CHAPTER VIII.FACING DEATH.
Texas Jack had been a ranchman in Texas since early boyhood. His sentiments and affiliations were Southern, and when the war broke out he joined the Confederate Army as a scout. He was a reckless, daredevil fellow, yet high-minded, honorable to foe as well as friend. The noble blood of the Omohondreaus showed through the rough manner of the hardy frontiersman.
It was Jack Omohondreau who came so near dealing an irreparable blow to the Northern cause by capturing President Lincoln and taking him South as a prisoner. How near the daring scout came to accomplishing this very thing nobody but those few Confederates in the secret—and possibly Lincoln himself—ever knew.
However, when the Civil War was ended, Buffalo Bill, who had scouted for the other side, found Jack in Kansas, and it was through his influence that the young French-American was enlisted in the Federal Army.
He was of cheery nature, fearless to recklessness, strong as a grizzly, and possessed of a handsome presence. Such was the man who had determined to return through the ring of enraged Sioux to give comfort and help to the besieged garrison of Fort Advance.
He knew all that he had to risk, but, in his Indian disguise, and under cover of the early darkness, he hoped to accomplish his purpose. If captured by the redskins he well knew that death by the most frightful torture would be his portion. The Sioux hated him almost as fiercely as they hated Buffalo Bill.
That he could speak their language was in Jack’s favor. And he knew that if he chanced upon any bunch of the reds a word or two might pass him through all right. Oak Heart had gathered several different branches of the tribe together, and many of the braves must be strangers to each other.
The scout had already formed his plan of return to the fort. He had reloaded his rifle and revolvers, seen that his knife was still in its scabbard, and, after another long swig at the clear, running water and a tightening of his belt, Texas Jack climbed one side of the cañon with infinite caution. He could not return through the gorge itself, for he did not know how near pursuit might be. And he wormed his way up the steep ascent like a serpent, that he might not be observed from below.
Night came upon him as he arrived on the summit of the timbered ridge. The forest was a tangled wilderness, but he knew how to pass through it without making the slightest disturbance, and, as he might come upon the Indians at any moment, he was glad of the darkness and the thicket. A few miles along thisridge and he would come out upon a bluff that overlooked the valley in which Fort Advance was situated.
He strode on lightly, yet swiftly—threading his way through the trackless forest with a confidence which brought him straight to his destination. And as yet he had not passed an Indian.
The dash of the scouts into the cañon had drawn all the outposts from the hills, and the redskins were either guarding the lower passes, ringing the fort, or gathered about the camp-fires where the main encampment had been established.
When Texas Jack came out upon the bluff he could see these camp-fires twinkling on the other side of the valley, although it was still light enough for him to see all who moved below him. The encampment was at the base of the southern hills, some two miles from the fort. Some half-hundred ponies were feeding in the valley, with the guards about them doubled. The loss of the bulk of the herd had been a severe blow to the redskins, and Texas Jack knew that the Indians would put forth every effort to retake them, should opportunity arise.
Jack decided that Chief Oak Heart was probably at the encampment, counseling with his old men and the other chiefs regarding the next blow to be struck at Fort Advance. That plans of deviltry and cunning were being hatched the scout was certain.
Then he thought of the Border King flying along the trail to Resistence for help, and he regained his courage.
Awaiting with the stolid patience of a redskin for the night to deepen, the scout finally pursued his marchinto the valley. He had carefully weighed all chances for and against his success. Now he was ready to take them.
Night spread its wings over the valley. It hid its scars and wounds and the stark bodies of the dead, lying under the fortress walls. In the gloaming it might have been the most peaceful valley in all the Rockies. One coming upon it suddenly, and unwarned, would never have suspected the blood so recently spilled there and the threatening aspect of the situation at that very moment!
Texas Jack stole down the declivity with a step as light as the fall of a leaf. The savage whom he imitated could have moved no more lightly, and as he came into the valley itself he crouched and crept along like a shadow.
He knew that the red men would be moving about, passing and repassing each other, and keeping up a tightening circle about the fort. They would afford the opportunity for no other white man to escape from the fort if they could help it. But they moved about as silently as the scout himself, and as the redskin is notoriously silent, Texas Jack’s ears were of little good to him in this emergency.
An Indian is not troubled by military accouterments to rattle as he walks; his moccasins are soundless, and he has schooled himself to endure all those little discomforts of body or environment that cause the white man to betray himself by either sound or movement. If a red warrior lay in wait for an enemy the flies and other insects might half eat him up without his betraying himself by a movement. He seldom has catarrhal affections of the throat, or if he does stifles the desireto cough or sneeze. He has, indeed, his whole body and mind under perfect control.
Therefore Texas Jack knew that the red men might be near—upon each side of him—in his very path, perhaps, yet they passed and repassed, silent as so many ghosts.
Texas Jack crept but a short way from the base of the hill before he lay flat down in the weeds and brush. There was a big rock on his right hand, and he believed that that obstacle, looming up as it did in the gloom, would keep anybody from walking over him.
