A loud noise was heard in the skirt of the woodland, of which the outer brush came gently down to the opening of the vale, where the Piegans were lodged. As the sound came nearer it assumed the dimensions of a downright tumult. Besides the clatter of hoofs, there was the banging of heavy articles against the saplings, which sprang back angrily, the squealing of mules, and many random shots of pistols and rifles. The latter made the Indians the more disquieted, as the screen of boughs long hid the cause.
At Red Knife's order all ran with their arms to the defences, whilst some got their horses ready at a secret outlet, in case, this being an attack, they might rush round down upon their camp and pay them back in their own coin.
Two young men were sent out as scouts, but they had hardly left before a whole string of persons and animals emerged from the forest with giddy rapidity. In the van was a mounted man, on a mare, who did not in the least slacken his furious pace, though turning every little while to fire his breech-loading rifle. He wore an Indian dress, and it was reasonably surmised that he was a chief, but the distance and the dust that sprang up from the alkali stretches among the scrub outside the forest prevented particulars being defined of his tribe, or even his nation.
He was followed by a girl in a sort of pannier seat on a large fleet mule. A mantle enveloped her, but the wind flapped it back, so that her sex was discernible as far as her attire and her mode of riding revealed. Behind her, separated by such varied spaces as the differences in their speed under burdens apportioned, six or eight beasts of burden rushed. As in their mad course through the woods their packs had been knocked about, pulled partly off, slewed to one side or under the bellies, or even trailing after by the lashings, every now and then one would be brought to a sudden stop, or hurled into a natural pithole half full of decayed leaves and melting snow. The squallings would redouble at these disasters.
After these fugitives upwards of a dozen horsemen came racing. Some waved lariats, or snapped whips, to cow the runaways into a pause, or to swerve from blindly following the leaders; some were using their guns at the foremost of this queer procession. But, though they stopped to take aim, they were not so expert or fortunate as he. The pursuers were Red River Half-breeds.
The pack animals did not clear the wood; the scrub was more entangling than the large growth, and they, at all events, were captured as they struggled after their harness was caught.
The two fugitives, on debouching upon the open ground, were in extreme peril. They had the river to cross under fire. Nevertheless, they did not seem discouraged. At least, the dark-complexioned man drove the lady's mule into the water, and halting himself on the bank crest, fired five shots almost as quickly as one into the line of pursuers, of which each emptied a saddle. The remainder howled with rage, and, forced to stop among the riderless and plunging steeds, discharged all their guns at the daring coverer of the girl's crossing.
The latter brandished his repeating rifle around his head, as if his warriorlike exultation was uncontrollable; an act alone denouncing him as no pure white. He then jabbed his heels into the flanks of the mare, which leaped in a beautiful curve into the river. In the leap he uttered a war cry new to that region:
"Wo!-O-whoo-whoo!" and it still resounded when he reappeared above the surface after the plunge.
The mule was floundering, the girl clinging to it with nail and tooth, so to say. But the mare, being directed to a shelving part of the other bank, the mule whinnied, and hurried to climb out also.
The two galloped on towards the Piegan encampment at full speed, letting the muddy water drip off them as it pleased. On seeing the Indians watching them, the horseman, whose buffalo robe had been washed away in the stream, shouted in a high, clear voice in Algonquin, the most generally understood language among the pure Indians north:
"A brother!"
"Ho, ho, ho!" roared the Piegans, clapping their hands joyfully.
Red Knife dashed out of the shelter, having gazed with admiration on their bold, brave flight, and neat shooting at full speed. At the announcement of the new arrival, he waved his mantle in the sign of welcome, and called,
"Come to our bosom!"
The two fugitives dashed up the gentle slope to the camp ingress.
In the meantime, the pursuers, having secured the pack animals and the riderless horses, as well as seen to the wounded, came on apace, having momentarily lost sight of their objects. On crossing the frothy stream they beheld them cantering into the Piegan camp. They were convulsed with impotent rage as they pulled up smartly. Slowly they continued their march, only five of them now.
But as fifty Indians mounted and rode out from the entrenchments, they stopped afresh to consult. At length one rode out of the mass and made the sign of peace. There was no reply for two or three minutes. But the Half-breed was not to be so easily disheartened, and making the sign again, cried out in Chinook that he was a friend of the red man, who requested a hearing of their rulers.
It was Red Knife, who haughtily demanded the grounds for his request.
"'Tis an important matter for the chief's own ear."
"Good! Let the hunter wait," and measured off on the sky so many minutes with his forefinger.
The parleyers were forced to submit. But they were galled on perceiving why the delay was imposed. Some forty of the Piegans, stealing out of the secret gate, had gone over the river and were about surrounding the wounded men and the lassoed horses. The Red River Rovers gazed at one another "like crabs in a net," all eyes protruding; but knowing the kind of folk they were dealing with, they had to pretend tranquillity.
As soon as Red Knife believed that his instructions were consummated, he waved his hand to the parleyer, who was eyeing him anxiously.
"My friends are welcome. Let four of them come into the camp unarmed."
All resistance was useless. One solitary Half-breed was left in charge of the five horses and his comrades' arms on the river brink. All he could do, if the others were treacherously murdered, was make a breastwork of the quadrupeds and fire away to his last shot, and then be slain.
Red Knife and his lieutenants received the crestfallen Canadians courteously, and conducted them silently to the council fire. There the Piegans sat down and invited their guests to do likewise. During the long silence that ensued the entrapped ones looked well about them. The two fugitives had shaken themselves reasonably dry, exchanged their wet outer garments for dry ones and were warming themselves at the priests' holy fire in the medicine lodge, where the totem pole was standing sentry, so to say, over the tribal ark within.
"Why have the palefaces come into my camp?" inquired the Piegan at length, in a stern voice. "What is the news for us? There is no common tie between the palefaces and the Blackfeet."
The tone, like the question, was not amicable. Moreover, the hunters had noticed that the pipe had not been offered them, so that they knew they were being treated as enemies, not as mere strangers even.
The leader of the Red River Half-breeds was their captain himself. He was supported by David Steelder, to whom Kidd has alluded as an undesirable acquaintance, whilst Margottet was guarding the horses and weapons as one in a most trustworthy and ticklish post.
Steelder was a stout, herculean fellow, with flaming red hair and beard, though his eyes were dark. But they so squinted, and shifted their point of view so frequently, that most would not have remarked this incompatibility. He alone looked round on the red men with the idle curiosity of one whose brain was congested or softening.
Dagard was too learned in Indian ways not to appreciate the hostility of the reception. But he was fearless, cunning, and accustomed to meet emergencies without flinching.
