84
While the foreman continued to talk, Stanley again looked over the human wrecks that he had rounded up and brought out of Sellersville. “What can we do?” echoed Stanley, repeating the last question tartly. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing we can do. We can throw Sellersville into the river.”
Dancing and Scott were gone half an hour. The report, when they returned, was not encouraging. “It is a bunch of cutthroats from Medicine Bend, colonel,” said Bob Scott.
“All friends of yours, I presume, Bob,” returned Stanley.
The scout only smiled. “John Rebstock is there with his following. But the boss, I think, is big George Seagrue. He is mean, you know. George has got two or three men to his credit.”
“Are we enough to clean them out, Bob?” inquired Stanley impatiently.
Scott looked around and his eye rested for a moment on Dancing. He hitched his trousers. “There’s about thirty men down there. I expect,” he continued reflectively, “we can take care of them if we have to.”
85
Stanley turned to the sergeant of his troopers. “Pitch a permanent camp, sergeant. There will be nothing to take us any farther up the river.”
As Stanley gave the order Bucks noticed that Dancing winked at Scott. And without the meaning glances exchanged by the lineman and the scout, Bucks would have understood from Stanley’s manner that he meant strong measures. Stanley sent a further message to the contractor, and the foreman, followed by his convoy of humanity, started on. The soldiers, foreseeing a lively scene, stripped their pack-horses and set at work pitching their tents.
Leaving four men in camp, the engineer, accompanied by his escort, rode down the bluffs and, striking a lumber road, galloped rapidly through the poplar bottom-lands toward the gamblers’ camp. It was an early tour for human wolves to be stirring, and the invaders clattered into Sellersville before they attracted any attention.
A bugler, however, riding into the middle of the settlement, sounded a trumpet call, and at the unwonted notes frowsy, ill-shaped heads appeared86at various shanty doors and tent-flaps to see what was doing. Stanley sent one man from door to door to notify the inmates of each shelter to pack up their effects and make ready to move without delay.
Five troopers were detailed to guard three gambling tents that stood together in the middle of the camp, each of these being flanked by smaller dens. Word was then passed to the gamblers and saloon-keepers to line up on the river front.
Stanley regarded the gathering crowd with a cold eye. Scott, who stood near Bucks, pointed out a square-shouldered man with a deep scar splitting one cheek. “Do you know that fellow, Bucks?” he asked in an undertone.
“No; who is he?”
“That is a Medicine Bend confidence man, Perry. Do you remember the woman you helped out with a ticket to Iowa? Perry is her husband––the man that Dave Hawk made pay up.”
Perry was a type of the Sellersville crowd now being evicted. There was much talk as the soldiers87urged and drove the gang out of one haunt after another and a good deal of threatening as the leaders marched out in front of Stanley.
“Who is running this camp?” demanded the officer curtly. The men looked at one another. A fat, slow-moving man with small blue eyes and a wheezy voice answered: “Why, no one in particular, colonel. We’re just a-camping in a bunch. What’s a-matter? Seagrue here,” he nodded to a sharp-jawed companion, “and Perry,” he added, jerking his thumb toward the scarred-faced man, “and me own these two big tents in partners.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name’s Rebstock.”
“Produce the axes stolen here from these two men,” said Stanley, indicating the choppers behind him. There was a jangle of talk between Rebstock and his associates, and Perry, much against his inclination, was despatched to hunt up the axes. It was only a moment before he returned with them.
Rebstock, with a show of virtue, reprimanded Perry severely for harboring the men that had88stolen the axes. “Sorry it happened, colonel,” he grumbled, after he had abused the thieves roundly in a general way, “and I’ll see it doesn’t happen again. We can’t watch everybody in a place like this. Tell your men,” he continued, expanding his chest, “to leave their axes with me when they come to Sellersville––what?”
The assurances were lost on Stanley. “Rebstock,” said he, in a tone that Bucks had not heard before from him, “take your personal effects, all of you––and nothing else––and load them on a flatboat. I will give you one hour to get-out of here.”
Rebstock almost fell over backward. He wheezed in amazement. There was an outburst of indignant protests. A dozen men clamored at once. Perry rushed forward to threaten Stanley; others cursed and defied him.
“Who are you, and what do you mean giving orders like that?” demanded Seagrue, confronting him angrily.
“No matter who I am, you will obey the orders. And you can’t take any tents or gambling apparatus89or liquors. Pack up your clothes and camp stuff––nothing else––and get out.”
If a bombshell had dropped into Sellersville, consternation could not have been more complete. But it became quickly apparent that not all of the gang would surrender without a fight. The leaders retreated for a hurried consultation.