His reason for lying there was easily understood. From the dark ground he could look upward and see any form passing between him and the lighter sky-line. He wished to get a line on the pacing to and fro of the sentinels. If there was any regularity regarding their beats, the scout might be able to time his passage so as not to be seen at all.
For if his presence was discovered, although his dress and appearance might carry him through, still there was a grave danger that they would not. There might be some password, for the redskins were shrewd, or he might run against some chief going the rounds of his men to see that all were properly placed.
Suddenly a form seemed to rise out of the ground before the advancing scout. It stood a moment directly between him and the lighter sky-line. Then it passed on—silently as the wind over the grass.
He heard a muffled grunt—a guttural Indian word—dropped by some invisible redskin in the direction the figure had disappeared. Then that, or another, sentinel returned and passed slowly across the line of Texas Jack’s vision. He was quite near the lines of sentinels,and he determined to lie there and, if possible, time their coming and going before trying himself to get through.
Once more the figure crossed the line of the scout’s vision. Texas Jack lay, scarcely moving in the grass, and with fingers on wrist counted his pulse while the Indian was in sight. In this way he learned something of the time it took for the sentinel to pace from end to end of his beat. He lay for some time and timed him back and forth to make sure that there was some regularity in the redskin’s actions.
Then, at the right moment—as the sentinel passed out of view in one direction, Texas Jack darted forward like a serpent through the tall weeds. Although he ran on his feet and touched but one hand now and then to help retain his balance, the scout’s body could never have been seen above the waving tops of the grass and weeds.
For several rods he ran in this way and then dropped down again, panting, hugging the earth, flattening his body upon it, and waiting with every nerve on the qui vive to discover if his actions had been noted.
And well he knew that, if the sentinel had seen him, no shout—no sound—would be raised. The red would sneak up behind him, and his first audible sound would be the cry of triumph when the scalping-knife was plunged into the scout’s back!
Jack twisted his neck to see back over his shoulder. After a moment the Indian sentinel appeared again. He walked upright. Jack could see his nodding topknot of feathers, and that he carried a gun of some kind. He passed on without even glancing in the scout’s direction.
“Thanks be for that!” thought the scout. “Now, what’s ahead?”
That the Sioux had but one ring of sentinels around the fort he knew was not the fact. There were two lines at least—possibly three. He raised his head like a turtle stretching from its shell and tried to pierce the gloom of the valley.
And then it was that he suddenly beheld a tall figure standing motionless not far ahead of him and almost in his path. It was a chief of some importance from his war-bonnet, and he had perhaps been going the rounds of his sentinels. Now he stood motionless, his back to the scout, looking toward the fort, one elbow leaning upon a broken stub of a tree, the other hand holding his rifle, hanging idly by his side. The chief was evidently in a reverie—or was he listening? Had he heard the scout’s breathing—or some other sound that warned him of the white man’s presence?
The question seared Texas Jack’s brain. It startled him to action. This was no moment for taking chances.
He rose up like a shadow, and, with great, catlike strides, stole upon the statuelike Indian. It went against the grain for the scout to strike even a redskin from behind. Man to man and face to face in a fair struggle would have pleased Texas Jack better. But the entire success of his attempt to reach the fort depended upon the action of the next few seconds.
Suddenly the chief began to turn—with a jerking motion which showed that he was startled. Some instinct told him that there was an enemy at hand. Perhaps his lips were already opened to give a warning call.
Like a stone from the sling the scout leaped forward—as the panther leaps! His knee found the small of the Indian’s back; his left had clutched his throat like a vise; his right drove his keen blade downward—and home!
The redskin crumpled and fell without a sound upon the earth. Not even a cough or death-rattle proclaimed the passing of his spirit. And the number of seconds occupied in the killing were infinitesimal. One moment the red chief stood there leaning on the broken tree; the next Texas Jack, in his Indian garb, had taken his place and assumed his attitude!
Unless some member of the tribe had been near enough to watch the chief continuously, this action of the scout’s was inspired. The chief had gone down and lay dead under his feet; the white man had taken his place, and for several moments, while he recovered his breath, he stood there in the exact attitude the real Indian had assumed in life.
Carefully he scrutinized his surroundings as closely as might be for the gloom. He became aware at length that a warrior was stalking toward him from the left—undoubtedly one of the sentinels. This man came on, saw the supposed chief standing by the tree stub, and made a gesture as though he were saluting his superior.
“Ugh!” muttered Texas Jack in an excellent imitation of an Indian guttural. He did not care to risk his Sioux intonation if he could help it.
The sentinel went on. Texas Jack was about to change his position and make for the fort when he saw the sentinel who had just passed and another, returning. They would pass him very closely. Did they suspect?Had the first brave become suspicious, and was he bringing the second to help him attack the supposed chief?
The thought sent a chill to the heart of the courageous scout. It seemed to him that, thus early in the game, he had come to a death-struggle with the redskins!