"I have walked into the Piegan camp to sit at the council fire," he said, firmly, "and put in a request that my red brothers are not the fools to throw aside hastily."
"The Piegans are wise, and they can judge anything laid before them," responded Red Knife, emphatically.
"I know very well what the Piegans are like," went on Dagard, who placed no faith whatever in them. "They are wise warriors, and to claim justice, when prairie law is infringed, is to get it."
The chiefs bowed; it was flattering to be taken for arbitrators, and, besides, the prairie and mountain arbitrator is entitled to take payment out of the property in dispute. So l'Embarrasseur continued as jauntily as if he felt secure now.
"I have so great a confidence in my red brother that I have put aside all to a toothpick to come right in among ye. Besides, there's no blood feud between the Half-breeds of Manitoba and the Blackfeet nation that ever I heard of. The hatchet never was used against either in the other's hand. Why, then, should I want to sit down with the knife in my girdle, as you carry yours? If I had been your foe—why, I have a good crowd left after a hot brush with the Crows that would have been entirely rubbed out but for the blizzard breaking up the evening's amusement; but I haven't come in any force. I knew perfectly well that I was meeting friends."
There was a silence. The Indians were clearly aware that the Canadian had been a tough bone for Ahnemekee, and that the remainder of his troop was not despicable. They had not Winchester rifles such as that which so rapidly disposed of half its owner's pursuers, and hoped no such rare fortune.
"This is the point," concluded Dagard, with an angry glance at the girl and her defender at the sacred fire of the sanctuary, "my men and I, on the open ground, captured that white woman and some stampeded animals that followed her mule; when in cut this renegade Half-breed, on a mare that called away her mule, and away went the whole outfit, helter-skelter. A stampede is fair enough—but not treachery. Either this Half-breed stands up for one colour or the other—red or white. If he hunts with the red, why, I am red. The Red River Half-breeds never yet held for the King George's, or the Yankees. And he should have let my prizes alone. Or, if he is a friend to the whites, either those gold seekers or the mountain trappers, he is our foe. I claim the girl, I claim the mongrel whom no race owns. My brother shall decide. That's my say."
All eyes were turned towards the fugitive, who was now carelessly leaning against the totem pole. The girl trembled with cold; he was steady as the staff itself. The sachem beckoned him thither, and darted a suspicious glance on him, inasmuch as, Half-breed for Half-breed, there was nothing to vary the scales between them.
"There is an accusation, brother. What is the defence?" he asked.
The other smiled scornfully, but making an effort over himself, he answered railingly, "In the land of my forefathers the mockingbird was often heard, but I little thought to hear its deceitful voice hereabouts. To what tribe does this patchwork man belong that he dares class me with such as he? I am a Sagamore! But look at his skin—is it white, is it red, is it even yellow? Can he name his father among men renowned in battle? Can he name his mother? Some white thief, kicked out of the frontier whisky room, and some squaw who hangs round the ports, these were his progenitors, and they shrank from owning him! By what right does he raise his voice in a council of dog soldiers, elders, hallowed men who have been initiated in the inner circle of secrets handed down from days when, from the White Ridge yonder to the Blue Ridge (the Alleghenies) there, none but pure red men trod the warpath, and fished and hunted. Because he commands a string of curs. My nation is the ghost of what it was, but we can whip the Red River mongrels any day! We are the Cherokees! I am a first chief among them—I amQuorinnah, the Raven, and I wear the treasured Totem!"
So speaking, with a voice that grew thunderous with pride, Bill Williams, for this was the man, ripped off the wet woollen shirt covering his breast to the waist belt. On his bosom was tattooed the "Great Round O," as the ignorant call it, which, however, by its rays, signifies the Sun. It was traced in pitch pine soot pricked in and only the high-class Cherokee, the very inspired one,Cheer a dagee, or "fire filled," are so tattooed. If by chance any foolish or wicked young man attempted even a rude imitation, the elders would scrub the marks out of his skin with green corn juice to the very quick, and then he might think he had got off lightly for the sacrilege.
The sun is an emblem understood and respected almost all over the two Americas.
"A Son of the Sacred Fire!" cried the chiefs, bowing with reverence.
"Cherokee Bill, the mate of Jim Ridge the mountain man," sneered Dagard.
"Yes, I am the Cherokee. My father was made a chief of the nation before me. If ever I come to the stake, and I am bled to the last drop in my body, nothing will have issued but red blood! Well, I am thousands of miles from the home and graves of my fathers—am I among brothers or foes?"
Red Knife rose and bowed to the speaker, answering:
"We have heard none but a Cherokee speak. The place of the Sagamore is in my stead. Let him command at the council fire, and all that here surround us will obey him to the letter. Wisdom is in the Son of Fire, and the Great Spirit loves him. To no one need he give an account of his doings."
With a dignity that struck all beholders, the Cherokee sat in the place Red Knife vacated, and lifting his hand to entreat silence, said gravely?
"I thank my brother for not having required any explanation from me; but my tongue is not forked, and my honour exacts my Piegan sons being judges between this Canadian and me. The young woman whom you see yonder was the captive of the gold seekers, commanded by Captain Kidd, whose name smells bad in the nose of honest Indians on the border. She escaped on the mule, and fell across the path of these Red River Rovers. Yes, she would have been their fair capture if they were independent. But that's not so. They are allied with Captain Kidd, and this detachment was going to join him when they met the fugitive. Being one and the same, any enemy had the right to cut in and cut out the prize. I did so. Who is in the right? He?"
"No!" responded the unanimous voice.
"Will he even deny my statement?"
Dagard, insolently enough and impudently, too, considering he had no weapons, was chatting with his three adherents.
"He cannot deny."
"Your conduct is right. The traitors are these Red River Half-breed dogs, for allying themselves with a bandit who respects neither red nor white, and then comes to a redskin camp and asks help and favour as being a red man himself."
"Go!" said Cherokee Bill, with scorn so withering that the Indians did not regret the four scalps thus rejected, and Dagard felt no joy at the deliverance. "Should your feet take root here, you will be trees cut down for the night fire! The girl is free! Until you cross that stream, you are neither foe nor friend, merely dogs kicked out of camp! Go, it is a chief that speaks."
The Embarrasseur seemed too much embarrassed himself this time to even lift his head. Steelder squinted horribly as he shrunk past the Cherokee. The four Canadians hastened to join the lieutenant, impatiently holding the horses, and, mounting rapidly, they rushed over the river. The Piegan party had contented themselves with examining the pack animals, the dead and wounded, under orders in some way signalled to them by the sun flash code. The Half-breeds put the wounded on the beasts of burden and dolefully returned to their camp.