Rebstock walked back presently and confronted Stanley. “What’s your law for this?” he demanded, breathless with anger.
Stanley pointed to the ground under their feet.
“What’s your title to this land, Rebstock? It belongs to the railroad that those ties belong to. Where is your license from the United States Government to sell whiskey here? You are trespassers and outlaws, with no rights that any decent man ought to respect. You and your gang are human parasites, and you are going to be stripped and sent down the river as fast as these flatboats will carry you.”
Without waiting for any rejoinder, Stanley turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Rebstock speechless. The threats against the intruders90continued, but Stanley paid no attention to any of them. Scott and the five troopers faced the gamblers. Stanley called to the two wood-choppers, who stood near with their axes, and pointed to the gambling tents.
“Chop up every wheel and table in there you can find,” said he.
A cry went up from Perry when he heard the order, but the axemen, nothing loath, sprang inside to their work, and the crashing of the gambling furniture resounded through the alarmed camp. Stanley made no delay of his peremptory purpose. The tent attacked belonged to Seagrue, who, common report averred, feared nothing and nobody, while the gambling implements were Perry’s.
Seagrue rushed to his property, revolver in hand. Bill Dancing, who stood at Stanley’s side, stepped into his way.
“Hold on, Seagrue,” he said. The gambler, fully as large a man as Dancing, faced his opponent with his features fixed in rage. “Get away,” he shouted, “or I will knock your head off.”
91
All eyes centred on the two men. Every one realized that open war was on and that it needed only a spark to start the shooting. The gamblers, rallying to Seagrue, backed him with oaths and threats.
“Seagrue, put down that pistol or I’ll wring your neck,” returned the lineman, baring his right arm as he sauntered toward the outlaw. Bucks, beside Stanley, stood transfixed as he watched Dancing. The lineman’s revolver was slung in the holster at his side.
Seagrue hesitated. He saw Bob Scott standing in the doorway of the gambling tent with his rifle lying carelessly over his arm. He was actually covering Seagrue where he stood––and Seagrue knew that Bob Scott was deadly with a rifle. But Dancing was walking directly up to him and Seagrue dared not be shamed before his own associates. He jumped back to fire, but it was too late.
Dancing caught his wrist. Both were men of great strength, and their muscles knotted as they grappled. It was only after a moment92that the lineman could be seen to gain. Then, as he bent the gambler’s arm back, he suddenly released it and struck the revolver out of his hand. Seagrue, with a curse, sprang back, and drawing a knife rushed for the second time at the lineman. Dancing jumped to one side. As he did so he seized an axe from the hand of one of the choppers and turned again on Seagrue. The gambler made a lunge at his throat, but as he threw himself forward, Dancing, springing away, brought the axe around like a flash and laid it flat across his assailant’s forearm. The knife flew twenty feet, and before the gambler could recover himself the railroad man with one hand like a vice on his throat bore him to the ground.
“Give me a piece of rope,” muttered Dancing as Stanley ran up.
IT WAS ONLY AFTER A MOMENT THATTHE LINEMAN COULD BE SEEN TO GAIN.
IT WAS ONLY AFTER A MOMENT THATTHE LINEMAN COULD BE SEEN TO GAIN.
Bob Scott slashed a tent guy and handed it to him. In another minute Dancing, in spite of Seagrue’s struggles, had lashed his prisoner hand and foot. Picking him up bodily, he walked unopposed to the landing, and to the astonishment of the spectators heaved Seagrue with scant ceremony into a flatboat. There a trooper kept him quiet. Walking back, the lineman brushed the dust of the encounter from his arms as if to invite any further Sellersville champion to come forward. But John Rebstock, the really responsible head of the place, showed no desire to meet Dancing, and Perry, the sneak of the trio, only ranted while Rebstock stood at a respectable distance wheezing his surprise at the tremendous exhibition of strength. And the work of destruction went forward.
Adjoining the Seagrue tent stood a saloon in which the men were now ordered to demolish the stock. This renewed the excitement among Rebstock’s followers.
“Don’t waste any time,” was Stanley’s order. “They may rush us. Knock in the head of a keg of whiskey, pour it over the bar, and burn the shanty.”
The gamblers were, in fact, mustering for a charge on the invaders. Before they could act the saloon was ablaze and the flames, rising amid the yells and execrations of its owners, leaped to the93big tent adjoining. In front of this the soldiers in a skirmish line held back the scurrying outlaws. Within a few moments Sellersville was ablaze from end to end and its population, including Perry and Rebstock, driven to the flatboats, were floating with threats and curses down the muddy current of the Spider Water.
