CHAPTER XXXIII.TICKLISH WORK.
Instead of hastening immediately toward Ramsey’s camp after leaving Red Hand, Buffalo Bill rode but a short distance in that direction. Then he brought his horse to a stop, and sat for some time in his saddle, listening and cogitating.
His sympathies had been aroused for Red Hand, and he believed in the man. Not often did Buffalo Bill go amiss in his judgment of men; yet in a few instances he had made mistakes in his opinions of certain individuals. The life of Red Hand was hidden in mystery. No one seemed to know his past or anything much about him.
“I think he is all right,” thought the scout, “but it is never safe to be too sure. I think that girl is all right, too; but even there I may be mistaken. The only way to be absolutely sure is to make sure! I can’t make sure of Red Hand just now, but perhaps I can find out something certain about the intentions of those Indians.”
Having thus come to a conclusion, he turned the horse softly from the trail, and in a little while was shaping his course toward the Indian village. The moon still shone brilliantly, and in that clear atmosphere moonlight sometimes is marvelously bright. The scout could see for a considerable distance in every direction.
While this brightness of the night had been favorable to him in the events which had recently transpired,it promised to make extremely difficult and ticklish the task to which he was now setting his energies. When the scout had ridden as far as he thought it safe to go, he dismounted, and after tying his horse to the swinging bough of a tree, he went forward softly on foot. As he approached the Indian village he heard droning sounds and the thump of drums.
“A bad sign,” he said to himself. “It is queer that whenever Indians meditate war they must work themselves up to a fighting pitch by a lot of dancing and howling.”
The Indian village was all astir, as he discovered when he came in sight of it. There were lights in many of the lodges, and in the council house, which was the largest lodge, and pitched in the center of the village.
The droning sound had now revealed itself as the singing and chanting of warriors and medicine men, and the thump of the drums reached the scout with great distinctness.
Because of the brightness of the moonlight, Buffalo Bill assumed a stooping posture as he crept forward, and a little later he got flat down on the ground and crept on with the litheness and softness of the panther stealing on its prey.
Not a leaf rustled under him as he thus stole forward, not a twig snapped; his advance was like the forward movement of a shadow, so silent was it. Buffalo Bill was no ordinary scout, no ordinary trailer, no ordinary Indian fighter. He could out-Indian an Indian himself in all the tricks of Indian warfare.
Now and then, when an Indian figure appearedat an opening in a lodge or hurried along through the moonlight, the scout simply “froze” in his place; and, if seen would then have been thought to be a mere shadow or some prominence in the landscape, a stone or a bit of elevated earth.
When the Indian had disappeared, the scout wriggled on again. Thus by progress that was slow and annoying, or would have been annoying to almost any other man, Buffalo Bill drew close to the Indian village.
In a short while after reaching it he was squirming along behind the lodges, seeking concealment in their shadows. Always he headed toward the central lodge, where the drums were thumping and the braves were howling.
What Buffalo Bill feared most was that some mangy cur, of which numbers are always found in every Indian village, should scent him out and raise a clatter which would bring some of the Indians down upon him.
As if to be prepared for this, or to guard against it, when he had advanced a short distance he drew his knife from its case at his belt and held it in his teeth, ready for instant use.
Lying flat in the shadow of a lodge, and looking out into the bright moonlight which lay before him, and seeing how difficult his advance from that point would be, the scout thought of an expedient which he had more than once used on a similar errand.
The lodge was apparently deserted, the inmates having taken themselves to other lodges for purposes of talk, or to the council house. Lifting the skin flap of the lodge, Buffalo Bill peered into the darkinterior. It was perfectly silent, and believing it to be quite deserted for the time, he crawled in, dropping the skin covering into place behind him.
Having gained entrance to the lodge, the scout lay quietly for a time, listening and getting his bearings. Then he moved forward until his hands came in contact with a blanket. This he appropriated, then began to feel about for some other article that would be useful. At length his hand fell on a feathered Indian headdress.
“Just the thing,” was his thought; and he took that also. “Now if I only knew where to look for this warrior’s paint box, I could soon turn myself into a pretty fair specimen of redskin.”