The Piegan captains remained squatted at the council fire, thoughtfully smoking.
After directing Doña Rosario, for this was the young lady whom he had saved from the Manitobans' clutches, to be attended to in a hut placed wholly at her service, Cherokee Bill wrapped himself up in buffalo robes to steam himself dry and drive away rheumatism. The others respected his curative withdrawal from the conversational circle, but evinced some anxiety lest his catching cold should spoil his voice.
The way things had come about was thus:—
We know that it was arranged that Doña Rosario should be put in the pannier of a riding mule, so that the party of gold seekers might travel by a straighter road. Meanwhile, Filditch and Williams were hovering about them as closely as they dared, cautiously exchanging brief confidence with Joe and Dearborn up to the critical moment. Then the Spanish girl was to be aided by the two friends of Ridge.
The plan was so simple and infallible, that the girl gleefully adopted it.
Soon after the second day's start in this order, whilst the mule was yet fresh, Filditch and his companion sprang on two outriders and pulled them to the ground. Unfortunately, Foxface, whom the Californian had thrown, was up again like lightning and encumbered the other as he was trying to mount in the warm saddle. The result was, that Bill was on horseback and riding alone at the point in the file where he could take Rosario's mule by the bridle.
It is true Filditch kicked the man away, but the delay was fatal. He was compelled to plunge into the woods at the side of the ravine where this occurred, or be the target for twenty rifle shots.
During this the Cherokee had executed his project. Thanks to his whoop, which set the animals curveting, and the increase in the confusion due to Joe, Leon, and Ranald, no one could get an effectual shot at the abductor of the young girl as the two dived in at a gap in the underwood.
But there was too much of a good thing. Rosario's mule was not alone in attraction towards the coquettish mare which the Cherokee had stolen. A number of the animals set up a cry at the mare's whinny, and for a moment the stampede threatened to be general. To be left without a hoof under them in the wild woods is the worst fate known to men like Kidd's command. They flew to work with superhuman activity, daring, and strength, and secured most of the frenzied animals. Still, a dozen had tailed off after Bill and the girl, very deeply to his disgust. But the only thing was to move on with the torrent of horseflesh of his own originating. In time they could be beguiled into a steep path, where, by dragging Rosario into a niche, the rest would hurl themselves by and be gone irreturnably.
Here, again, calculations were upset by the Half-breeds on their way to rendezvous with Kidd at the fixed place.
Bill saw them only in time to take a new course. But Dagard and a few of the better mounted started off after the straggling line, of which they at once cut off two or three hindmost. But the others freshened up at being so harried, and the kind of wild hunt continued hotter than ever. The thunder of the added coursers continually reminded the Cherokee that these woodsmen were not easily to be outridden and thrown off so broad a track.
"Are you brave?" inquired he of the girl, flushed and excited by the mad gallop.
"I do not know, judged by your measure," she replied; "but there's one thing sure, I would sooner kill myself than fall again into those ruffians' power."
"That's the true talk? By the way, have a knife," he said, putting a sheath dagger into her hand as if he were offering a bonbon to a child. "You may want it, though I fancy you have no great shakes to fear. I am responsible for you."
"Thank you. I believe in you."
The flight continued, only that the Canadians, being less wearied, gained like a whirlwind on a fleeing wayfarer.
Cherokee Bill had his Winchester "fourteen shoot" and a brace of heavy revolvers—a portable magazine.
"Keep on galloping," said he, "smack into the running water. You shall have a warm-up beyond. I reckon it will also be hot enough here!"
So saying he blazed away at the Half-breeds for six shots. Down went the men out of the saddles, the rest being terrified by the accuracy of aim and the long, killing range. Meanwhile Bill and the girl effected the crossing and came upon the plain where the Piegans were encamped. The reader knows the sequel. For the nonce Doña Rosario was safe.
The day advanced, and yet the Cherokee seemed loth to check his contemplation of mental pictures. Red Knife made up his mind to begin the talking.
"Are the ears of my father open?" he asked.
Bill had become a father for wisdom after having been a brother for valour.
"What is my son's desire?" was the counter query.
"The Piegans want the Cherokee sage's advice."
"The Piegans are boys of mine at my knee. Speak away."
"The Raven is a wise bird—a bird that scents a battlefield from afar. He flies straight to the mark. As the coyotes and wolves join to track the deer, so the bad whites and mixed bloods join to take hold of the red man's territory. What is my father's opinion on this? What ought the redskins to do when the mine robbers threaten to invade the holy ground of the Basin of Fire?"
Without replying in words, the Cherokee looked about him. In one spot a chalky seam cropping out was soaked with blood from the butchered game. He pointed to the white earth on one side of the red stain, and then scratched the soft substance up with his fingernail. But to scrape the blood-caked chalk, hardened into stone, he was forced to use his hunting knife. He took up a handful of the soft dust and slowly let it fall through his open fingers.
"This dust is the Indians, uncemented by their blood; they are grains that a child's breath could spin into the river. United by blood, a block is formed which turns the edge of a knife. Do my brothers comprehend?"
"I do," answered Red Knife. "The Raven of the Cherokee counsels us to be one. Before now we have done the same, and waged war. Perhaps, had not some weaklings and traitors fallen away, a great and lasting victory would have been ours. But our enemies are powerful as they are. What if the white trappers and hunters unite with these Canadians and the Men of Montana?"
"You need not fear that. Oil and water do not blend."
"But the Old Man of the Mountain, the friend of the Cherokee, would he not come to the aid of the Piegans?" asked the chief, subtly.
"But the white trapper is alone—" began Bill.
"He may be alone at this hour, but my spies speak of the lone trappers converging to join him. Does not the Cherokee know—his moccasins have crossed the traces of theirs?"
"I know what I know. The Old Man has no secrets from his brother. The trappers are massing, that's a fact."
"To what end? Will he guide the gold seekers into the Enchanted Valley, where the holy fire rages, which my father has drank."
"No. Jim Ridge loves the Yellowstone—he does not want a wholecaboodleof scourings to be poured into its lovely glades and peaceful parts, where the fawns come up and lick your hands."
"Ah! Does the old Yager wish the help of the Piegans to keep off the whites? Is his Cherokee mate sent to ask that help?" came from the Red Knife, in a coaxing voice.