94CHAPTER VII
Stanley’s next camp was pitched down the river where the overland telegraph line crossed the Spider Water, and Bucks, installed in a smart army tent with a cracker-box for a stool and a packing-case for an instrument table, was, through Dancing’s efforts, put in communication by wire with Medicine Bend and the west country as far as Sleepy Cat, where the War Department was establishing an army post.
Stanley, with Bob Scott, now spent a great deal of time in the saddle between the bridge and the upper tie-camps, and his presence made itself felt in the renewed energy everywhere apparent among the contractors and their men. Bucks, chained to a wire, as he expressed it, found the days dragging again and would much rather have been at liberty to ride with Scott, who, when free, hunted in the foot-hills.
One day Bucks was sitting alone in his tent,95looking for the hundredth time over a worn copy ofHarper’s Weeklythat he had picked up at Casement’s camp, when a dog put his nose in the tent door. A glance revealed merely a disconsolate, unpromising cur, yet Bucks thought he had seen the dog before and was interested. He seemed of an all-over alkali-brown hue, scant of hair, scant of tail, and with only melancholy dewlap ears to suggest a strain of nobler blood in an earlier ancestry. He looked in with the furtive eye of the tramp, and as if expecting that a boot or a club would most probably be his welcome.
But Bucks at the moment was lonely––as lonely as the dog himself––and as the two fixed their eyes intently on each other, Bucks remembered that this was the tie foreman’s dog, Scuffy.
Scuffy had appeared at the psychological moment. Bucks regarded him in silence, and the dog perceiving no immediate danger of assault stood, in silence, returning Bucks’s stare. Then watching the boy’s eye carefully, the dog cocked his head just the least bit to one side. It was a mute appeal, but a moving one. Bucks continued,96however, his non-committal scrutiny, recalling that the foreman had said nothing good of Scuffy, and the homeless cur stood in doubt as to his reception. But realizing, perhaps, that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain, the little vagabond played his last card––he wagged his stubby tail.
A harder heart than Bucks’s might have been touched. The operator held out his hand. No more was needed; the melancholy tramp stepped cautiously forward waving his alert flag of truce. He sniffed long and carefully as he neared Bucks, looked solicitously into the boy’s eyes, and then smelt and licked the proffered hand. It was a token of submission as plainly expressed as when Friday, kneeling, placed Robinson Crusoe’s foot on his head. Bucks reached into a paper bag that Bill Dancing had left on the table and gave the dog a cracker.
Scuffy snapped up the offering like one starving. A second cracker and a third disappeared at single gulps. For the length of the dog, the size of his mouth appeared enormous. In a moment the97cracker-bag was emptied and Scuffy again licked the friendly hand. It did not take Bucks long to decide what to do. In another moment he had resolved to adopt his tramp visitor. The day happened to be Friday, and Bucks at once renamed him Friday. When Dancing, who had been with Bob Scott hunting, came in late that night he found Bucks asleep and Scuffy lying in Dancing’s own bed, from which he was ejected only after the most vigorous language on his own part as well as on that of the lineman. Even then, Scuffy retreated only as far as Bucks’s feet, where he slept for the rest of the night undisturbed.
“Where did he come from?” growled Dancing in the morning as he sat with his pipe regarding the intruder, who acted quite at home, with a critical eye.
Bucks explained that this was the tie foreman’s runaway dog, Scuffy, and beyond Scuffy’s first appearance at the tent door he could tell him nothing. Scuffy simply and promptly assumed a place in camp and Bucks became, willy-nilly, his sponsor.98But his effort to rename him came to nothing. Scuffy gave no heed when called “Friday,” but for “Scuffy” he sprang to attention instantly.
Bill Dancing decided, off-hand, that “the pup” was worthless. Scott, whose smile was kindly even when sceptical, only corrected Bill to the extent of saying that Friday or Scuffy, whoever or whatever he might be, was no pup; that he was a full-grown dog and in Bob’s judgment he would need no guardian.
One day, shortly after Scuffy had been put upon the pay-roll, Scott came in from a trip after venison with word that there were black bears in the hill canyons. The thought of bear’s meat aroused every one, and Stanley suggested a bear hunt. Scott had to send down to Stanley’s ranch at Medicine Bend for his dogs and some delay followed. But when the three hounds arrived there was excitement enough to compensate for it. One of the dogs was a big black fellow and his companions were brown full-bloods. The hounds, one and all, set on Scuffy the moment they reached camp, and it was only by the most99dexterous manœuvres that the strange dog escaped being eaten alive. Indeed, Bob Scott remarked at once that if Scuffy should survive the greetings of his new comrades he would prove his right to live. The hounds always set upon him at meal-times, usually chewed him at bed-time, and harried him at all times.