But, though the scout felt about in the gloom of the lodge for some time, his hands did not light on the coveted box of Indian paints.
They did light on something, though, that almost startled him, and that was an Indian baby. It was lying in a sort of cradle of deerskins; and, as soon as the scout’s fingers touched its face, it awoke and began to screech.
“Thinks I’m some sort of wild animal,” muttered the scout as the baby increased its yells. “Well, the thing for me to do is to get out of here as quick as I can.”
Thereupon he “crawfished” rapidly back to the point where he had gained ingress, and again lifting the skin lodge covering, he slipped out of the tepee.
Scarcely had he done so when a squaw came running from an adjacent lodge.
Again the scout “froze” to the ground, but this time with the Indian blanket drawn about his shouldersand with the feathered headdress on his head. His hat he held in one hand under the concealing folds of the blanket. In the other hand he held his knife.
The coming of the squaw quieted the child.
“I’m all right, if she doesn’t start up a fire, or get a light, and so discover that the blanket and the headdress are gone,” was the scout’s thought as he heard the Indian mother crooning to the baby.
Then he arose softly to his feet, and with the headdress in place, but with the blanket drawn up to conceal his face, and so draped about his form that his clothing was pretty well hidden, he walked boldly out into the moonlight.
It was a daring thing to do, but safety is often assured by the very audacity of any given line of action. Stalking along with all the dignity of a painted brave, Buffalo Bill made his way, without molestation or apparent observation, almost to the door of the council lodge.
Instead of trying to enter it, however, he moved around it until he was well within its shadow; and there, after looking about to be sure he was not observed, he lay down quietly on the ground and placed an ear to the skin lodge covering.
The din within the lodge, now that he was so close to it, was well-nigh deafening. The warriors were howling and jumping in frenzied Indian fashion, and the beating of the Indian drums was something furious.
Aside from the monotonous chanting of the drum beaters, he heard no words for a while. Then one of the Indian dancers began in a bragging way, and in a high monotone, to boast of his many bloody deeds.
He had slain many white men, he said, and now he would slay many more. The white men were cowards, they were serpents, they had hearts like women, and they would run when he, this great brave, should lift the knife to strike.
Buffalo Bill smiled when he heard the words of the boaster.
“That’s all right, old bragger,” he muttered, “but you’ll find out, when you go against them, that the white men don’t run worth a beaver’s skin!”
Anxious to see what was going on within the council house, for what he heard was unsatisfactory, the scout softly lifted the lower edge of the skin and peered in.
As he did so an Indian dancer whirled with jerky motion right past his face. All about, within the lodge, dancers were hopping, jumping, and gyrating.
The drum beaters were seated not far away in a group, pounding away with such energy that the sweat stood on their painted faces.
The Indian who was doing the boasting continued to tell what great things he would accomplish when he lifted his knife against the whites.
Just at this juncture, when the scout was beginning to think that, perhaps, he might now acquaint himself with something definite concerning the plans of the Indians—though the fact that they were dancing and in war paint showed that they meditated an attack on the camps of the white men—one of the dogs, whose presence Buffalo Bill had feared, came sniffing around the lodge, and discovered him lying there in the shadow.
The scout let the skin of the tent fall, and, turningabout, gripped his knife. The dog was sniffing at him with suspicion, though the odor of the Indian blanket and the sight of the familiar headdress, no doubt, somewhat lulled the animal’s suspicion.
The dog could not see Buffalo Bill’s face, for the blanket was pulled rather closely about it. So again the animal advanced, with nose outthrust, sniffing the scout.
The dog seemed to have an intuition that all was not well, and thrusting its sharp, wolflike nose into the air, it gave a long, whining howl, like a veritable wolf.
The scout lay as if he were dead. The howling was heard in the lodge, but seemed to excite no thought that all was not well outside. These dogs were known to be great howlers.
Ceasing its long-drawn howl of suspicion, the dog came forward again, and thrust its nose almost into the scout’s face.
Discovering now that the man under the Indian blanket was not an Indian, it started to leap back, at the same time giving a short bark, like a dog that has treed game.
“Curse you!” muttered the scout.
At the same time his left hand shot out like lightning from under the blanket.
