CHAPTER XVI.THE RESCUE OF CAYUSE.
This was the scene which had brought the fierce frown to Buffalo Bill’s brow, and the gasp to Dell’s lips and the white to her check.
Little Cayuse, suspended by the arms against the smooth cliff wall, swinging and twisting with the rope.
Was he alive?
That was the question the scout asked himself as he ran forward toward the wall of the blind gully, and it was the question Dell Dauntless put to herself as she followed.
Cayuse was about ten feet above the ground, his eyes were closed and his head was drooping forward.
“Cayuse?” cried the scout, halting close and peering up at the slender form.
Instantly the boy opened his eyes and threw back his head.
“Wuh!” he answered.
“What fiends those Apaches are!” exclaimed Dell. “They drew him up there and left him to die!”
The scout drew his revolver.
“What are you about to do, Buffalo Bill?” the girl asked.
“I could cut the rope with two or three bullets,” answered the scout hesitatingly, “or I could ride up on my horse——”
“You couldn’t reach him on your horse, or, at least,you wouldn’t be able to reach the rope. Put up your revolver, Buffalo Bill, and leave it to me.”
Dell took a position in front of Cayuse and drew the bowie-knife that swung at her belt.
“What can you do with that?” asked the scout.
“Cut the rope above Cayuse’s hands.”
The scout started and stared at the girl.
Such a feat, if successfully accomplished, would be one of the most remarkable he had ever seen.
To throw a knife and keep it perpendicular was comparatively easy; but, in order to sever the rope, Dell would have to throw the blade so that its edge would meet the rope horizontally.
“Are you sure you can do it?” went on the scout gravely.
“I would not try if I were not.”
“If you made a miss——”
“I know what would happen if I made a miss, but I shall not. Stand close enough to catch him when the rope parts, Buffalo Bill.”
Dell Dauntless was perfectly cool. The scout marveled at her self-control, and her stony calmness.
Without removing her gauntlet, she took the knife in her right hand by the point; then she measured the distance and the height with a quick eye.
Once, twice, three times her hand went up in a circle, the pearl handle of the bowie flashing in the sun.
“Now!” she murmured.
There was a second or two in the preparation for the throw, but the feat itself consumed less than a second.
“Bravo!” cried Buffalo Bill, as the girl hurled the knife and its edge bit into the rope above Little Cayuse’s head.
The rope was not cut cleanly through, but the few strands that were left parted quickly, and Cayuse shot downward into the scout’s arms.
Carrying the boy to the horses, Buffalo Bill laid him on the ground.
Dell took her canteen from the saddle-horn, sank down beside the boy, and took his head on her knee.
Her tenderness as she ministered to Cayuse gave the scout a glimpse of another side of her nature.
“Poor little chap!” she murmured, pressing the canteen to his lips. “You had a tough time of it, didn’t you?”
The water gurgled down the boy’s throat, and his black eyes gazed into the blue ones above him, then swerved to the scout.
For a few moments he lay quietly, while the scout removed the rope from his wrists and the girl removed her gauntlets and chafed his temples with her soft hands.
“Ugh!” grunted Little Cayuse suddenly. “White squaw got heap good heart; but Cayuse no squaw, him warrior.”
He sat up on the ground and began working his benumbed arms back and forth between his knees. In spite of his stoicism, he winced, and the scout saw that one of his shoulders was dislocated.
“Down on the ground again, Cayuse!” ordered the scout; “on your left side, boy.”
Cayuse tumbled over obediently, the scout standing astride his body and firmly gripping his right arm.
“Hold him down, Dell,” went on the scout.
With the girl pushing and the scout pulling, and Cayuse making no outcry whatever, the shoulder was slipped back into place.
Cayuse crawled to the wall of the defile and sat upwith his back against it. His bare breast jumped with his hard breathing so that his necklace of bear-claws and elk-teeth fairly rattled, but a ghost of a smile flickered about his lips.