To a less hopeful temperament than Scuffy’s, life would not have seemed worth living. It was only Bucks who insured him anything at all to eat, and the enmity of the big, rangy hounds for the lean and hungry tramp dog left him no peace save when they were fighting in dreams. To accept life under such conditions indicated that Scuffy was a philosopher, and he accepted the conditions cheerfully, filching what he could of sustenance from the common pot and licking his troublesome wounds at night after his truculent companions had gone to sleep.
As soon as the tie-supply trouble had been lessened Stanley took things more leisurely and the interval afforded the opportunity for the delayed bear hunt. Bob Scott and Dancing were to go100with Stanley, and Bucks being freed for one day from his key was invited to be of the party. All hands were in the saddle by daybreak, and Scott’s hounds were baying and tearing around camp wild with excitement.
At the last moment a complication arose. Scuffy, who until the moment of starting had for prudential reasons––that is, to avoid being eaten up––remained in obscurity, joined the hunters. Every one in turn tried to drive him back, but long practice had made him expert in dodging missiles and had rendered him insensible to reproach. The hounds were too filled with the prospect of sport to pay any attention to Scuffy. In vain, Bob Scott tried to set them on him and drive him back to camp. On this occasion, when bullying would plainly have been justified, no hound would assail Scuffy. Bucks drove him again and again from the flank of the advance only to have the mortification of seeing him reappear a mile or two farther along the trail, and it was at last decided to leave him to his fate at the paw of a bear––which no one made doubt he101was certain to suffer. At that moment Bucks and Bill Dancing, riding together, saw a deer frightened from a thicket running toward the river. Bucks jumped from his horse and lifted his rifle to take a shot, but by the time he was ready to fire the deer had vanished.
Led by Scott, the hunters rode at once into the rough country to the west, where in the mountain fastnesses the bears loved to feed. The hounds gave tongue vigorously, and Scuffy, who had by this time not only established himself but had impudently taken the lead and was heading the pack, barked loudest and longest.
“Did anybody ever see conceit equal to that?” demanded Stanley. “Look at that cur leading the hounds.”
Bucks was mortified and expressed his regret.
“Don’t mind him, Bucks,” remarked Dancing consolingly. “That dog won’t bother long. The first time the hounds run in, the bear will finishhim.”
Bucks did not know precisely what Bill meant by “running in,” but he was not to be long in doubt. The pack struck a fresh trail almost at102once and the hunters had a long ride along a mountain-side covered with fallen timber and cut by innumerable wash-outs that made the riding hard and dangerous. Scott found intervals to encourage Bucks, whose youth and inexperience made his task of keeping up with the others a difficult one. “Take it easy,” said Scott encouragingly as the operator tried to urge his mount.
“I am keeping you all back, Bob.”
“Plenty of time. You are doing wonders for mountain-riding. When we close in on the bear don’t be too keen to get near him. You wouldn’t be safe for a minute on your horse if the dogs didn’t keep the bear busy. As long as the dogs worry the bear you are safe. A bear will never chase a man as long as a dog keeps at him. It’s only when the dogs refuse to go in any longer that the danger begins. When that happens, look out. Keep a respectful distance all the time and a road open behind you. That’s all there is to a bear fight.”
As he spoke, the hounds yelped sharply and Scott spurred forward. The hunters were threading103a grove of quaking asp and the dogs had come up with the bear on an opening of shale rock surrounded by down timber. Throwing his reins and advancing cautiously on foot, Stanley, followed by his companions, who spread themselves in a wide semicircle, took his place, the others, as they best could, choosing their own.
The bear, a full-grown male, met the onset of the hounds with grim confidence. The dogs encircled him with a ring of ferocious teeth, running in from behind whenever they could to nip the huge beast in the haunches or on the flank. But the surprise of the encounter was Scuffy.
“Look,” cried Bill Dancing, under whose wing Bucks had taken his post. “Look at him! Why, the pup is a world-beater!”
In truth, Scuffy was the liveliest and most impudent dog in the pack, and when the fight was fully on, managed to worry the angry bear more than the hounds did. Within a moment the black hound, over-bold, imprudently rushed the bear in front. A paw darting from the huge beast caught him like a trip-hammer and stretched him helpless.104In that moment the bear exposed himself to Stanley’s rifle and a shot rang across the mountain-side. Scott watched the result anxiously. But the slug instead of dropping the bear served only to enrage him. For an instant the two hounds lost their heads and the infuriated bear charged Bucks and Bill Dancing.