"Lor', no," responded Bill, coldly. "On the other hand, the old man never refused help to an Indian who played him fair. Many a poor wretch, frozen out, has been succoured by him—more than fed, mark you; clothed in fine fur, and given a gun and powder and ball, with the promise only understood that he should not use them on any of Jim's colour. But never has he craved any return for what he has done. That's his style, chief. What the Raven says is dictated by the friendly spirit in his very bones, with which his mother tempered them. He has no mission from anyone. But still, if to drive away these gold thirsty dogs, ay, and to crush them, the Piegans want the trapper's help, who entertains no kindly feelings for the disgraces to their race, then find out whether he will give it. It is a sachem that you have heard. Ponder over his words."
Bill rose and retired to a tent made ready for him. He was left alone to recruit till about sunrise, when the chiefs flocked round his tent door with all the ceremony laid down by Indian etiquette. The medicine man hallowed the tent, so that they could hold a council smoke, and this was Red Knife's proposal:
"After considering the words of the Cherokee chief, the headmen of the Piegans have come to this conclusion:Quorinnahis a wise man; he knows that only boys and squaws, having no keenness or experience like trained men, who have made their mark, set about things unthinkingly, and with no conception of their extent. The Piegans do not ask in this fashion, being men of war. The chief, subchief, captains, and big braves of the nation have resolved to say this: The Cherokee chief loves his brothers, the Blackfeet. His heart is red, and prompts him to speak good counsel, and that counsel has been debated on. It is true the Old Man of the Mountain has punished trap robbers and ravagers of thecachés, and that he has given shot for shot when fired on. But if he has shed blood, he, too, has had his blood spilt. Let the rock moss and the desert sands drink the blood up of both foe and friend of ours, and say no more about it. On the other hand, the Yager has helped many a naked, starved, gunless Indian about the Yellowstone, and on the highland slope. He has defended the Enchanted Valley, and never has he offered men to guide his white brethren within its bounds of fire and steam and smoke. He is alone, yet he does not need help. But we do. Never in our memory, or on the painted books of the tribe history in the sacred lodge, have so many evil men been covering the wilderness. Lo! The buffalo and the bear are driven away by the reek of strange campfires, and the birds hurry from the uproar of carouses. The Raven of the Cherokees speaks true. He comes on no errand from the Great White Trapper. But the Piegans, proud to have the slayer of six-at-full-gallop-under-their-own-eyes as their guest, claim a service of him: the chiefs desire to see the Yager of the Yellowstone. Did they know where to meet him, they would go forth in their best clothes to greet him; but the Mountain Man is a great hunter—he disguises his trail neatly, and his fort is an undiscoverable refuge. But the Cherokee chief knows where his friend abides, and he will go to him, and say, 'Old Man of the Mountain, your sons the Piegans have a weight on the heart, a skin over their eyes—they beseech your help, with the wondrous gun that sends death so far and so true. Come to their aid against their enemies, who are yours; come quick; let your presence console and make joy displace the grief that eats up their heart.'"
Bill did not in the faintest believe in the more than temporary sincerity of the speaker, but he spoke so feelingly, that he joined in the murmur of applause which hailed the final words.
"The saying of my brother, the renowned of the Piegans, ring sweetly in my ear," returned the Cherokee half-breed. "What the Piegans wish, the Raven will do this night. Away goes the cloud on my brother's heart! Leaving the young paleface girl in his brother's keep, the Raven will fly. I have spoken all that is in me."
"The young paleface maiden is not here, we see only a sister of the Piegans," answered Red Knife, nobly. "She is in the shadow of the totem pole of the tribe, her head is pillowed on the ark of the Blackfeet Piegans. No danger shall befall her, though the Cherokee chief stayed away till the moon and stars fell out of the sky, and the sun burnt itself to a dead coal and dropped also into the lakes!"
An hour afterwards, at dusk, Bill Williams rode out of the camp, confidently. As we know something of the singular telegraphing and telephoning which the old trapper and his comrade employed to correspond secretly, we need not describe how again they conferred without the overhearers piercing the mystery. A little before sunrise, the Cherokee was back at the Piegan resting place. Red Knife was awake, and eagerly awaiting him at the inlet.
"What does the old father say?" queried he, after the customary greeting.
"These are the trapper's words," returned Bill, gravely. "'Am I to be deaf to the appeal of redskin brothers who are fighters and not thieves? No! When the sun is so high that there is no shadow at the base of the tree, then I shall be in the Piegan camp.'"
"Good, good!" said the sachem, cordially, "I thank my father for having swiftly and fully kept his promise. The white trapper will be welcome."
At this moment, hearing Bill Williams' voice, the door flap of Doña Rosario's tent house was pushed aside, and she came forth. Albeit she was in complete safety among the red men, her precarious position filled the dainty girl with restlessness. Throughout the night she had been kept awake by excessive nervous excitement, caused by reflections on recent events, and the pain from bruises and thorn scratches gained during the flight. In the pannier she had been shaken about more than in a cockboat in a chopping sea. She was glad to have her enfevered forehead kissed by the cool morning breeze. She came out over to the two principals, and saluted them with a grateful but still rueful smile.
Red Knife, with that innate delicate grace common to all men who live unfettered in the open air, bowed to her respectfully, and kindly asked how she rested. To encourage her, he repeated that she had nothing to fear from her enemies, as she should never fall again into their hands.
"Thank you, chief," she rejoined; "but," she added, with a brightening eye of deep proud determination, "if, in spite of your powerful protection, those ruffians had succeeded in seizing me again, they would have carried away merely the dead. I would have slain myself rather than have yielded."
With a significant gesture, she flung aside the hem of a Mexican blanket, showing the knife in her waistband.
"'Tis a brave girl," remarked Red Knife, smiling dubiously, for he had his own ideas about using a dagger on himself before he had struck out all he could; "but the steel was useless, my sister being under the guard of the Sacred Emblem, and my warriors would have fought to the last shot for her."
As, in our other Indian stories, we seem to have pourtrayed their treatment of white women in a different light, we beg to say in this digression that there is really no contradiction in sense. The southern Indians are not to be trusted with women, but the northern races and those descended from the ancient nations of the Northeast and Atlantic coast are of opposite morality. The latter will make white women slaves, but never their wives. The Half-breeds spring from the union of red women and white men, it is to be remembered, which in no wise gainsays our statement of an incontestable truth.
Cherokee Bill was too profound an observer and was too familiar with the thoughts of white people and red people, to say nothing of Mexican ones, not to understand Rosario's doubts and dreads. So he hastened to inform her that Jim Ridge would soon be present. This intelligence much exalted her; hope at once was kindled in her bosom and warmed her heart with its beneficent rays. It seemed to her that this celebrated adventurer's intervention must be advantageous to her. This was apart from Mr. Dearborn's promising that he would confer with the Man of the Mountain and compact for her rescue and Miss Maclan's. It is true the Cherokee had only saved her; but, perhaps, already something had been done in as effectual, if not in so dashing, a mode to save her dear companion.