“Heap hard time,” said he. “Me no care. Umph! Me warrior; Pa-e-has-ka’s pard.”
“You’re a brave little fellow, that’s what you are!” declared Dell admiringly.
Cayuse studied her face attentively.
“Who you?” he asked.
“I’m Buffalo Bill’s girl pard,” laughed Dell. “And I’m your pard, too, Cayuse, if you’ll have me for one.”
“No like um squaw pard. Squaw make um fire, boil um kettle, sew um beads onmoccasins, no go on war-path with braves.”
“I’m different from theordinary run of squaws,Cayuse,” said Dell, with a humorous side-glance at the scout.
“You throw um knife heap fine,” observed Cayuse.
“I can shoot as well as I can throw a knife.”
“Umph! You make um squaw your pard, Pa-e-has-ka?”
“Yes,” smiled the scout.
“Squaw your pard, squaw my pard. Shake um hand.”
Cayuse lifted his hand—his left one—and the compact was sealed.
“Now that that formality is over, Cayuse,” said Buffalo Bill, “you might tell us how you came to be strung up there against the cliff.”
The boy looked distressed.
“Cayuse no good. Make um worst break this grass. Let Apaches and paleface ketch um.”
“Paleface?”
“Wuh. One paleface, five Apaches. Paleface make um heap swear, say Cayuse tell um if Pa-e-has-ka sent um. Cayuse no tell um. Apaches haul Cayuse up with rope. Ugh.”
“Was the paleface Bernritter?”
Cayuse shook his head.
“Was it Bascomb?”
Again Cayuse shook his head.
“There has been underhand work at the mine, Cayuse,” explained Buffalo Bill. “Bascomb and Bernritter have taken away McGowan’s daughter, who was coming from ’Frisco, and the arrow that was shot into camp contained a message. Understand?”
“Me sabe.”
“The message was from Bascomb and Bernritter, and stated that if McGowan would not agree not to prosecute them for their attempt to get the mine bullion the other day, and would not leave a bar of gold at the old shaft near the Black Cañon trail, he would never see his daughter again.”
The boy fixed his eyes on the scout’s face.
“Apaches and bad white men got heap black hearts,” said he. “You like ketch um white man that string me up?”
“Yes, if we can. He’s probably in this plot with Bascomb and Bernritter. If we could capture him we might be able to discover something of importance.”
“Where Squaw Rock?” asked Cayuse.
“That’s too many for me,” said the scout.
“I know where it is,” spoke up Dell. “It’s about two miles and a half from here.”
“Paleface go there. Say he meet other paleface name Hendricks at Squaw Rock. Tell Apaches come SquawRock report if they make trouble for Buffalo Bill. Me hear um say so.”
“Good!” exclaimed the scout. “That gives us something to work on, Dell, and we won’t have to go back to the camp and wait for Nomad to carry that agreement and that bar of bullion to the deserted shaft.”
“Me go too?” asked Little Cayuse.
“We’ll have to take you, Cayuse. I wouldn’t let you try to tramp back to the mine in your present condition.”
“Ugh, me all right.”
“Most white boys, with a shoulder like yours, would be in bed, Cayuse.”
“Me use um left hand.”
“All aboard, Dell,” said the scout, getting into his saddle. “If we’re going to do anything with that ruffian who mistreated Cayuse, we’ll have to lay him by the heels before the Apaches join him. You lead the way and set the pace. Cayuse and I will tag along on Bear Paw.”
“It’s a rough road,” said the girl, rising to her own saddle; “by taking an even rougher one we can lop off that extra half mile.”
“Lop it off,” answered the scout. “I’ll lay a blue stack Bear Paw can follow wherever Silver Heels can lead.”
“This way, then,” cried the girl.
She spurred straight to the side of the defile and started up the dizzy path which the Apaches had climbed some time before.
Arizona is full of difficult country for a horseman; but of all the up-and-down trails the scout ever covered inthe saddle, the course Dell led him on the way to Squaw Rock was one of the worst.