The shale opening became a scene of confusion. Exposing himself recklessly, Scott tried to urge the dogs forward, but they had lost their nerve. It needed only this to upset everything. The hunters closed in together, and the critical moment had come; deaf alike to command and entreaty, the two hounds refused to go in, and Scuffy, flying wildly about the bear, seemed unable to check him. Dancing stopped long enough to take one shot, and ran––with Bucks, who had found no chance to shoot, following. The bear gained fast on the long-legged lineman and his boy companion. A wash-out, hidden by a clump of bushes, lay directly in the path of flight. Dancing, perceiving it, dashed to the left and escaped. He shouted a warning to Bucks, who, not understanding, plunged straight over the declivity and105sprawled into the wash-out with the bear after him. Catching his rifle, the boy scrambled to his feet with his pursuer less than twenty feet away. Between the two there was only open ground, and the bear was scrambling for Bucks when Scuffy sprang down the shale bank and confronted the enemy.
It looked like certain death for Scuffy, but the tramp dog did not hesitate. He rushed at the bear with a fury of snapping, though not without a lively respect for the sweep of the brute’s fore paws. The little dog, freeing himself forever in that moment from the stigma of cur, put up a fight that astonished the big brute.
Scuffy raced at him first on one side and then on the other, bounding in and out like a rubber ball, dashing across his front and running clear around the circling bear, nipping even an occasional mouthful of hair from his haunches. He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long. Skilful as106the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his disordered faculties, raised his rifle to help his champion with a shot. His heart beat like a hammer in his throat, but he knew there was only one thing to do, that was to get the rifle-sights carefully lined in his eye and shoot when Scuffy gave him an opening.
It came in a moment when the bear turned to smash Scuffy on his flank. Bucks fired. To his amazement, no result followed. The failure of the bear to show any sign of being hit stunned him, and he drew his revolver, never expecting to escape alive, when two shots rang across the wash as close together as if fired by the same hand. The bear sank like a falling tree. Yet he rallied and again rushed for Bucks, despite Scuffy’s stout opposition and the yells from above, and finally halted only when Bob Scott, jumping into the wash-out, confronted him with a knife. There was107an instant of apprehension, broken by a third shot from Dancing’s rifle across the gully, and the bear crumpled lifeless almost at Scott’s feet.
The scout turned to Bucks as he stood dazed by his narrow escape. Stanley, above, shouted. And Bill Dancing, carrying his empty rifle, and with his face bleeding from the briers, made his way down the opposite side of the wash. Scuffy, mounting the body of his dead foe, barked furiously.
The little dog was the real hero of the encounter. He had paid his keep and earned his way as a member of the family and as a bear-fighter. When Bucks picked up his rifle he told Scott of his bad miss in the critical moment of the fight. Bob took the gun from his hands and examined the sights good-naturedly. Bucks had neglected to change the elevation after he had aimed at the deer an hour earlier.
“Next time you shoot at a bear twenty feet away, don’t leave your sights set for two hundred yards,” was all Scott said.
108CHAPTER VIII
The bruises that Bucks nursed were tender for some days, and Scott tried out some bear’s grease for an ointment.
Scuffy, who had come out of the fight without a scratch, took on new airs in camp, and returned evil for evil by bullying the two wounded hounds who were too surprised by his aggressiveness to make an effective defence.
Bucks, when he was alone with the dog and time dragged heavily, turned for diversion to the only book in the camp, a well-thumbed copy of “The Last of the Mohicans.” He had brought it with him to read coming out from Pittsburgh, and had thrown it into his bag when leaving Medicine Bend. In camp it proved a treasure, even the troopers, when they were idle, casting lots to get hold of it.
One day, when Bucks was absorbed in the romance, Bob Scott asked him what he was reading.109Bucks tried to give him some idea of the story. Scott showed little apparent interest in the résumé, but he listened respectfully while cleaning his rifle. He made no comment until Bucks had done.
“What kind of Indians did you say those were,” he asked, contracting his brows as he did when a subject perplexed him, “Uncas and Chingachgook?”
“Delawares, Bob. Know anything about Delaware Indians?”
Scott shook his head. “Never heard of Delawares in our country. I saw a Pottawottamie Indian once, but never any Delawares. Is this story about Uncas a true story?”
“As true as any story. Listen here.” Bucks read aloud to him for a while, his companion at intervals asking questions and approving or criticising the Indian classic.
