CHAPTER XL.THE FREIGHT-TRAIN.
The sun was sinking like a great globe of fire, seemingly at the very foot of the broad valley which, from its head, spread forth miles upon square miles of verdant lawn, crimson and yellow groves, the leaves of which blushed before the cold finger-touch of winterinterspersed with patches of hemlock and spruce, now, as ever, green. Through the valley flowed a broad river, joined here by several mountain brooks which tumbled down from the heights on either hand to swell the main current, which entered the vale from the mouth of the broad cañon on the north. A deeply rutted wagon trail came out of the cañon as well as the river. For miles this trace wound along the riverside, hemmed in by gigantic cliffs on the tops of which the bighorn sheep looked like specks to the traveler below, and which were so high and so close together in places that it was twilight at noon in the bottom of the gorge!
Indeed, back in the cañon it was already night when the sun was but setting out here in the valley. Therefore the “mule-skinners” cracked their blacksnakes and shouted many objurgations to their patient animals, desiring to reach the open and make camp outside the cañon before darkness finally settled upon the valley. The creaking of the wagon wheels and the cracking of the whips, with the voices of the mule-skinners, made music a mile up the cañon.
It was a heavy wagon-train. First rode the captain on a gray mare with a bell on her neck. With her tethered near the wagons the mules could be turned loose at night; they would never desert the camp as long as the gray mare remained faithful.
The wagons of the train were linked together—five or six great, lumbering, canvas-topped vehicles, with eight or ten span of mules hauling on each section. There were three of these sections in the train, six men to a section, the captain, and the cook who rode behind on another saddle-horse, leading a pack-animalwhich bore the cook-tent and some of the camp equipment.
When the captain reached the mouth of the cañon and beheld the pleasant, sunlit valley he turned and uttered a loud “coee! coee!” which brought the cook and his packhorse trotting forward. The valley looked perfectly safe to the captain of the train, and he selected an indenture in the river-bank where the cook and he set up the tent, and, as fast as the wagons came up, they deployed off the trail so as to make a horseshoe figure around the camping-place, the open part of which was toward the river.
This precaution was always taken whether they saw Indian signs or not. And at night rifles were issued to the men and a strong guard mounted. Each man “packed” a couple of guns at his waist all day, anyway.
The selection of this low piece of ground as the camp was not wise, however. An enemy could ride to the edge of the low, sloping bluff which surrounded it on three sides and pop bullets over the wagon tops into the enclosure, shooting from one side those who strove to guard the other line of the camp.
For days, however, the party had seen no signs of redskins. Small scalping-parties would fight shy of the wagon-train; for twenty well-armed whites were bound to be respected by the Arabs of the plains, especially as the train crew was sure to be armed with the quickfiring guns which the Indians so feared.
After the sun set the evening was short, for it was late fall now. The air grew chill; in the midst of the camp the men built a rousing fire, aside from that over which the cook pottered, and around this theygathered and told stories, cracked rude jokes, or basked silently in the warmth of the flames, resting from the toil of the day. So unconscious were they of aught but their immediate surroundings that they did not see several horsemen who topped the nearest rise to the west, and overlooking the camp.
It was now deep dusk, but the horsemen were silhouetted against the sky-line so plainly that had any of the freighters chanced to glance that way they must have seen the figures. Only for a moment were they in view, however. The leader of the group spoke sharply, but in a low tone, to his mates, and all pulled their horses about and disappeared quickly beyond the ridge.
Later, and afoot, two of the party came again to the summit of the ridge and reconnoitered. The freighters’ camp lay calmly under the starry sky, the fires burning briskly, the mules champing the grass of the plain contentedly, occasionally a laugh or a sharp word echoing across the valley between the calls of the night-birds.
The wind wandered down from the heights and shook the canvas covers of the wagons as though trying to arouse the men to the danger that threatened them. Coyotes whined in the distance, sniffing the herd, but too cowardly to advance until on the morrow the freight-train should have passed on.Thenthey would come boldly in and fight over the scraps remaining. And, perhaps, there would be greater booty for the scavengers of the plains to fight over!
The men scouting about the freighters’ camp numbered the unconscious men and noted their arms and how the camp was arranged. There was a high river-bank.The captain of the train had ordered the arrangement of the wagons partly because he was eager to obtain water; but there was a high bank to the river here, and a narrow beach below it. Men afoot could creep down this bank and, sheltered from the camp, approach it and attack from the riverside. Even a sentinel stationed on the very verge of the bank would be little likely to apprehend the coming of such an attacking force, unless he chanced to be expecting it.
The captain of the train set one of his watchmen on the bank above the river, however, and to keep warm the rifleman walked back and forth, pacing a beat some twenty yards long. This would have been all very well had the crew believed there was a particle of danger threatening the camp. But so confident were they of peace that they did not even drive the mules down from the higher ground where they were feeding. A party of a dozen reds—if they could have loosed the gray mare—might have made off with the entire herd.
There was a shelter tent for each six men, while the cook and the captain shared the fourth canvas. At ten o’clock, under a black-velvet sky pricked out with the brilliant but distant stars, the camp was as quiet as the grave—that is, providing one could imagine some of the occupants of the grave sleeping their long sleep “loudly.” Aside from these snores, however, and the champing of the horses and mules, there was little sound to break the silence. There was a sentinel pacing a short beat on the inland side of the camp; but, it being cold when the wind swooped down and flapped the loose canvas, he got in behind the chain of wagons and was not so much use as a guard. Along the river-bank paced the other sentinel, whistlingunder his breath, and staring off across the black, smoothly flowing water, in which the stars were mirrored.