She found time to ask Bill about his partner in the friendly abduction, but he had only spoken with Ridge, who had seen nothing more of Filditch than himself.
"Patience," said he, calm as a "whole red man," "he would not have travelled with me in the warpath unless he was capable of taking care of himself alone."
Quite as impatient as the girl were all the Piegans to receive the famous old explorer; but they had donned the motionless mask which the savages use to hide even the deepest feelings on public occasions.
If we were in town, we should say the hour of twelve sounded when all the Indians, questioning the country with glittering eyes, grunted with pleasure. A horseman was seen to be clearing a piney wood at the extreme limit of the horizon, and gallop in a beeline towards them. He was alone. At a glance he was recognised as Jim Ridge.
Red Knife blew his war whistle loudly. This was the cue for forty men to spring on their ponies. The chief took the lead and all tore away like fiends over the level ground. They soon "fanned out" there, banishing their guns over their heads, tossing up war clubs and catching them when all but touching the ground, juggling with their knives and pistols, all without drawing rein; executing, in fact, circus feats, after the manner of the Arabs, who employ this same method, orfantasia, to greet a celebrity. On his part, the trapper was riding a steed without any harness whatever—one that he had caught astray from the unfortunate Half-breed detachment that "bunked up" against the Cherokee. Except for the lasso which had ensnared it, and which served as a halter, it obeyed the rider by his voice and slap of the hand, and was restrained from rebellion by the threatening pressure of his knees, with which he would have crushed in the ribs.
This simple show of arrogant horsemanship delighted the Piegans, who journey oftenest on foot, and they all fired off their guns. Then, forming a line abreast under cover of the smoke, they charged with a prodigious howling, but when almost overwhelming the solitary rider, they reined up by a miracle of skill, as if their poor broken-jawed horses had suddenly taken root in the ground.
Jim had come on at the same round pace, as if the yelling cavalcade were miles remote. He had been too long identified with Indian customs not to see in this demonstration what it really was—a strong manifestation of the regard he was held in, and their joy at his venturing by himself in their midst.
Red Knife and the others now fell in as an escort, and so accompanied him to the encampment, where the tedious ceremony of reception had to be gone through. TheGrand Monarch, in all his glories, was not more punctilious than the Indians in their refined etiquette. The whole performances, as Bill termed them to Doña Rosario, were bound to last an hour, and they protracted them to half as much again.
Old Ridge supported them like a king to the manner born. No such trifle was going to hinder him from his purpose.
Whilst the warriors continued their rejoicings, the chiefs went into the medicine lodge, and more solemnly received Ridge there, the Cherokee being his sponsor.
The Old Yager was in a predicament. The red men wanted him to co-operate with them in a league of the Indians against the whites east, south, and north; but as this would have been treachery, or at least apostasy, they had to lessen their desires gradually during a long discussion. As Jim said, he pared the proposition down till it came to a smaller head! The Yellowstone Basin was to be defended from all comers. On his side, Jim promised that none of the trappers, hunters, Scotch Canadians, and whoever might rally to him should enter the Firehole Region. Kidd, the Half-breeds of Red River, and any scoundrels who flocked to them as the redskins advanced and swept the country, were to be destroyed.
"You will have all the fighting you hunger for," remarked Jim drily, "with these rascals, without wanting to go on and injure theBostons, or King George's men."
As the pact was clear for the morrow, and the savages do not look forward beyond a day, the utmost good feeling remained.
Runners were sent out, and during the evening representatives came in from the hunting parties allied to the Piegans. There were chiefs of the Small Robes, Blackfeet proper, Blackfeet Sioux, which linked the league with the Dacotahs and counterbalanced the Crows, in case Ahnemekee objected to the new and narrow arrangement, and some Rovers. These summed up as one hundred and fifty war men. The Yager counted them and recognised the elders among them with relief and gladness. He had resolved to crush out Kidd and his crew to the last man. He had contemplated the march of events with secret satisfaction, having prepared many of them; and the great progress made in a few days was enormously gratifying.
A little while before he and his nephew and Cherokee Bill stood against huge odds. Now they were commanding an army. If the reds were not perfect matches to the gold grabbers, they were quite so to the Manitobans, and the Scotch Canadians and Americans formed a reserve, or backbone, which ensured success.
Now the intruders were being enveloped in a net of which the meshes were self-plaiting themselves all around them. When the fowler pulled the string, the game would be inextricably caught.
At a final council held at night the concord was perfected. Saying nothing of hostilities against the border settlers, Montana miners, railroad surveyors, and pioneers north, the objective point of the allied reds, with Jim Ridge as mere counsellor and volunteer private, was to be Elk's Leap, where Captain Kidd, reinforced by the French Canadians, was tending to enter the Yellowstone Park.
Runners and riders went out to collect scouts and strayers. Messengers were selected to throw a sheaf of arrows, a knife, and a bag of powder and balls into the camp of Captain Kidd and that of the Red River Rovers if separate. The war pole, forty feet high, was set up at the Piegan camp, for the war dance to be performed round it. Jim Ridge did not join in the capering, but the Cherokee, curtly remarking that "it would do him good," stripped, and paraded, and leaped among the dancers. The cut of his hatchet on the pole was a tie with Red Knife's for height of the bound and cleanness of the chop. At the dawn, the deputies hurried to their camps to marshal their braves and conduct them to the rendezvous.
It is to be noted that the Red Indians spring sharply from their laziness of peacetimes into the strain of warfare. They become other men. Metamorphosed entirely, they endure with unflinching stoicism the greatest fatigue and longest privations. The very men who were ridiculous sloths and gluttons will never groan at having no sight of food for two, three, or even four days, or even at having no water.
Then they are granite and stop for nothing, and are not surprised at any disaster. Cold, heat, sun or rain, snow or hail, these are silently mocked at. Hence the secret foundation of their rapid movements, the fury of their attack, and their unconquerable energy in battle.
After the final talk, Ridge had a short conversation with Williams, immediately after which the latter left the camp. The white trapper had, we have remarked, kept himself out of the savage demonstration, sitting at a watch fire without even dozing off. A white man with an army of reds is like a chemist experimenting with an explosive of which all the qualities have yet to be tested. In some unexpected manner the whole may hoist the engineer himself.
About an hour after sunrise the Cherokee returned. He was accompanied by two white hunters. They were to be the guards of Doña Rosario, who, though she made a wry face about it, as if she personally wished to assist in the deliverance of Miss Maclan, consented reluctantly to being lodged in one of Jim Ridge's mountain refuges.
