CHAPTER XVIII.THE BLACKFOOT TRAILERS.
Under cover of the screening trees, Buffalo Bill and old Nomad watched the cañon and stream, while they talked of the threatened Blackfoot war, and of their individual experiences since they had last been together.
“It warn’t Blackfeet we war up ag’inst last time together, Buffler, but road agents. Pool Clayton was with us then, you recomember? D’yer think he’ll be in this hyar neighborhood soon?”
“I’m not expecting him this time.”
Buffalo Bill told his old mountain pard, however, that Pawnee Bill, the famous dead shot, was to have joined him in the town below, but had missed him there, and would no doubt follow.
“It’s just possible,” he had stated, “that he went round by way of the Ferguson Trail, and, if so, he may have gained these hills in advance of my coming; yet I think he is behind me.”
As the two friends talked thus, Buffalo Bill laid his hand with a quick, firm motion on Nomad’s arm. Reaching out with the other hand, he took his horse by the nose.
“Hist!” came from his lips.
Nomad understood, glanced at the stream, and patted the nose of old Nebuchadnezzar to keep him still.
A Blackfoot warrior had come in sight on the other side of the little cañon river. He was naked, save for a breechclout, and his copper-colored body was smeared and striped with paint. He carried a long rifle, and a knife, and hatchet. In his raven hair eagle feathers fluttered, proclaiming him not only a warrior, but, with the abundant paint, announcing that he was on the warpath.
He had come downstream, and he was scanning the river and its shores, and the cañon walls, together with the wider expanses where the little groves of trees were. But most he gave his attention to the banks of the stream at the water’s edge.
It was plain to the experienced bordermen that if he had not tracked the white men to the cañon and the river, he at least suspected they had gone there, and he was looking for the point where they had emerged. His presence was proof that other Blackfeet were near, and no doubt a strong war party. They had chased old Nomad, and were ready for scalps and plunder.
The concealed friends and their horses stood motionless, as the Indian stepped with light feet along the farther shore of the little river.
He was a magnificent specimenof the American Indian; lithe, as well as muscular, his body straight as an arrow, his limbs sinewy, yet so gracefully and evenly developed that they would have done as models for a sculptor or a painter. Buffalo Bill looked at the Blackfoot with admiration, regarding him at the moment merely as a fine specimen of Indian manhood, forgetting in that momentary enthusiasm what his appearancethere meant, and what was denoted by the paint and the floating feathers.
The Indian stared hard at the trees which concealed the scout and the trapper. He neither saw nor heard anything there. On the ground between the river and the grove there was not so much as an indentation in the soil to suggest that horses had passed that way.
“Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye!” Nomad whispered to his horse; for Nebby’s ears were pricked up and his big eyes were staring. Indians frightened him, for which Nomad was responsible, for he had taught the old horse to fear them.
“Nebby is better’n any watchdog,” was Nomad’s boast. “No Injun kin come nigh him without him makin’ a hullabaloo.”
This tendency to make a “hullabaloo” when he saw an Indian had its disadvantages at times, as at present; yet the whispered adjurations of old Nomad, and the touch of his hand, kept the horse quiet as the Blackfoot passed along. As for the scout’s horse, though it had not Nebby’s peculiar tendency, there was, nevertheless, danger that it would make a noise of some kind, hence the scout kept his hand on its nose.
After staring hard at the grove, and scanning the soil by the stream, the Blackfoot went on, and soon he was lost to sight in a bend of the cañon.
“A close shave!” said the scout.
“And a healthy one fer thet red nigger, Buffler,” said Nomad meaningly. “I’d hate fer him to ’a’ smelt us out hyar, fer then I’d had to shot him. And that would ’a’ made a tarnal noise, too.”
“Yes; we’d have been in for a fight.”
“Thar’s more of ’em about, Buffler.”
“They may be a good deal scattered, though; so we may see only this fellow.”
“I’m hopin’ it, Buffler.”
They saw another, in a very few seconds, on their side of the stream. He was armed and painted like the one who had just disappeared, but he was not so tall and handsome. His body was shorter and thicker, his arms longer, his sheer physical strength greater. He could not have run like the one who had just gone on, but in a rough-and-tumble fight he would have been an enemy more to be feared.
He not only looked at the grove where the white men were hidden with their horses, but he walked a few yards toward it, looking carefully at the ground.
Once or twice he stooped down and inspected the grass; and the scout and trapper thought then he had seen some faint indentations in the soil, and guessed of the trick that had been played. But the redskin retraced his way to the river, and went on, searching its shores.
“Phew, Buffler! I thought it war fight, shore thing, then!”
“I, too.”
“I reckon we’re safe hyar, unless they come back and take a notion to look behind these trees. If they does it, thar will be dead Injuns, and fun immediately afterward.”
The Blackfeet did not return. An hour passed, and then another, and nothing was seen or heard; but Codyand Nomad could not be sure that sharp eyes were not watching the cañon from some cliff or cañon precipice; hence they remained concealed in the grove, keeping the horses as quiet as possible, and talking only in low tones.
Not until darkness came did they venture to leave their secure retreat. Even then they moved with the utmost caution, leading the horses instead of riding them, and progressing so slowly that hours elapsed before they came out into the open country below. There the land lay broad and free before them, and the stars pointed the way.
Yet they did not ride toward the town. Instead, they turned back into the hills; for the discovery that the Blackfeet had taken the warpath under Crazy Snake made the scout fearful for the safety of a family he knew, who lived just under the shadows of the big hills.