CHAPTER XV.THE TREASURE CHEST.
This dreadful discovery told the scout that Indians had held up the coach. Yet he wondered if it had been done for robbery as well as murder? The officer he recognized as Captain Hinkley, the paymaster; the soldiers were his guard. He was a week ahead of his time; yet he had not managed to get safely through.
The fact that Indians had done the deed, however, disturbed Buffalo Bill. He could not understand it. The marks of half a dozen unshod ponies proved that his first suspicion was correct. Some of Oak Heart’s young braves might have done this. It was true, too, that the driver and soldiers had all been shot with arrows.
“How do I know that robbery has been committed at all?” muttered Buffalo Bill, and he leaped off his horse and made search inside the stage.
It was revealed at once that the marauders must have been frightened off before they came upon Captain Hinkley’s strong-box and bags of coin.
Fear of being caught in the act of murder and rapine usually rides the redskin to undue haste. Had there been whites with this gang of red robbers—either Boyd Bennett himself or any of his men—Cody knew that no small matter would have frightened them away before the object of the hold-up of the stage was accomplished. And the presence of the treasure-chest proved that the marauders must have been driven off.
By what, or whom? Surely his own coming had not done this! Yet the thought gave the scout food for serious reflection. Perhaps the reds might be lurking near and would descend again upon the spot and finish their job by gathering inhisscalp as well as that of the driver, the paymaster, and his guards.
He did not touch the money, therefore, but appeared likewise to find nothing in the coach. He even went back to his horse, mounted into the saddle, and set off along the trail at a lope as though proposing to go for help. He had remembered that there was a sandy piece of ground not far away, and here his horse’s hoofbeats would be deadened. As soon as he reached this he halted, dismounted, led his horse up among the rocks, and approached the scene of the catastrophe with great circumspection. Not a bird did he raise by this maneuver.
“They’ve vamosed!” declared Buffalo Bill, with confidence. “A scalping party of reds, and they knew nothing about the money. So it appears, at least. Yet, from all I’ve heard, Bennett is hand and glove with Oak Heart’s people. He’ll hear of this without fail. Now, what had I better do?”
He spent little time in cogitating, however. Cody was a man who made up his mind instinctively, rather than by any slow process of reasoning. He was prompt on this occasion to come to a conclusion.
The party of Indians who had done this hold-up act were not in the immediate vicinity. It was of some moment to Cody, however, to learn how far they had gone, and in what direction. He rustled the treasure-box out of the stage and lugged it up into the rocks, where he found a hiding-place that would do for thenonce. Then he picked up the trail of the redskins afoot and hurried after them.
Beyond the nearest hill the party had fled down into a well-watered valley which the scout knew led to a gorge, which was about the shortest way to Oak Heart’s camp. If Boyd Bennett and his gang happened to be with the Indians, saw the scalps, and guessed who the reds had murdered, he would be here after the treasure-box in short order.
Buffalo Bill believed that the reds were aiming for this gorge; yet they might have had another route in view. To make sure, he cut across the valley on a straight line for the mouth of the gorge to see if the trail was marked there, as well.
The middle of the valley was a swamp, and one that the scout had never been through. He had no idea that it was so dangerous a place until he had gotten some rods into it. Then, in leaping from a tussock to what looked like a solid log, he found the log, hammock, and all, sinking under him, and there was no safe spot ahead on which he could alight.
“Great Scott! I’d better go around, after all,” he muttered, in disgust, and turned gingerly on the sinking log.
And then, to his amazement, he saw that the comparatively safe place on which he had last stood had disappeared! As he leaped it had toppled over and the quagmire had swallowed it instantly. All he could see was a long stretch of some ten or twelve feet of stinking, dimpling black muck!
“However did I get over that place?” grunted the scout, in surprise. “Why, I’m due to go ten feet under the surface maybe, if I jump!”
And it quickly became apparent that he might go that depth under the surface if he didn’t jump, too. The old log sank lower and lower, until finally the liquid mud lapped over it completely and began to rise around his ankles. The log was only about eight feet long. He crept to the end which lay nearest solid ground, but even then it was a good eight-foot jump, and from such an unstable footing that seemed well nigh impossible of accomplishment.
Besides, the log began to tip. Where he stood it sank deeper and deeper, and with a splash of the filthy mire the other end shot into sight. Cody had to leap to the middle of the stick quickly to save himself from toppling over completely into the mud. There he wavered a moment until he caught his balance, and then, with grimness, looked about for escape.