"Poor girl," murmured he, as she departed, "what a blessing that she has no idea that I am her kinsman, and that her father has perhaps lost his life in helping Bill to wrest her from that villain."
He was very thoughtful, and his chat with his comrades was more brief and in shorter phrases than ever. If he was idle in his moodiness, however, the Cherokee redoubled his activity in scouting.
There was already one screw loose in the machinery: the Crows had lost connection with the Piegans. Their disappearance was perplexing, ominous even. The Piegans were completely puzzled. And all Ridge surmised was that somehow Ahnemekee had learnt, or strongly supposed, that not Kidd, but the Mountain Men had interfered with his descent on the Red River Half-breeds.
Red Knife, though, soon offered his opinion that the Crows were cowards, and had skulked away from the prospective battlefield.
Apart from this defection, all went on merrily enough for six days, when the concentration was perfected. Each day the border ruffians and Canadians were kept under view, and camp for camp invisibly opposed each other. It is true the mixed bloods and the whites had their scouts and outliers busy, but they found nothing to alarm. The trappers and Blackfeet seemed to be swallowed up in the mountain gorges.
The temperature became milder. The influence of the hot water springs of the Yellowstone certainly affected the air. In four days or so, toilsomely as the adventurers broke their way through the pathless wilds, they would hail the promised golden land.
But one evening Cherokee Bill, as director of all the scouts, reported that there were more ingredients for the stew. Instead of finding Ahnemekee's band in the eastward, his spies had descried evidences of a strong force of whites. And in the Northwest also another body of whites were perceived.
This news very much disquieted Jim Ridge, and deepened his thoughtfulness. According to the flag to which they held allegiance, the newcomers might exert a preponderating influence on what was to become a veritable war. Hesitation would be fatal. It was imperative to have done with present opposing elements as quickly as possible, or have a double force to contest. It is soundest reason in the wilderness to believe enemies approach, and, anyway, white men would rather combine with those of their complexion than the redskins.
This was strictly logical, but, as often happens in practical life, that itself made it wrong; but the Yager could not suspect this. Always in his fears was that of the lovely enclosed country of the Yellowstone becoming the prey to land raiders and freebooters. He warded off intruders from that garden like the dragon of antique fable.
Cherokee Bill was ill at ease as regards the newcomers, and, whilst other scouts left the main body to discover what was the force approaching from the north, he took the almost opposite direction. But when a scout goes out thus "on his own hook," he makes sure of his way back being clear. A scout must return with news, that is his ruling motto. Besides, the Half-breed on the scouting path was very prudent. His line led him across a trail to Old Nick's Cutoff, and there he scrutinised the ground.
In a few minutes he frowned and stooped lower. He had perceived, scarcely more than discernible though, the mark of a human foot, invisible for other eyes. He gave some seconds' concentrated examination to it, for it was not an Indian's tread, nor a white man's in soft heelless shoes, but that of the wearer of pegged boots, such as are common on the border. They are too heavy and require too much reparation in dry weather to suit the hunters; they adopt the redskins' lighter and pleasanter footgear, as do the Canadian Half-breeds.
There was no doubt that one of Captain Kidd's crew had been here, and recently. Whence he came last and whither he was going now were the questions. That this was a spy of the gold grabbers was clear to Bill. Still, confirmation was far from easy. Except over a few square feet where a shallow rock basin had preserved moist soil, there was nothing but hard stone and dry rocks. The Cherokee chief was not disheartened for all that, being rather too experienced in desert tricks.
This solitary footprint was on the skirt of the woodland, the toe pointing thither.
"He's altogether too blamed cunning," muttered he, with an inward chuckle. "This might scoop in a white man, but not even half an Injin."
He dropped to the ground, and lying thereon like a geographer intently investigating a crabbedly written map, explored every inch of the soil. After a long while he caught sight, a couple of yards distant from the footmark—in the same direction—of a long thin scratch, made evidently by an iron instrument which had lightly slid along. That brought forth a smile, and he went back whence he came.
A huge old cedar rose at the wood border, and flung out protective boughs, so that one waved majestically above the lone footstep. He looked up at it without seeing anything out of the common. He shook his head and fell a-thinking. Then, going all around the tree, he picked out the best side for climbing, where weather had made it rugged, and was at the first branch in two or three minutes. There he stopped to have a look around. His lips curled in silent satisfaction. He crawled along the bough like a panther going to drop on a fawn, and reached a place where a cord had chafed half a ring on the round.
He could go down again—the mystery was solved.
One or more men had gone through the woods, monkey fashion, in the trees, and when at the edge had wound a rope, probably a lasso, to the bough by which to lower themselves to the ground, taking heed to land with their toes towards the course they had followed. Once afoot, they had used an ironshod staff to execute a giant's stride off the damp place under the sheltering tree upon the hard, dry stone. Hence the metallic line noticed by the hunter.
What they were and what their number little worried him. The main point was that he could find them readily. They might conceal themselves temporarily amongst the chaos of boulders, but escape was out of the question! Beyond was an immensely deep abyss, of which the adventurers were doubtless ignorant. They had entered into a no thoroughfare.
After overhauling his rifle, the hunter crept and glided among the large stones, looking in all directions, and stopping now and anon to listen avidly. He came to a spot where the whole of the rocky sea was comprehended in one view. A strange sight was offered him, which filled him with a kind of admiring surprise.
Two men had managed to throw a lasso over a jutting crag right over a large fissure serving as window to the Grotto. One had wound the rope about his middle, and with perfectly alarming boldness, was dangling over the fathomless abyss of the Cutoff with the hope to pry into the cavity.
At the nick when Bill Williams caught sight of this, the suspended man was about climbing up, and with the help of his comrade, was hastening to land on a ledge.
The Raven of the Cherokees allowed him to just get a footing, and whilst he was uncoiling the cord from his waist, Bill aimed at the second man and let the lead fly. It took him fair in the bosom, so that he leaped up in the air tremendously, and fell over into the gulf with an almost endless but more and more faint scream of agony.
Bringing another cartridge into readiness for an immediate shot, the Half-breed strode steadily towards the second bandit, who trembled all over in the greatest dread at his approach.
"My poor brother is shaky with too much weariness," remarked he, when nearer. "It must be as near hard work as ever you tried to hang by the girdle on a rope—and highly risky, too, for the string might snap, and there's no telling how deep you might drop."
The man stared at him as though not understanding the bitter jest. It was Bill who laughed.