Not once during the entire trip were the horses on a level. When they were not standing almost straight up in the air, pawing their way aloft like mountain-goats, they were inclined downward so far that the stirrups touched their ears, and the riders had to brace back in them to keep from sliding over their heads.
Such a rough passage was hard on Cayuse’s tender shoulder, but he would have scorned to make the slightest complaint.
At one place on the devious path there was a cool spring, and here for a space the riders halted, refreshing themselves and their sweltering mounts with a drink.
At one place, too, Dell forced Silver Heels to a jump of half a dozen feet over a crevasse; and at another place she made a leap downward over a bluff of twelve feet. Bear Paw and his two riders were always behind, the scout marveling at Dell’s perfect horsemanship.
The girl, it was plain, was entirely at home in the saddle. Was there anything, the scout was asking himself, in which Dell Dauntless did not excel?
Throughout the entire journey it was necessary to keep a keen lookout for enemies, white and red. None were seen, perhaps because none would dare this almost impossible trail.
At last, after two hours of sweating labor, Dell pulled Silver Heels to a halt under the brow of a steep hill.
“Going to rest and breathe the bronks?” asked the scout.
“Nary, pard,” answered Dell, with an easy return to the colloquialism of the West; “we’re close to the end of our trail, and that’s why we’re rounded up. SquawRock is just over the rise. I thought perhaps you might like to reconnoiter before we shacked down on the place.”
“That’s the sensible thing to do, of course. Cayuse will look after the horses while you and I climb the slope.”
Leaving the boy below with the mounts, the scout and the girl crawled up the sun-baked rise to the crest, and peered over.
What the scout saw was a circular, cactus-covered plain. In the midst of the plain arose a boulder about the size of a two-story house.
But it was not the shape of a two-story house. On the contrary, from the angle at which the scout and the girl viewed it, the boulder had the contour of a woman’s head and shoulders, with the shoulders blanketed.
To all seeming, the rock was the upper part of some gigantic statue, embedded in the sand from the shoulders down.
In the shadow of the rock stood a horse, head down and listlessly panting with the heat. Closer to the base of the rock a man half sat and half reclined. He was smoking a pipe and gazing out across the plain. Evidently this was the man they wanted, and he was alone.
The scout and the girl slipped downward on the slope for a hurried consultation.
“The scoundrel is there, all right,” whispered Dell.
“The question now is to capture him,” returned the scout. “He’s on the east side of the rock, and we’re to the north of it.”
“We could rush him,” suggested Dell, “and have him covered before he could mount and ride away. Even if he did get on his horse, we could overhaul him.”
“A better plan, I think,” said the scout, who hesitated to place Dell in the peril her plan would call for, “would be to take him by surprise. While he’s mooning down there, and looking across the desert; I’ll slip down the slope, crawl around the base of the rock, and have a bead drawn on him before he’ll know there’s any one else within a mile of him.”
“If he should hear you getting down the slope he might shake a bullet out of his gun before you had a chance to fire first.”
“He’d have to be quick, if he did. However, you can remain here and keep him covered.”
“You’re taking all the risk,” demurred the girl.
“It’s right I should.”
Without debating the question further, Buffalo Bill regained the top of the hill, rolled over, and started downward on hands and knees.
As he crawled, a foot at a time, he kept his eyes on the man at the foot of the rock.
The fellow seemed completely absorbed in his reflections. He smoked languidly, like one half asleep.
The scout, remembering the brutal treatment accorded Little Cayuse—and the boy had not told him the half of it—would have been only too quick to meet the ruffian in a two-gun game. But he wanted to make a capture, and try persuasion in an attempt to find out something about Annie McGowan.
The girl was certainly hidden away somewhere among the hills. Wherever she was, quite likely Bernritter and Bascomb were, also; and the scout was not losing sight of the fact that he wanted to get hands on Bascomb quite as much as he wanted to rescue Miss McGowan.
Watched by Dell Dauntless, Buffalo Bill succeeded, indue course, in reaching the base of Squaw Rock without attracting the attention of the ruffian.
