CHAPTER XI.A BUSY HALF-HOUR.
Buffalo Bill had spoken a truer word than he thought. A great deal may happen in thirty minutes, and the Border King, as he separated from his brotherscout, was unconsciously approaching a series of startling and perilous happenings.
The moment the darkness had wiped Judd out of sight the wary scout turned eastward from the trail. The brush was thick and hung heavy with the dew of the mountains—and that might as well be rain. Every twig he touched communicated to its parent branch a shiver that showered him like a patent bath. He kept the lock of his magazine rifle under his armpit, pulled down the brim of his sombrero to shield his face, and walked swiftly on for some few yards. Yet he made wonderfully little noise.
Having begun to climb rising ground, he here bore off toward the gorge, or cañon. If Oak Heart had laid an ambush there, the reds would be hiding in the brush, behind logs, and sheltered by boulders, all along the sidehills for some hundreds of yards. Buffalo Bill proposed to make a wide enough détour to get well behind the ambushed foe.
By chance, however, he came suddenly upon a slope of gravel and sand, and stepped upon it before he realized the shifting nature of the soil. A stream of small pebbles began rattling down the hill!
Instantly Buffalo Bill learned that his suspicions had been well founded. The Indians were there.
He heard a startled grunt below him. Then in Sioux a voice asked a brief question.
“Bear?” returned a second Indian.
There was a sound as though one of the speakers had risen from his place. Buffalo Bill cast his mind quickly over the situation. The suggestion that a bear might be lurking about the sidehill seemed the mostreasonable. A bear is notably a blundersome beast, and the wind was not from the ambushed redskins. The scout grasped the idea.
He sent another small avalanche of gravel down the slope, and then floundered a bit in the brush. His ability to imitate the voices of birds and animals was very keen; but it is not easy to imitate the gruff, startled “woof!” of the marauding bear. However, he essayed it and then stamped away up the hill through the brush, making a deuce of a clatter till he reached an open space. He hoped that the reds would take his play-acting in good faith; yet he could not help having his doubts. He considered that, had he been in their place, he would have felt strong doubt regarding the validity of the sound, and would have investigated.
Therefore he slipped behind an enormous tree trunk at the edge of this opening and waited to see if the supposed bear would be followed. Minute after minute passed, and a deathlike silence reigned upon the hillside. Buffalo Bill was wasting time, but he was too wary to approach closer to the Indians—near enough to learn their numbers at least—until he was assured that his first mistake had not borne perilous fruit.
Sharp as his hearing was, however, he did not hear a footfall, or a breath; yet of a sudden a figure was silhouetted before him against the open space in the forest. An Indian stood there with folded arms, his back to the scout, and facing the clearing!
One of the reds whom Cody had disturbed was not satisfied with the imitated retreat of the frightened “bear.” He had come to investigate and stood nowalmost within striking distance of the scout. But the latter feared to shoot him, of course; nor did he trust to a fling of his tomahawk, or knife. There were too many uncertainties about either of those methods of removing the redskin. To steal from behind the tree and spring upon him was another difficult thing, for the ground was strewn with rustling leaves and twigs, and the scout feared to announce his approach.
To his disgust, too, the Indian turned and began searching about the edge of the forest. Cody saw him step cautiously behind two trees and stick the muzzle of the old-fashioned musket he bore into a brush-clump. The red was trying to learn if the creature that had made all that “catouse” was still in the vicinity.
Instantly the scout glanced about in the gloom for a means of hiding himself more surely. In a minute the red would come his way.
Directly above his head he saw a branch. He slipped the strap of his rifle over his head and shoulder, thus leaving his hands free, seized the branch, and drew himself up carefully as an acrobat does when he “chins” the horizontal bar. Without a sound, or the rattle of a button or an accouterment, the scout drew himself into the tree. Three branches sprang from the butt low down, so furnishing him a splendid nest.
He removed his gun and stood it upright, wedged in a niche. Then he lay down along the lower branch, his body in the darkness merely adding a darker shadow to it, and watched and listened. No mountain cat was better ambushed for a foe. His guns he loosened in their scabbards, and then, drawing his bowie,he stuck it softly into the branch within easy reach of his hand.
At that instant there was a soft rustling in the leaves which covered the ground below. Cody craned his neck to see. The Indian in a stooping posture came into view. He halted directly under the limb on which the scout lay. It seemed too dark for him to see any mark that the scout might have left, yet he seemed wonderfully interested in the tree and the ground beneath it.
Cody could see the outline of his figure very well indeed. How much sharper the red’s vision might be he did not know; but he was not taking any chances. He noted that the red scamp faced the tree trunk and was apparently examining the rough bark for recently broken places. Was it possible that the fellow was really stumbling upon the truth—that a man had climbed this tree? Or was he feeling for the marks of a bear’s claws?
