit of weariness, might offer. One by one the precious cartridges spit, and fell from the breech-blocks empty and useless. And still the tufts of grass wavered a little nearer.
"I wish t' hell, stranger, you-all hadn't edged off south," chattered Alfred. "We'd be nearer th' Pierre trail."
"I'm puttin' in my spare wishin' on them Injins," shivered the other; "I sure hopes they aims to make a break pretty quick; I'm near froze."
About two o'clock the sun came out and the wind died. Though its rays were feeble at that time of year, their contrast with the bleakness that had prevailed during the morning threw a perceptible warmth into the crouching men. Alfred succeeded, too, in wriggling a morsel of raw bacon from the pack, which the two men shared. But the cartridges were running very low.
"We establishes a dead-line," suggested Alfred. "S' long as they slinks beyond yonder greasewood, they lurks in safety. Plug 'em this side of her."
"C'rrect," agreed the stranger.
This brought them a season of comparative quiet. They even made out to smoke, and so were happy. Over near the hill the body of Indians had gone into camp and were taking it easy. The job of wiping out these troublesome whites had been sublet, and they wasted no further anxiety over the affair. This indifference irritated the outlaw exceedingly.
"Damn siwashes!" he grumbled.
"Look out!" warned Alfred.
The dead-line was overpassed. Swaying tufts of vegetation marked the rapid passage of eel-like bodies. The Indians had decided on an advance, being encouraged probably by the latter inaccuracy of the plainsmen's fire. Besides, the day was waning. It was no cat-and-mouse game now; but a rush, like the other except that all but the last twenty or thirty yards would be made under cover. The besieged turned their attention to it. Over on the hill the bucks had arisen from their little fires of buffalo chips, and were watching. On the summit of the farther ridge rode silhouetted sentinels.
Alfred selected a tuft and fired just ahead of it. Acrackat his side indicated that the stranger, too, had gone to work. It was a discouraging and nervous business. The shooter could never tell whether or not he had hit. The only thing he was sure of was that the line was wriggling nearer and nearer. He felt something as though he were shooting at a man with blank cartridges. This test of nerve was probably the most severe of the fight.
But it was successfully withstood. Alfred felt a degree of steadiness return to him with the excitement and the change of weather. The Winchester spat as carefully as before. Suddenly itcould no longer be doubted that the line was beginning to hesitate. The outlaw saw it, too.
"Give it to 'em good!" he cried.
Both men shot, and then again.
The line wavered.
"Two more shots will stop 'em!" cried the road-agent, and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked against an empty chamber.
"I'm done!" he cried, hopelessly. His cartridges were gone.
Alfred laid his own Winchester on the ground, turned over on his back, and puffed a cloud of smoke straight up toward the sky.
"Me, too," said he.
The cessation of the shooting had put an end to the Indians' uncertainty. Another moment would bring them knowledge of the state of affairs.
"Don't get much outen my scalp, anyway," said Alfred, uncovering his bald head.
The sentinel on the distant ridge was riding his pony in short-looped circles and waving a blanket in a peculiar way above his head. From the grass nine Indians arose, stooped, and scuttled off like a covey of running quail. Over by the fires warriors were leaping on their ponies, and some were leading other ponies in the directionof the nine. An air of furtive but urgent haste characterised all these movements. Alfred lent an attentive ear.
"Seems a whole lot like a rescue," he remarked, quietly. "I reckon th' boys been followin' of my trail."
The stranger paused in the act of unhobbling the one remaining pony. In the distance, faintly, could be heard cheers and shots intended as encouragement.
"They's comin' on th' jump," said Alfred.
By this time the stranger had unfastened the horse.
"I reckon we quits," said he, mounting; "I jest nat'rally takes this bronc, because I needs him more'n you do. So long. I may 's well confide that I'm feelin' some glad jest now that them Injins comes along."
And then his pony fell in a heap, and began to kick up dirt and to snort blood.
"I got another, so you just subside a lot," commanded Alfred, recocking his six-shooter.
The stranger lay staring at him in astonishment.
"Thought you was busted on catridges!" he cried.
"You-all may as well know," snapped Alfred,"that's long as I'm an officer of this yere district, I'm a sheriff first and an Injin-fighter afterward."
"What the hell!" wondered the road-agent, still in a daze.
"Them's th' two catridges that would have stopped 'em," said Alfred.