"After such a job, you ought to have a rest," he went on. "Don't you fret—you'll have plenty of rest before I get through with you."
Whilst uttering this promise he had disarmed the prisoner of the weapons which he tossed over the precipice; then he used the lasso to bind the man, who could not think of resistance on that perilous shelf, all with a skill and dexterity that a European hangman might envy. As soon as he was pinioned so that to shudder was almost an impossibility, Bill gagged him so that his breathing was confined to the nostrils, Indian mode, and shouldering him like a bale of furs, he carried him to a cleft in the stone whence he could see nothing, and dropped him down within.
"It's nigh as close a fit as a grave," said he ominously. "But the coyotes won't touch you, never fear! And nobody else will. I'd advise your putting in some sleep whilst awaiting my coming back; it will prepare you for the long sleep you are fated to enjoy."
He left the wretch. He let a glance trace the circuit of the landscape, and, carrying his valuable gun under his left arm in the savage's fashion, he returned to discover the trail of the horsemen from the southeast. He seemed to be fully pleased with the late incident.
"All the news those scouts bring to old Captain Kidd will not spoil his slumber," he remarked, chewing some checkerberry leaves as if to counteract the nauseating flavour of the gold hunter's name.
Having settled his object, he marched forward in the Indian style, as the crow flies, all the more recommendable, as path there was none. This plan has the advantage of considerably abridging the road; but in a broken mountainous land most people would rather be excused. It requires steel muscles and uncommon vigour, and the craft to employ them properly; no fear of giddiness—the gifts of the mountain sheep, in short.
Without appearing to give a second thought to the narrow squeaks he had, turning angles in midair merely to reach cornices goats would have evaded, the Cherokee went steadfastly on and on, though each fresh hindrance seemed less surmountable than the easiest before. On the whole he moved rapidly, so that in three half hours he had gone what must have taken anybody else three or, maybe, four full ones.
About eleven, he bounded down on a broadish clearing, where an extremely transparent rivulet ran shallowly, with a melodious murmur, over pebbles where Californian diamonds and agates glowed in all colours, between banks edged with lilies and other aquatic plants.
His piercing eye explored the scene till he was satisfied with the profound stillness. He collected dead wood in a pile a little off from the streamlet, and lit a fire. When it had taken good hold, he dug up some edible roots, which he had found by the leaves as well as if they were labelled, and put them in the ashes to roast. On a large bed of hot coals he laid some strips of deer meat, and lighting his pipe, sat down for a quiet smoke—his gun ever handy, however.
During twenty minutes he only shifted to turn the meat with the point of his knife; both meat and the substitute for potatoes were soon nicely cooked. But even after he dished the peeled tubers upon a leaf and the meat on a strip of bark, with its satin lining equalled by no Dresden china platter, he seemed to wait for the cue to eat.
Indeed, there was a faint rustle in the covert which he must have heard, for he smiled and turned his face fully that way. A hunter crept out of the brush, his gun barrel directed forward and his finger on the trigger.
"Friend!" said Cherokee Bill, without further emotion.
"Well, I am knocked endwise!—The chief!" exclaimed the stranger, in amazement. It was no other than Mr. Filditch.
"Just in time," said Bill Williams, waving his hands hospitably in a kind of welcoming grace over the edibles, "though you are not precisely the man or men I expected."
"Well, I hope he is not dying of hunger, as I am," answered the Yankee Californian, dropping down joyfully in front of his friend. "We have been pushing on with such forced marches that we don't know what eating, sitting still, means!"
"We!" ejaculated the hunter, with what was great astonishment for him.
"What we? When we parted company you were about the lonesomest man in the woods, I should allow."
"Lonesome and lost, chief! Well, I wandered about alone, but I came back a hundred strong!"
"With these horse from the south'ard? I was expecting them."
"Perhaps Don Gregorio telegraphed to you overnight that he was about due?" cried Filditch, jestingly, as well as a mouth full of food would permit.
"Don Gregorio? That's all right, then! They are friends, for sure. That's a weight off my mind!"
"They were glad to have me as guide. They might have had a better. But you can take my office now. I resign with the utmost pleasure. But how has my uncle and the rest been getting on?"
"They are beautifully posted, as you will see."
From the tone, Filditch did not press; he knew that Bill was not communicative unless he pleased.
"What makes you prowl about alone?" inquired the hunter in a little while.
"I thought I recognised a landmark, and wanted to verify it. The troop is only a little beyond."
"Well, this is a good spot for the camp; but Jim and the boys are clean 'way up by the Yellowstone, where we must scoot in hot haste as soon as your band is recruited. Go, fetch 'em up smart!"
Filditch had "gobbled" his share of the unexpected repast. He felt ever so much better physically from that, and morally because he was assisted out of his dilemma as an inexperienced pilot by the proffered guidance of the Cherokee. He darted away in a delighted spirit.
In the meantime, Bill finished his pipe, muttered some remark on the Mexicans wanting to pick their way for the horses' sakes, and leisurely gathered fuel, of which he made a number of fires.
There was great glee among the four or five score Mexicans who rode into the break in the wooded and rocky land at this brilliant token of welcome. In another moment, old Gregorio Peralta, alighting with a briskness hardly anticipated from his silver beard, shook hands with Bill Williams cordially. Several of these Southerners knew Bill by sight, and nearly all by hearsay. It was Hail-fellow, well met! And the camp seemed in a festival.
Don Gregorio had been partly dispossessed of his prejudice against all whose blood was intermixed, by Mr. Filditch's glowing account of Bill Williams' excellences. He at once cast prejudices aloof, and felt genuine sympathy and admiration as he understood him better. He had pictured all reds to be savages fond of rapine and strong drink, with no clear notion on good and evil; essentially devoted to a brutish life, and only human in externals. In brief, ferocious bipeds incapable of generous sentiments.
The sight of the Cherokee, more than ever an Indian since he was on the warpath, so calm, fond of his comrades, handsome of his kind, able, loyal, and wise, his natural gifts added to, not enhanced, by his college training—these aspects made him believe that the Raven was an exception to all the race hitherto seen by him. As time passed over the meals, Don Gregorio learnt that the new guide was very human, with the same passions, virtues, and vices as others of the great human family.
The rest being over, the column formed anew, directed by the mixed-blood hunter, who "handled" them like a ship at sea with the deepwater pilot at the helm. The night made no difference to him, and he pressed them on. After two halts, he brought them to a point whence all was plain riding. It was desirable, perhaps, that this reinforcement should be kept a secret, from the gold grabbers in particular. Such a body of cavalry was invaluable for a final charge, or to pursue the fugitives after a defeat.