He couldn’t hope for any help. Indeed, he would have been more troubled than delighted to see any other person than himself in this swamp at just this moment. The matter of the pay-chest rested heavily on his mind. However he escaped from this situation it must be by his own exertions, and those alone.
To try to wade to a more solid spot was to court possible extinction. To sink slowly into this muck and be smothered by it was a horrible thought. It chilled even the scout’s blood!
And, meantime, the log was sinking steadily. Inch by inch it was being submerged, and the mire was crawling up Buffalo Bill’s boot-legs.
The swamp was quite heavily wooded, so he was hidden from the view of anybody on the eminences around about. And, as he cast a worried glance about at the heights in fear that he might have attracted attention,he suddenly beheld the end of a tree branch almost over his head.
“Ah!” exclaimed he, and his eyes glistened as he followed the trend of this branch with their glance.
Of course, the branch was altogether too slight above his head to bear his weight, even could he reach it. But it promised something. He glanced along its length several times to the parent trunk some twenty feet away, and then began operations. There was, indeed, no time for him to lose, for the log was a good bit under the surface of the dimpling mud by this.
The fronded end of the branch was much too high for him to reach it with his hands; nor could he pull it down with his gun. Indeed, he got rid of that implement at once—it only weighed him down into the mire the faster—by tossing it into a crotch of the branch, where it fortunately chanced to catch and hang. He removed his belt, slipped the cartridges into the side pockets of his coat, tied his handkerchief to one end of the belt to make it longer, and then fastened one of his pistols to the handkerchief to weight the end. Swinging this weighted line, he cast the pistol about the small twigs above his head. The weapon caught in them, and gradually he drew the end of the branch down within the grasp of his hands.
He held this and fastened on his belt and gun again, buttoning his pockets so as not to lose his ammunition. The end of the branch was a bushy fan of small twigs and leaves. He could pull it down into the mud, and the green wood was tough and strong; but there was a big chance, when he bore any weight upon it, of the limb tearing off at the trunk.
However, swarming up this branch seemed the onlyway of escape from the smothering mud which already was as high as his knees. Its suction was terrific, too. When he flung himself forward on the branch he could scarcely drag his boots out of the mire.
But he fought on desperately, dragging up first one booted foot and then the other, and, although the limb cracked and he lay almost flat in the mud at first, he finally wormed his way up the branch to its bigger part. There he straddled it and waited to get his breath, and to scrape off some of the mud.
“A little more,” he puffed, “and I’d have gone down in that, and nobody would have been the wiser. Ah!”
He halted in his speech and stared down into the mud. An idea had smitten him, and he turned it over and over in his mind while he worked his way along the limb and descended to the foot of the tree.
He returned as quickly as possible to the edge of the swamp, and was contented thereafter to follow the trail of the redskins direct. No more short cuts! He found in time that his early suspicions had been correct. The trail led to the head of the gorge, and he was bound to believe that the murderers were some of Oak Heart’s Sioux.
“Boyd Bennett will learn of the hold-up inside of twenty-four hours—if not sooner. It’s up to me to hide that money where he won’t be able to find it.”
With this decision uppermost in his mind, he put into practise the idea that had been suggested to him as he sat on the tree branch. Returning to the temporary hiding-place of the money, he carried the chest to the edge of the swamp, endeavoring to leave as little trail as possible as he went. He had brought his lariat with him, and when he reached one of the mosttreacherous-looking pools of mud, he fastened the lariat about the box and lowered it into the depths. The quagmire sucked the box out of sight almost instantly.
Then Cody tied the end of the lariat to a tree-root under the surface of the muck, and so effectually disposed of the treasure where nobody but himself—or some person whom he guided—could find it. He returned to the scene of the hold-up and prepared to get away with the driverless stage instantly.
He placed the dead man inside the stage, tied Chief to one of the leaders, and, mounting to the box, drove hurriedly along the trail.
Being alone, he could not drive the horses and guard the treasure, too; so he had hidden it, intending to bring back a file of troopers from the fort later and pick it up.
He had not driven two miles along the trail when, loud and threatening, rose a voice from the rocks beside the road, which uttered these significant words:
“Live or die—yours the choice! Up with your hands there!”