His task now was to follow the base of the rock around until he came near the spot where the man was sitting. This was almost directly under the chin of the profile, and the scout had to get around one of the shoulders.
Drawing his revolver, the scout immediately began his flanking movement, still on all-fours and pushing the weapon ahead of him.
Just as he was on the point of passing around the edge of the shoulder, and coming out in plain view of the man, if he happened to be looking in the right direction, the scout observed peculiar actions on the part of Dell.
With head and shoulders above the hill-crest, the girl was waving her hands and pointing westward.
The scout could not understand, and the girl, in her excitement, had risen so far above the ridge that the ruffian might catch sight of her at any moment.
As the quickest way to terminate the situation, the scout hurried on around the rock. Rising to his feet the moment he had the man squarely in front of him, Buffalo Bill leveled his six-shooter.
“Hands up, you!” he shouted.
The ruffian shot into the air as though propelled by some powerful spring. His pipe went one way and his hat another. Also, his hand darted at his hip, but a warning bullet from the scout’s forty-four buzzed past his ear.
“Hands up, I said!” shouted the scout. “The next bullet I send at you won’t go so wide.”
The man turned, at that, and lifted his arms.
“Who the blazes are you, anyhow?” he snarled.
“Buffalo Bill is the label I tote. What’s your own mark?”
“Banks.”
“Well, Banks, you’re mine. Come this way till I strip off your guns.”
“What’s the matter with ye?” scowled Banks. “What have I ever done to you that you make a play like this?”
“Never you mind that for now. I feel hostile enough to put a bullet into you, right where you stand, on account of the way you treated my little Piute pard. Are you coming?”
“Your hand has the call,” grunted Banks. “Sure I’m coming.”
He moved toward the scout, but slowly.
“I reckon I’ll have to plant a little lead around your feet so’st to make ’em more lively,” remarked Buffalo Bill. “Step off, high, wide, and handsome. Try it, now, before my patience begins to mill. You’re slower than molasses in zero weather.”
The man increased his pace. When he had come within a couple of yards of the scout, something happened which the scout had not been expecting.
“Up withyourhands, pilgrim! That’s my pard ye’re a-drawin’ a bead on.”
This raucous voice came from behind. A thrill ran through the scout’s nerves as he began to understand what Dell’s dumb-show meant.
She had been trying to tell him that another of the ruffians was coming.
The man had come, and was now in the scout’s rear.
Naturally, Buffalo Bill could not look behind him. Tohave done so would have been an invitation for the man in front to drop his hands, pull a revolver, and begin firing.
“That you, Hendricks?” the scout called, without making a move to lift his hands, and without taking his eyes off the fellow in front of him.
“Sure it’s me,” came the voice, “big as life an’ twicet as onnery. Did ye hear me when I told ye to put up yer hands?”
“I heard you,” the scout answered, “and I’m not going to do it. The click of a trigger in your hands will be my signal to throw lead into Banks.”
“I ain’t a-goin’ to have no foolin’,” snorted Hendricks. “If you want to drop yer guns an’ skin out, well an’ good; Banks an’ me won’t object. You’ll find it a heap healthier, I reckon, than to try to make front on the pair of us. We ain’t got no crow to pick withyou, and you hadn’t ort to force our hands. Will ye git?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m a-goin’ to count three. By the time I finish the count I’m a-goin’ to turn loose the fireworks, unless you either git or throw up yer hands. That’s plain enough, ain’t it?”
“I understand you, but——”
“One!”
There was a tone in the voice behind that plainly meant business.
“Two!”
The scout was just planning to jerk his second revolver from his belt and whirl about so as to cover both Hendricks and Banks, when a fourth person took a hand in the odd game.
This was Dell. From the hill-crest she was leveling a revolver at Hendricks.
“Drop that gun!” she cried; “drop it quick or you’ll hear fromme!”
Buffalo Bill could hear Hendricks swearing to himself at this unexpected summons.