“If you could only read, Bob, you ought to read the whole book,” said Bucks regretfully, as he put the volume aside.
“I can read a little,” returned Scott, to Bucks’s110surprise. “All except the long words,” added the scout modestly. “A man down at Medicine Bend tried to sell me a pair of spectacles once. They had gold rims, and he told me that a man with those spectacles could read any kind of a book. He thought I was a greenhorn,” said the scout.
“Where did you learn to read?”
“A Blackrobe taught me.”
Bucks held out the book. “Then read this, Bob, sure.”
Scott looked at the worn volume, but shook his head doubtfully. “Looks like a pretty big book for me. But if you can find out whether it’s true, I might try it sometime.”
Stanley, after a few days, started up the river with Scott and Dancing, leaving his men in camp. Bucks, who was still too stiff to ride, likewise remained to receive any messages that might come.
There was an abundance of water-fowl in the sloughs and ponds up and down the river, and Bucks, the morning after Stanley’s departure, leaving the troopers lounging in camp, started out111with a shot-gun to look for ducks. He passed the first bend up-stream, and working his way toward a small pond thickly fringed with alders, where he had often seen teal and mallards, attempted to crawl within gunshot of it.
He was working his way in this fashion toward the edge of the water when he heard a clatter of wings and the next moment a flock of mallards rushed in swift flight over his head. He impulsively threw up his gun to fire but some instinct checked him. He was in a country of dangerous enemies and the thought of bears still loomed large in his mind. An instant’s reflection convinced him that it was not his movement that had frightened the ducks, and he was enough of a hunter to look further than that for the cause. As caution seemed, from the soreness of his legs and arms, plainly indicated, he lay still to await developments.
Soon he heard a movement of trampling feet, and, seemingly, across the pond from him. Bucks thought of buffaloes. His heart beat fast at the thought of getting a shot at one until he reflected112that he had no rifle. The next instant his heart stopped beating. Not ten feet from where he lay in the thick willows, an Indian carrying a rifle, and in war-paint, stole noiselessly along toward the camp. No sooner had he disappeared than a second brave followed, and while Bucks was digesting this fright a third warrior, creeping in the same stealthy manner and almost without a sound, passed the staring boy; the appearance of a fourth and a fifth raised the hair on Bucks’s head till he was almost stunned with fright, but he had still to count three more in the party, one more ferocious-looking than another, before all had passed.
What to do was the question that forced itself on him. He feared the Indians would attack the troopers in camp, and this he felt would be a massacre, since the men, not suspecting danger, would be taken wholly unawares. Should he fire his gun as a signal? It would probably bring the Indians back upon him, but the thought of allowing the troopers to be butchered was insupportable. His hammers were cocked and his finger113was on one trigger when he considered how useless the alarm would be. The troopers knew that he had gone duck hunting. They would expect to hear him shoot and would pay no attention to it. To rush out after the Indians would only invite his instant death.
There seemed nothing he could do and a cold sweat of apprehension broke over him. But if he fired his gun he might, at least, surprise the Indians. The report of a gun in their rear would alarm them––since they knew nothing of his presence or his duck hunting and might take fright. Without more ado he fired both barrels one after the other, careful only to shoot low into the willows, hoping the smoke would not rise so quickly as to betray him before he could make a dash for a new hiding-place.
His ruse worked and he ran at top speed for twenty yards before he threw himself into a clump of cotton-woods close to the camp trail and began to reload. While he was doing so a shout came from the direction of the railroad bridge. Not until then did Bucks understand what the Indians114were after. But had he not understood, he would have known a moment later when he heard a sharp exchange of shots toward the camp, heard the dogs barking furiously, and saw the Indians, now on their ponies, running the troopers’ horses past him at a breakneck gallop. The Indians yelled lustily at the success of their raid, the stampeded horses dashed panic-stricken before them, and the braves shouted back in derision at the vain efforts of the troopers to stop them with useless bullets. Bucks’s own impulse was to empty a charge of birdshot into the last of the fleeing warriors, but this he knew might cost him his life, and he resisted the temptation. When he was sure all were past he ran toward the bluffs, and gaining a little eminence saw the fleeing Indians, a dozen in all, making their way jubilantly up the river. At the camp the discomfited cavalrymen were preparing for a siege, and in their excitement almost shot Bucks as he hove in sight.
Bucks gave a good description of the marauders, and, following him up to the pond, six of the troopers attempted some pursuit. This, to unmounted115men, was useless, as they well knew. Indeed, they used caution not to come unawares on any friends of the escaping braves that might have lingered behind.
