CHAPTER XV.LITTLE CAYUSE CAUGHT.
The scout’s praise of Little Cayuse was well-deserved. The lad was brave and quick-witted, and prided himself on being a warrior, on having won an eagle-feather, and on knowing how to carry out the orders of Pa-e-has-ka.
Yet bravery and quick wit are not always sufficient to keep their possessor from disaster.
Little Cayuse had been sent to find the Apache who had launched the arrow. This was entirely owing to the scout’s forethought, and was done before the contents of the note brought by the arrow had been read.
Cayuse had not the least idea why he was to follow the Apache who had shot the arrow into the office door. He had received his orders direct from Pa-e-has-ka, however, and that was enough for him.
As he crossed the rim of the valley in which lay the buildings of the Three-ply Mine, the roar of the mill-stamps was muffled by the wind, and his quick ear could distinguish a fall of hoofs from somewhere up the arroyo.
To pile his little heap of quartz “float” took him but a few moments, and then he started along the arroyo at a run.
If the Apache rode at speed, Cayuse knew that he would not be able to come anywhere near him. But this did not discourage the boy. He would run out the trail as far as he could, and when he gave up it would be becauseno one else—not even Pa-e-has-ka himself—could have followed it any farther.
In his trailing, he had much better luck than he had expected. While he was dodging on along the arroyo he heard the yelp of a wolf—not of a real wolf, but an imitation by a human being.
He was approaching a bend in the arroyo, and this yelp, which was clearly a signal, caused him to approach the bend with more than usual caution.
This was well for him; since presently, from behind a shoulder of rock, he was able to peer out and see a mounted Apache, waiting for another who was riding down the arroyo’s bank.
The Indian Cayuse had been following had a bow and quiver slung at his back. The bow was still bent, showing that the Apache had not yet taken the time to unstring it. Aside from the bow and arrows, both Apaches were likewise armed with rifles.
They met in the arroyo’s bottom, exchanged a few words, and started on again. They looked behind them carefully, but they did not see Cayuse. At that moment the boy was busily engaged laying his quartz pieces on the ground, not only showing his course, but informing any one who might follow that the first Apache had been joined by another.
The Apaches rode at a leisurely gait on into the gulchlike gash into which the arroyo presently changed.
At the place where the gulch forked the two halted and one of them repeated his wolf-yelp.
A little later the rocky walls reechoed with galloping hoofs, and three more Apaches showed themselves, and joined the other two.
The entire party then turned into the right-hand branch of the defile.
Cayuse continued to follow, noiselessly, swiftly, screening his passage with all the cunning of a coyote.
The gloom thickened in the bottom of the gulch. He was glad of it, for it made his trailing easier.
The Apaches talked and laughed as they journeyed, entirely oblivious of the fact that a hated Piute was hanging upon their trail.
All might have gone well with the boy had he noticed a figure on the top of the gulch wall, looking down. It was the figure of a white man, and the white man had under his eyes both the forms of the mounted Apaches and the trailing Piute.
The man stared for a space, then drew back.
Little Cayuse wondered why, when the Apaches arrived opposite the narrow defile that entered the wall of the gulch, they ceased their talking and laughing and came to an abrupt halt.
Of course he could not hear the low voice of the white man, calling from within the lateral defile.
One of the Apaches, leaving the rest, spurred into the smaller gash. And again it was impossible for Cayuse to see that the white man had appeared and beckoned to the Apache.
“Fools!” said the white man to the Apache, partly in Spanish and partly with the hand-talk; “don’t you know that you are being trailed by the little Piute, Buffalo Bill’s pard? He is behind you, in the gulch. He must be captured, and this is the way you are to do it:
“You will ride back to the rest of the Apaches. Then, taking care not to turn and look down the gulch, you will all ride into this cut. When well within the cut, four ofyou will dismount and hide behind the boulders; the other one will ride forward, leading the four horses, and get beyond that turn.
“The Piute will come in. The four who are behind the boulders will spring out and capture him—capturehim, mind, for I want to talk with the rascally imp before anything else is done with him.”
The white man hid himself, and the Apache rode back.
Little Cayuse, his black eyes glimmering like a snake’s, watched the Apaches trail into the smaller defile. He made after them.
At the entrance to the defile he listened. From around a turn he could hear the pattering hoofs of the ponies.
Swiftly he passed into the smaller defile—and then, almost before he could realize what had happened—he was set upon from every side, flung down, and bound at the wrists.