The dog was about to bark again when that hand caught it. Then it yelped, as a cur does when trodden upon. But it was the dog’s last yelp, and it was cut short. The hand that held the keen-bladed knife shot out from under the blanket; and, as the dog was drawn forward by the other hand, the knife ripped its throat open.
The yelp and the flouncing of the dog had broughtsome Indians out of the lodge. The scout, lying quiet again, with the bloody knife in one hand and one of his ready revolvers in the other, heard the warriors talking.
One of them, after a few words, began to walk around the lodge, in the direction of the scout.
“If I lie here I shall have to kill that Indian as I did the dog; and I’ll be discovered, no doubt, after which there will be the greatest row and hubbub here any one ever heard. I guess it’s time for me to sneak.”
He did not “sneak,” however. He was still concealed from the approaching Indian by the intervening tent wall. So he arose boldly to his feet and as boldly walked on around the council lodge, away from the advancing redskin.
Almost any other man would have jumped up and fled out through the village, trusting to his legs to carry him to a point of safety. But that would have involved risks which Buffalo Bill did not care to take.
Hence he walked straight on. As he came out into the moonlight and toward the front of the council house, he was seen by one of the Indians who had stood talking near the lodge door.
This Indian called to him, asking if he had heard the dog; for the blanket and the headdress made the Indian think the scout was another redskin.
As the scout had heard the words that were spoken before the lodge door and had noted the tones of the voice, he answered, for he understood the Sioux language perfectly, and imitated almost to perfection the voice of an Indian.
“The dog has gone off that way,” he said. “I think he is after a rabbit; I will see!”
Then the scout broke into a run, as if he were hastening after the dog. He knew that now he would have to “cut sticks,” as he would have expressed it; and when he had another lodge between him and the Indian he had spoken to, he ran with all his might, yet as softly as he could.
It was well for Buffalo Bill that he had moved thus promptly. For, as he ran, he heard a wild yell behind him, which told him that the body of the dog had been discovered.
The yell stopped the dancing and the drumbeating as suddenly as if a rifle shot had been fired. The Indians poured pell-mell out of the council house. The yells that now sounded seemed to arouse all the village curs at once; and some of them discovering the hurrying figure of the scout, they rushed at him like a pack of wolves chasing a deer.
But the scout was now on the edge of the village, and before him was the wild-timbered hills. Turning suddenly as the foremost of the dogs pressed him and began to snap at his heels, he cast aside the blanket and the headdress and lifted his revolver.
They were plainly to be seen in the moonlight. Two shots sent the leaders rolling in their death agonies, and so startled the others that they drew back, thus giving Buffalo Bill a clear path again before him.
Then arrows began to sing and rifles to bark as the Indians, guided by the yelping of the dogs, and knowing now that an enemy had invaded the village, began to fire in the direction of the scout’s flight.
But the missiles went wild. Their singing and hurtling in the trees seemed, however, to increase the scout’s speed, so that he almost flew, selecting the wildest and rockiest course for the line of his retreat.
As soon as he was clear of the village he shaped his course toward the point where he had left his horse.
Fortunately Buffalo Bill was a good runner. Moreover, he did not wish to be captured by the Sioux. He had a due regard for his own personal safety, and besides he had important information which it was necessary to carry to the camps of the white men.
He had not heard much in the Indian village, notwithstanding the great risks he had run to gain information; but what he had heard, together with the dancing and the drumbeating and the sight of the warriors in war paint, was enough to assure him that the Sioux meditated an early, if not an immediate, attack on the whites.
The dogs still pursued him, and kept up with him, though he began to drop the Indians. Turning at bay, the scout killed two more of the leading dogs, and again ran on.
The other dogs seemed to lose heart because of this and dropped back, though they followed along his trail and continued their yelping, thus aiding the Indians in their pursuit.
The rapidity of the scout’s flight brought him, after a time, to his horse.
“All safe and sound, old fellow, are you?” he said speaking to the animal. “Well, let them catch me now if they can! I have found out enough toshow me that that girl wasn’t lying to me; and, when I meet her again, she will no doubt give me particulars of the Indians’ plans, as she promised. So, here we go!”
And away the scout sped through the silvery moonlight.