Colonel Stanley returned in the morning to hear that his escort had been unhorsed. Bob Scott grinned at the cavalrymen as they told the story. He assured them that they had got off lightly, and that if Bucks’s signals had not alarmed the little war-party they might have carried away scalps as well as horses.
“We shall be in luck if we don’t hear more of those fellows,” said he to Bucks afterward. There was now manifestly nothing to do but to go in, and later in the day a freight train was flagged and the whole party, with Scuffy and the hounds, returned to Casement’s camp. Scott sent his dogs thence to the ranch in Medicine Bend, and at Bucks’s urgent request Scuffy was sent with them to await his own return to head-quarters.
116CHAPTER IX
The foray of the Indians at the Spider Water Bridge proved, as Bob Scott had feared, only a forerunner of active hostilities. Casement had already taken all necessary measures of defence. His construction camp was moved steadily westward, though sometimes inside the picket lines of troops, despite the warring Indians and the difficulties of his situation. Alarms, however, were continual and the graders, many of whom were old soldiers, worked at all times with their muskets stacked on the dump beside them. In the construction camp Bucks saw also many negroes, and at night the camp-fires of their quarters were alive with the singing and dancing of the old plantation life in the South.
While waiting for Stanley’s inspection of the grading and track-laying, Bucks relieved at times the camp operator, whose principal business was117the rushing of emphatic demands to Omaha for material and supplies.
During other intervals Bucks found a chance to study the system that underlay the seemingly hopeless confusion of the construction work. The engineers moving far in advance had located the line, and following these came the graders and bridge- and culvert-builders, cutting through the hills, levelling the fills, and spanning the streams and water-ways with trestles and wooden bridges, miles in advance of the main army. Behind these came Casement’s own big camp with the tiemen, the track-layers, and the ballast gangs.
Every Eastern market was drawn upon for materials, and when these reached Omaha, trains loaded with them were constantly pushed to the front. The chief spiker of the rail gang, taking a fancy to Bucks, invited him to go out with the rail-layers one day, and Bucks took a temporary commission as spike-dropper.
To do this, he followed Dancing up the track past a long construction train in which the men lived. The big box-cars contained sleeping-bunks,118and those men who preferred more air and seclusion had swung sleeping-hammocks under the cars; others had spread their beds on top of the cars. Climbing a little embankment, Bucks watched the sturdy, broad-shouldered pioneers. A light car drawn by a single, galloping horse was rushed to the extreme end of the laid rails. Before it had fairly stopped, two men waiting on either side seized the end of a rail with their trap and started forward. Ten more men, following in twos, at a run, lifted the two rails clear of the car and dropped them in place on the ties. The foreman instantly gauged them, the horse moved ahead, and thirty spikers armed with heavy mauls drove the spikes furiously and regularly, three strokes to the spike, into the new-laid ties. The bolters followed with the fish-plates, and while Bucks looked the railroad was made before his eyes.
The excitement of the scene was unforgettable. In less than sixty seconds four rails had gone down. The moment a horse-car was emptied it was dumped off one side of the track, and a loaded car with its horse galloping to the front119had passed it. The next instant the “empty” was lifted back on the rails, and at the end of a sixty-foot rope the horse, ridden by a hustling boy, was being urged back to where the rails were transferred from the regular flat cars. The clang of the heavy iron, the continuous ring of the spike mauls, the shouting of the orders, the throwing of each empty horse-car from the track to make way for a loaded one, these things were all new and stimulating to Bucks. The chief spiker laughed when the young operator told him how fine it was. He asked Bucks to look at his watch and time the work. In half an hour Bucks looked at his watch again. In the interval the gang had laid eight hundred feet of track.
“I don’t see how you can work so fast,” declared Bucks.
“Do you know how many times,” demanded the spiker, “those sledges have to swing? There are eighteen ties and thirty-six spikes to every rail, three hundred and fifty-two rails to every mile, and eighteen hundred miles from Omaha120to San Francisco––those sledges will swing sixty-eight million times before the rails are full-spiked––they have to go fast.”
The words were hardly out of the chief spiker’s mouth when a cry of alarm rang from the front. Bucks, looking eagerly, saw in the west a cloud of dust. At the same time he saw the tie gang running in dozens for their lives from the divide where they were working toward the camp. The men beyond them on the grade had scrambled into the wagons, dumped any ties they might contain helter-skelter to the ground, and were clinging to the wagon boxes. In these, the drivers standing up, lashed their horses with whip and line for life, and death, while everywhere beside and behind them other men on foot were racing back to safety.
