CHAPTER XLII.THE AVENGER.
The gang of outlaws had been depleted by five. One had fallen on the river-bank, and four others had either been killed or so badly wounded that they fell captive to the freighters on the side of the ridge. There were but eight who gathered about the spot where White Antelope was left tied, when the fight was over.
And they feared pursuit and a worse thrashing than they had already endured. They clamored to be ledaway from the place, and Boyd Bennett, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage, was forced to agree.
Every man of them had a fear of Buffalo Bill, the Border King. How he could have gotten ahead of them, and been in the teamsters’ encampment when they made their attack, added to the superstitious veneration in which the outlaws had begun to hold the great scout. Heretofore they had held Boyd Bennett as a better man than Cody; but now they began to doubt.
Besides, several of them did not approve of his bearing away the Indian girl from her village. While Bennett had posed as the medicine chief of the Sioux, they were all sure of being treated well by the savages. Some of them had taken Indian wives and were living in ease and plenty—the lazy, irresponsible existence of the “squaw-man.”
Boyd Bennett’s unhappy attachment for the chief’s daughter had brought the gang together again, and old-time loyalty had caused them to answer his command. But they now believed that they had lost more than they should gain. All the Sioux would be down upon them, and so they would be at enmity with every man they met in the forest and on the plain, both red and white!
White Antelope showed plainly that she would never yield to Boyd Bennett’s demand and espouse him. While he was with the Indians and wielding so much influence as Death Killer, the medicine-man, she had spurned his advances. Much more did she hold him in contempt now.
And Boyd Bennett, too, was acting very strangely. Evil ways and evil desires were turning the man’sbrain. He acted without judgment. Now he unloosed White Antelope, caught her up to his saddle, and rode away with his men without as much as looking for traces of Buffalo Bill in the vicinity, or learning if in reality the freighters were inclined to follow up their advantage and push the attack.
They swam the river and made for another exit from the valley. But their horses were pretty well done up, and they could get only a spurt of speed out of them now and then. Besides, Boyd Bennett’s own mount refused after a time to carry double. This necessitated one of the other ruffians carrying White Antelope before him on his saddle.
The chance afforded the chief villain an escape from certain death. The party were aiming to leave the valley by the way the broadening river flowed; but they were some distance from the river’s side. Through the uncertain light of early morning they did not see a tireless white horse carrying its rider down the opposite bank until they reached a ford, through which the stallion splashed to the side of the stream on which the bandits rode.
It was the avenger on the villain’s trail; but they did not suspect that again Buffalo Bill had ridden ahead of them. Chief was tireless.
The scout ensconced the horse behind a thicket, and wormed his way out into the open where he could draw bead on anybody passing along the river trail. It was a long shot, but the scout had succeeded in making more ticklish ones in times past.
By and by the band of tired horsemen loped along the trail. The light was too uncertain for Cody to distinguish one man from the other; but he saw oneriding ahead and carrying the girl before him, and he believed it must be Bennett. He did not think the fellow would let the White Antelope out of his own bloody hands.
Therefore he took sight—deadly sight—at this man, and shot him through the head!
A yell rose from the bandits as the rifle exploded and the man pitched off his mount. It was answered by Buffalo Bill’s eery war-whoop. The seven remaining bandits knew who had fired the fatal shot.
But, although the immediate captor of the girl had fallen, she had no time to urge the pony to one side and thus escape. Buffalo Bill saw his mistake in a moment. With a wild yell Boyd Bennett spurred to the side of the horse which White Antelope sat, and threatened her with drawn bowie as the whole cavalcade shot down the river trail and put a brush-clump between them and the scout’s rifle. When they appeared again they were out of rifle-shot.
“Seven of them left,” muttered Buffalo Bill. “I thought I had that devil that time. But let him wait—let him wait!”
He mounted Chief once more and rode for a time in the wake of the bandits. But, fearing that some of them might slip off their horses and lay in wait for him, he turned aside into the hilly country and so saw the refugees only occasionally from the summits of certain hills which he climbed. He kept them from resting, however, during the forenoon. By midday the desperadoes’ ponies were completely worn out.
Had they not been so fearful of the scout the seven men might have shown fight. They were equally well armed with Buffalo Bill, and some of them were goodshots. But Boyd Bennett thought only of escape with the girl, and his mates were in a blue funk, anyway.
They came at noon to a deserted Indian encampment. It was a hunting-camp, the braves evidently being out in the hills after game and having left nobody but the squaws on guard. The squaws had gone into the bush after late berries. Therefore, there was none to balk the bandits.