However, Cody decided the red had gone far enough. Besides, the fellow was temptingly near. He was a small, wiry man weighing little more than a hundred pounds.
Cody stooped suddenly, and both his muscular hands clutched the Indian around the neck—one before, one behind. And with this awful grip—which cut short any attempt to breathe, let alone to cry out—he lifted the redskin off his feet!
As was only natural, the red dropped his gun and clutched with both hands at the hand which pinched his windpipe. He kicked vainly for freedom. Before he could drop his hand to his knife and draw that, Cody jerked him upward till the top of his head struckwith fearful force against the under side of the tree branch. He could actually hear the redskin’s crown crack!
The foe’s hands dropped limply; yet Cody held on and squeezed his throat for a minute longer. Then he dropped the fellow like a bag of bones to the ground.
In a moment he seized his own rifle and dropped lightly beside him. The Indian had not stirred; he was without doubt dead. Cody took his weapons and removed his scalp, and went his way with some confidence that there was certainly one more “good” Indian.
He dodged the gravel bank this time, and came down the side of the cañon at another point—some rods beyond that at which he had found the first of the reds established. There were fewer trees here, and, looking from above, the scout was able to observe considerable of the more open hillside. Dark as the night was, he saw several forms crouching behind stumps and boulders.
He made a further détour, came down the hill again, and found the same conditions. On this side of the trail the Indians were extended along the hillside for five hundred yards and more. It was a big ambushing party. Cody reckoned it to be no less than two hundred braves at the least, and probably more. Captain Taylor’s command was not prepared to meet such a foe—especially when the foe would have every advantage of cover.
Had it not been so dark, or had Cody known the ground better, a flank movement might have been made which would have overwhelmed the reds. But thiswould have taken much time, too, and, meanwhile, the garrison at Fort Advance was in sore need of reenforcements.
Cody returned swiftly to the rendezvous he had appointed with Judd, to learn what that individual had discovered upon the other side of the cañon.
Now, the warriors lay very silently indeed in their ambuscade, but three hundred men cannot be in a small place like that together without making some sounds. Judd, too, discovered the ambush, although he did not know just how many Indians were awaiting the coming of the bluecoats.
“There’s a good bunch of them. Perhaps Oak Heart has drawn off half his gang,” said Cody. “We’ve got to fool ’em, Judd.”
They hurried back to the group of scouts, and there Cody issued his instructions. Judd and three others were to watch the Indians as well as possible. Meanwhile Cody proposed to ride back and meet Captain Taylor’s command and take them, by another way, to the valley in which Fort Advance was situated.
Cody rode back in haste and reported the danger ahead.
“We are able to handle five hundred redskins, Cody,” said the officer, eager for a fight.
“But not when they are established on both sides of the trail and it is dark and the forest is too thick for you to maneuver horses. No, no, captain! Be advised by me.”
“I suppose you are right, Cody.”
“And, besides, you will be able to deliver a heavier blowtoOak Heart’s gang if you fall upon them unexpectedly;and then, when these ambuscaders rush in, you’ll be ready to cut them to pieces, too.”
“Right you are, scout. You are sure of the way?”
“Confident. It’s a bit rough, but I could find it with my eyes bandaged.”
“Lead on, then, scout.”
“And no bugle-calls,” warned Cody. “Pass the word to the men. We don’t want these reds, waiting in the cañon, to suspect that we are stealing a march on them.”
Fortunately, the troops did not have to take the back track. The path by which the Border King was to lead them to their destination branched off this main trail into the hills. Over the rough way they rode, and soon the eastern sky began to grow gray. Dawn was approaching, and the increased light made the path vastly easier of traveling.
Buffalo Bill and Captain Taylor rode some distance ahead of the troops. The cavalry could go only as fast as the guns and ambulances could keep up, so the band moved necessarily slow.
They came at last almost within sight of Fort Advance. A low ridge shut out their view of the valley. Suddenly the cool morning breeze brought to them a great shouting and hullabaloo, intermingled with rifle-shots and the intermittent discharge of heavy guns.
“An attack!” exclaimed the captain and the scout together, and they spurred their horses to the top of the ridge.
It was true. Oak Heart had chosen the hour before dawn as the time to throw his remaining warriors against the stockade. He believed that about this time the rescue-party would be falling into the trap he hadlaid for it in the cañon. He would keep both bands of white men so busy that they could not go to each other’s rescue.
Suddenly the heavy guns ceased. There was only the occasional snapping of rifles from the fort.
“My God, Cody! What does that mean?” gasped Captain Taylor.
“Their ammunition has run out!” cried the scout. “I adjure you, captain, bring up your men at a double-quick. The next few minutes may settle the question as to whether those red devils get the scalps of every man, woman, and child in the fort! There is not an instant to lose, sir!”