New clouds of dust rose along the grade from the flying wagon wheels, the horses tore madly on, and as the heavy wagons jolted over the loose stones, the fugitives, yelling with excitement and alarm and clinging to one another as they bounced up and down, looked anxiously behind.
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There was no uncertainty as to the cause of the panic. “Indians!” was the cry everywhere. Every man in camp had dropped his working implement and was moving somewhere on the double-quick. Every one, it seemed to Bucks, was shouting and running. But above the confusion of the surprise and the babel of voices, Bucks heard the sharp tones of Jack Casement giving orders.
The old soldiers in the working gang needed no further discipline. The timid and the skulkers scurried for the box-cars and the dugouts. On the other hand, the soldiers ran for the dumps where the arms were stacked, and seizing their muskets hurried back and, trained for the emergency, fell into line under their foremen.
Casement, musket in hand, taking the largest company of men as they formed in fours behind him, started forward at the double-quick, yelling now for the moral effect, to protect the retreat of the wagons. The men, scattering as they reached the edge of the camp, dropped into every spot of shelter, and at the same moment Stanley, mounted122and alive with the vim and fire of the soldier, led a smaller body of men rapidly back to guard the rear of the camp, deploying his little force about the box-cars and flat cars as they hastened on. In an instant the construction camp had become a fortress defended by a thousand men.
It was none too soon. Stirring the yellow plain with the fury of a whirlwind, a band of Sioux warriors rode the fleeing railroaders furiously down. They appeared phantom-like out of every slip and canyon, and rode full-panoplied from behind every hill. The horizon that had shown five minutes before only the burning sunshine and the dull glare of the alkali sinks, danced now with the flying ponies of the Indians, and the hills echoed with ominous cries.
Without a word of warning, the few fleeing men who had been working too far from camp to reach it in safety were mercilessly cut down. Their comrades under arms, with an answering cry of defiance poured a volley of cartridge balls into the thin, black circle that rode ever closer and closer to the muzzles of the muskets. Jack Casement and his brother Dan recklessly urged their men123to the most advanced posts of defence, and from behind scrapers, wagons, flat cars, and friendly hillocks the railroad men poured a galling fire into their active foe.
The Indians, seeking with unerring instinct the weakest point in the defence, converged in hundreds upon the long string of box-cars that made up the construction train at the rear of the camp, where Stanley, extending his few men in a resolute skirmish line, endeavored to prevent the savages from scalping the non-combatant cooks and burning the sleeping-cars. Bucks saw, conspicuous in the attack, a slender Sioux chief riding a strong-limbed, fleet pony with a coat of burnished gold and as much filled with the fire of the fight as his master was. Riding hither and thither and swinging a long, heavy musket like a marshal’s baton, the Sioux warrior, almost everywhere at once, urged his men to the fighting, and the fate of the few white men they were able to cut down or scalp before Stanley could cover the line of box-cars seemed to add vigor to their onslaught.
Stanley himself, attacked by ten braves for124every man he could muster at that point with a gun, dashed up and down the old wagon roads along the right of way, a conspicuous target for the Indians. His hat, in the mêlée, had disappeared, and, swinging a heavy Colt’s revolver, which the Indians shrank from with a healthy instinct of danger, he pressed back the hungry red line again and again, supported only by such musketry fire as the men crouching under, within, and between the box-cars could offer.
Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, but they closed in constantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows, succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose from the circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. Stanley, wheeling like a flash, gave chase to the incendiary. The Sioux rode for his life, but his pony’s pace was no match for the springing strides of Stanley’s American horse.
For an instant the attention of the whole fight in the rear of the camp was drawn upon the rash brave and his pursuer. Bucks, with straining eyes and beating heart, awaited the result. He saw125Stanley steadily closing the gap that separated him from his fleeing enemy. Then the revolver was thrown suddenly upward and forward, and smoke flashed from the muzzle. The echo of the report had hardly reached Bucks’s ears when the revolver, swung high again to balance the rhythm of the horse’s flight, was fired again, and a third time, at the doomed man.
The Indian, bending forward on his horse, caught convulsively at his mane, then rising high in his seat plunged head-foremost to the ground, and his riderless horse fled on. His pursuer, wheeling, threw himself flat in his saddle to escape the fire bent upon him from behind as he rode back. At that moment Dan Casement and his men hurried up on the double-quick. With him came Bucks, who had secured a rifle and fallen in. Some men of the welcome reinforcement were set at putting out the fire. Others strengthened Stanley’s scattered skirmish line.
Convinced by the determined front now opposed to him of the impossibility of rushing the camp, the Sioux chief gave the signal to retire.