There were no ponies, or the men would have left their fagged mounts and stolen those of the red men. But in the river lay two good-sized canoes. Abandoning their ponies the outlaws seized these boats, forced White Antelope into the leading one with Boyd Bennett and two others, and the four remaining men entering the other boat, both were pushed off and paddled down the stream.
Cody beheld this move from a hilltop, and immediately rode down to the river. Had he crossed the paths of any of the Indians—they were not Sioux, but he knew the tribe—he might have obtained their help. Alone, however, he came to the river-bank. The canoes were far out in the stream and going down rapidly with the current and the force of the paddles. The scout saw the White Antelope on her knees in the forward boat, her arms stretched out to him. Her mute gesture for help spurred him on to a desperate attempt!
Chief had come far now without much rest, but he was able to make one more spurt. Down the river path the scout thundered, racing to catch up with the canoes. There was a high bluff across the river, offering no landing-place. On this side the bank was low. Even if the canoes were paddled near the oppositeshore, the scout’s rifle would carry a deadly ball that distance. In coming near, and into sight, however, he gave the bandits a chance to try their marksmanship upon him.
But this risk the brave scout took. For the White Antelope’s sake he was venturing his life.
He forced Chief to top speed until the brave old horse came out upon a cleared space just ahead of the two canoes. The bandits began to pop at him with their rifles; but shooting from a sitting position in a trumpery little canoe was no easy job.
Both craft were overloaded, anyway. Two men were supposed to be the full complement of the cargo of each. So the craft rode low, and the least movement might tip them over. One man in the forward boat, and two in the latter, turned their attention to the scout and his white horse; but their bullets flew wide of the mark.
The scout, however, paid no more attention to the whistling lead than he would have to so many buzzing flies. He dismounted from Chief, and, standing out deliberately on the river-bank, raised his rifle and took aim at the leading paddler in the rear boat. He did not shoot at those with White Antelope in the other canoe. First he would reduce the numbers of the gang.
Crack!
The heavy rifle spoke no louder than a pistol across the flat surface of the water. With a yell the man dropped his paddle, turned a face all gory upon the scout, and then pitched out of the canoe!
Strangely enough he did not tip over the vessel.Another caught up his paddle. They tried to urge the craft to the foot of the steep bluff. But now the current had caught the light canoe in a fierce grip, and to swerve it was not easy.
Crack!
Just as a second man was drawing bead as well as he could upon the undaunted scout, the rifle dropped from his hands, and he fell backward into the bottom of the canoe. The craft dipped dangerously and all but went over. As it righted the scout fired a third time. Plunk the ball went through and through the body of the canoe!
The water began to run in at both holes, and the canoe sank. One of the remaining men, in complete panic, threw himself overboard and swam for the shore. The other continued to paddle desperately.
A double report sounded. The rifleman in the forward boat had stood up and taken a better aim at the scout. The latter’s shoulder was plowed just under the skin by the ball. But Cody’s own bullet sped straight to the desperate paddler in the second canoe, and the man fell sideways, shot through the lungs; the canoe tipped completely, and man and canoe went to the bottom together.
Meanwhile, the fourth man in that boat had reached the strand. It was a narrow beach and offered no shelter for him. He scrambled up the steep bluff like a crab making for its hole. But when he was half-way up, and his body against the yellow sand made an excellent target, the scout’s gun spoke again.
Sprawled out, and screaming, the fellow fell all the way back to the shore, and there, squirming with the agony of the wound which was in a vital part, he rolledinto the river, and the black current swept him swiftly down-stream.
He passed the first canoe that had been retarding, while the rifleman tried a second particular shot at the scout. The drowning man yelled for help. He even snatched at the gunwale of the canoe as he was swept by.
Instantly Boyd Bennett seized a pistol from his belt and deliberately shot the drowning man through the head. Perhaps, if the latter had seized the canoe, he would have overturned it and sacrificed the four other lives; yet it was a desperately cruel act!
Meanwhile Cody had leaped aside, escaping the second shot of the rifleman in the remaining canoe; and then, before the man could sit down and the canoe could shoot ahead, he dropped him cleanly with a ball through the heart!
In five minutes the bloody battle was over. But two of the bandits were left alive. The other five had sunk to the bottom of the river, while the remaining two, and the White Antelope, were being carried swiftly down the stream, and by a current now so powerful that they could not steer to the bank on either side. Just below were the worst series of rapids on the entire river!