He struggled, but what availed the struggles of one Piute boy against four brawny, full-grown Apaches?
Physically, he was not injured. His chief hurt was to his pride.
What would Pa-e-has-ka say when he learned what had happened?
Jerking Cayuse to his feet, two of the bucks caught his bound hands and pulled him farther along the defile to a place where it ran into a blind wall, rising high into the air.
At this place the white man was waiting.
Who the white man was, Cayuse did not know; but he began to understand, dimly, that the white man had helped the Apaches entrap him.
The white man, stepping angrily up to the boy, drew back the flat of his hand and struck him in the face.
Cayuse reeled with the blow, but not a sound came from his lips.
“You’re Little Cayuse, huh?” demanded the man fiercely.
“Wuh!” answered the boy, his black eyes darting lightning.
“Pard of Buffalo Bill’s?”
Little Cayuse straightened his shoulders and threw back his head proudly.
“Wuh! Me all same pard Pa-e-has-ka’s.”
“Why were you trailin’ the Apaches?”
Cayuse did not answer. Instead, he looked straight into the eyes of the white ruffian with studied insolence and defiance.
The white man pulled a revolver from his belt and pressed it against the boy’s breast.
“Answer, or I’ll blow a hole through ye!” he threatened.
Cayuse did not open his lips. He continued to dare the man with his eyes, however, even more insolently and defiantly.
“Blast ye!” raged the man, lowering his revolver and giving the helpless boy a kick that threw him to the ground. “Ye won’t talk, huh? Waal, ye needn’t! I know Buffalo Bill sent ye to trail the reds, an’ I reckon Buffalo Bill will be follerin’ ye, afore long, but that won’t doyouany good.”
The ruffian turned and growled an order to the Indians. Immediately the entire five mounted their horses and began climbing to the top of the wall of the defile.
Cayuse, breathless from the kick he had received, lay on the ground and watched.
In a little while he saw the five Indians on the top ofthe steep wall which closed in the end of the defile. One of them lowered a rope.
The ruffian thereupon grabbed Cayuse by the shoulders and dragged him to the foot of the wall. The next moment he had made the swinging rope fast to the bonds that secured Cayuse’s wrists.
“Haul away, ’Pachies!” roared the white man, stepping back.
The pull of the rope drew the boy’s arms above his head, and then he was lifted up and up the sheer cliff wall.
“There!” yelled the white man; “make it fast.”
The rope was secured at the brink of the cliff, and Cayuse, hanging by his bound hands, was left swinging against the face of the smooth rock.
Revolver in hand, the ruffian began to fire at the rock, planting his bullets all about the swinging boy.
“Goin’ ter tell me about Buffalo Bill?” he asked.
Cayuse would not answer.
The white man swore a fierce oath, threw his left arm in front of his face, and laid the barrel of his six-shooter across.
Just as he was about to shoot, he suddenly changed his mind.
“I won’t do it,” he growled; “that would make it too easy fer you. Hang there, ye measly Piute! Hang there until yer arms pull out o’ their sockets, and ye starve an’ die. That’ll teach ye to butt inter a game of Bascomb’s, I reckon. Hi, there, you!” he shouted, lifting his gaze to the Apaches on top of the cliff. “I’m goin’ to Squaw Rock to wait for Hendricks, but you’re to go back along the rim of the gulch and pick off Buffalo Bill and his pards if they come this way follerin’ thePiute. Come ter Squaw Rock an’ report ter me if anythin’ happens. Scatter, now, the five o’ ye, an’ see that ye carry out orders. If you don’t, look out for Bascomb!”
In addressing the Apaches now the white man was not using Spanish or the hand-talk; some among them, presumably, understood English sufficiently to catch his meaning.
Leaping to the back of their ponies, the Indians rode away.
The white man, springing to the path that led to the top of the wall of the defile, mounted it swiftly.
In a few minutes Little Cayuse’s captors were all gone, and Little Cayuse was left swinging helplessly against the bare cliff wall.
The pull on his arms was frightful. The rope seemed to be tearing them out of his body.
But he had said no word about Pa-e-has-ka’s orders, and he was glad. He had faced death, and was then facing it, because he had been true to Pa-e-has-ka.
What if the rope did pull at his arms and torture him? Was Little Cayuse a squaw that he should whimper and cry with the torture?
No; Little Cayuse was a warrior. He had won his eagle-feather, and was entitled to take the place among the braves of the Piutes.
So he gritted his teeth and hung where the merciless white ruffian had left him.