Wide-awake as he was, this second guard heard nothing when a single figure slipped down the river-bank beyond the camp and toward the cañon’s entrance, and in a stooping posture sneaked along toward him. This figure lay low upon the shore when the guard walked that way. When the guard turned the prowler arose again and kept just behind him, but below the bank, until both reached about the middle of the beat the sentinel was following.
Then, softly as a cat, without as much as scratching a button or rattling the rifle in his hand or the guns in his belt, the stranger darted up the bank, and, stooping low, hurried to the smaller tent in which slept the captain of the train and the cook. Evidently the stranger had picked this tent out before dark, and shrewdly guessed who occupied it. Lifting the flap softly, he crept in and lowered it before the guard on the river-bank turned. The other guard was standing facing the opposite way and saw nothing.
Once in the darkness of the tent, the stranger coolly squatted on his haunches, laid down his rifle, and drawing out a match-safe, scratched a lucifer and held it up so that the sputtering flame might cast some radiance over the interior of the tent.
The pungent odor of the sulfur got in the nose of one of the sleepers, and he sneezed. He sneezed a second time and sat up suddenly, blinking his eyes in surprise at the figure squatting inside the tent. This was an utter stranger to him—a man with long hair, a military hat, buckskin coat, and riding breeches andboots. And he was armed like a pirate—belt stuck full of guns and with a big bowie. He smiled cheerfully at the amazed and sleepy individual, however.
“Hello!” he said. “Which one of you is the captain?”
“Heh?” murmured the startled one.
“Who’s the boss?”
“I—I’m the cook.”
“Then the other feller is the boss?”
“I—I reckon so. Say, Billings!” and he suddenly punched the other man in the ribs. “Wake up! We’re surrounded!”
“Shut up, you fool!” exclaimed the visitor, slapping his palm suddenly over the second man’s mouth, for it opened to emit a yell before his eyes were fairly ajar. “It’s all right. What did you want to startle him for?”
“Who the devil are you?” demanded the cook.
“And how’d you git here?” cried the other man.
“I’m Cody, and I belong just now to the command at Fort Advance. You’re in about as dangerous a position as a score of men can be and get out of it alive, and I’ve sneaked into your camp to help you.”
“Injuns!” groaned the cook, turning pale.
“There ain’t a red within forty miles,” declared Buffalo Bill, for he it was.
“Then what’s the matter?” sputtered the captain of the freight crew. “I’ve set guards over the camp. We’re all right.”
“Your guards are a lot of use, ain’t they?” sneered the scout. “They’re out there walking up and down like two wooden men; but they didn’t see me get by.”
“But, for Heaven’s sake what is the matter?”
“You’ve got worse than Injuns after you.”
“What can that be?”
“Boyd Bennett’s gang of hold-up men.”
“Git out! Bennett’s left the country.”
“He’s j’ined an Injun tribe,” added the cook. “Become a squaw man.”
“Well, he’s out yonder with about a dozen of the p’izenest ruffians that it’s ever been my fate to run up against,” declared Buffalo Bill. “And from what I could overhear lying out there on my belly in the grass, they’re pretty near ready to stampede you!”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned the cook.
But the captain of the crew was no coward. He was awake now, and he leaped up, ready to fight for his own life and help to defend the lives of his mates and the valuable property entrusted to him.
“Mr. Cody, you take command,” he urged instantly. “You are a better man than any one in this entire party—that I’ll swear to. I have shown my incompetency already by placing my guards so carelessly that you could creep into my very sleeping tent without being apprehended.”
“Many a man has made the mistake of being too confident when there were no signs of trouble,” said Buffalo Bill. “But you had no knowledge of these outlaws being near you, of course. Although, it was quite by chance that they did not blunder into your midst, I fancy. There are fewer of them than there are of your men; but if they had caught you with your pants down it would have been ‘Good-by John!’ for you all. This is as bloody-minded a gang of cut-throats as infest this Western country.”
“So I have heard said of Bennett and his men. But I thought they had left the Overland Trail.”
“They are not on the old lay just at present,” Cody explained. “In fact, I am following them for an entirely different reason. And if we have the luck to beat the devils, I’d be thankful for any help you could give me toward capturing the whole gang and rescuing a prisoner they hold.”
“A prisoner?”
“Aye, and a girl—God help her!”
“Great heavens! a woman in the hands of those ruffians?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“White Antelope, the daughter of old Oak Heart, the Sioux chieftain.”
“Oh, thunder! a squaw!” exclaimed the captain of the train crew in disgust.
“She’s just as precious to the old redskin as the daughter of a white man is to him, I s’pose,” said the scout sternly. “Besides, her release means a great deal to me—and to Major Baldwin of Fort Advance—and, perhaps, to the entire white settlers of this part of the country.”
“Well, well! I can’t afford to quarrel with you over a red squaw,” said the other lightly. “You help us, and we’ll help you.”
“I am here for the purpose of helping you,” said the Border King, with some stiffness of manner, for the other’s tone had jarred upon him.