Don Gregorio impatiently expressed the wish to ride over towards the Elk's Leap, and confer with Jim Ridge.
"I do not catch what the guide says," remarked he, interrogatively.
"Oh, he says that white folks are very knowing theoretically, but lamentably fail in practice. I quite coincide."
"As how?"
"Well, we are not so near the camp of the Mountain Men and the united Indians as you fancy. The air is very different here from that of the southern plains. In the highlands the large masses absorb the lesser and merge all asperities into smoothness. You are three days off from the Yellowstone Basin, however fast your horses might scramble along." Thus the Cherokee.
"Well?"
"You must wait till Jim comes or otherwise meets you and assigns your place for the combat. Meanwhile, Don Gregorio, as you are eager to see your grandniece Rosario, take a couple of men, an extra mule, and lend me a horse. We will ride to where she is ensconced."
"What! You are never going to take her out of a place of shelter and bring her into the fighting place," cried the old Californian, whilst Filditch echoed the exclamation.
"Not so. I want the pack animal to bring my prisoner along to show Jim."
"A prisoner?"
"You shall see," answered Bill, curtly, turning away to select a horse among the several offered him; whilst Filditch, who, of course, went with them to see his daughter, despatched a messenger to Ridge's command with the gladsome news.
Kidd was spending the night without any rest. Besides the tumultuous emotions excited by the proximity of the treasure land, the uncontrolability of his forces worried him exceedingly. He was confident that on finding gold, admitting that they penetrated the Firehole country unimpeded, it would be each man for himself. Even now he felt lonely enough. Dan Steelder had determinedly set off on a scouting expedition to see what had befallen Doña Rosario. He had expressly charged his associate to watch Leon well; but lo! That youth had slipped away as well as Lottery Paul, whether in company or separately was unsettled. As for Joe, he was left behind to guard the women and goods. And the departure of Dearborn increased Kidd's misery at being abandoned, for the guide had shown him the promised goal and departed.
"If only in cutting our way through these unknown enemies we lose the bulk of this riffraff," he muttered, "I shall perhaps have a choice few whom I can govern. All may yet be for the best, and Joe and me can set up a hotel for summer tourists, with the richest gold mine in our wine cellar, right there in the heart of the Yellowstone."
Leon had not gone away with the Frenchman, but the latter's departure was directly the cause of his. The Drudge, angered at being divided from the Carcajieu, was only awaiting an opportunity to leave the captain. As payment for his long unremunerated services, he took a horse from Foxface and arms and equipment, passing the outposts with the truth seeming plea that he was sent on a special mission by the leader.
"It's stuck him up high," muttered the outer guard. "The boy is quite handsome all of a sudden!"
In fact, Leon was transformed, for, being of an eagle race, the more doleful he was in captivity, the more haughty and noble he was unfettered.
Long hours of meditation over the wilderness had "soaked" knowledge into him of wood and desert craft almost unawares.
He rode at once into the high grass and canebrake in the wet pits at the bottom of the canyon, for it was so high that he was hidden on the horse's back.
He mocked at the night, confident that he could guide himself by the stars. He ate in the saddle, and though he did not ride fast, kept on ceaselessly till he had gone by the Medicine Rock, where the Half-breeds were showing a fire in their ceremonies, pious perhaps, but assuredly imprudent.
Here he halted. From all Dearborn and Joe had imparted to him, he knew that friends were approaching and from the west. But should he proceed thitherward on the chance of crossing the trail of their outliers, or climb the other side of the giant defile and join Corky Joe, with whom he could be comparatively at ease, and if anything befell Kidd, as free as now?
His brooding was almost tragically put an end to by a gunshot above him, and whilst he instinctively looked up, his poor horse leaped and fell sidewise to the ground. In the flash he had recognised the face of the Frenchman. He threw himself off the dying horse, and none too soon, for a second shot, from a large pistol this time, carried away his hat, and with a fragment of the bullet laid the flesh open on his cheekbone. He stumbled at the shock, and rolled on the grass beside the stiffening horse.
"Aha!" cried Paul, who could be heard descending in the brushwood, "So I have served out my spy this time. Our dear captain, he does so hate to lose a man, that he sends after him. Who is it, anyhow, that I've peppered?"
Leon remained prone, but slewed his gun round ready. As he lay, the dead steed formed a rampart: he was well posted.
"He's my meat," muttered the Frenchman, holding on by a bush and peering down through the gloom.
"Not precisely!" interrupted another voice, on the same level; "It is you, dog, who shall die!"
On this threat from an unexpected quarter, Paul dropped to the next ledge and jumped behind a tree. Leon rose slowly and cautiously, and looked up. By the stranger's voice he had, he believed, recognised Dearborn.
He and the bandit were at the limits of a comparatively clear space. The youth stole off obliquely to the right so as to left flank the Frenchman. He aimed his rifle, and, leaving shelter, cried so loudly that the Englishman could also know him by his voice:
"You are all wrong. Mr. Paul, it is you who must die."
Lottery Paul looked at him steadily and replied:
"Maybe—two to one is odds—but you shall lead the way to Kingdom come."
But before he had time to change the direction of his piece, bearing on the Englishman, Leon fired, knowing what kind of murderous fellow he was.
Over he rolled, clawing up the moss, with a fractured skull.
Dearborn ran up. But at the same time there was a noise in the thicket, and several men appeared. Nothing was more impressive than this peopling of the solitude in such obscurity.
"Drop your guns!" shouted one of the newcomers, authoritatively; "We're all friends here, I reckon."
"Bill Williams!"
It was the Cherokee and Filditch, and his eight or ten men besides.
"What's the meaning of all this?" said Filditch, as there was a group formed around the dead robber and the guide and the servant of Captain Kidd.
"In the first place," said the hunter, "there's your son in that young man. It is a sufficient card of introduction that he has rubbed out one of the vermin anyway, though we are lucky if their confounded rattle of shots does not spoil the scheme."
"My son!"
"Yes, Rosa's brother," went on the hunter. "We won't mind you two. Well, Mr. Dearborn, out of the trap?"
"Yes. I was looking for some of you, when I found there was a horseman below, and, on descending, was in time to see him overturned by a couple of shots from that ruffian. But the boy did not require my intervention. He avenged himself."
"Good boy! Well, now, all your information."
As soon as the hunter learnt details of the arrangement of the enemy, he formed a fresh variation, or rather supplement to the plan.
"Gentlemen," said Bill, thereupon, "over there, across the canyon, are the women and children. We will go straight to their camp. The guard know Leon and Mr. Dearborn, and, anyhow, Joe, their lieutenant, will accept them and remove any doubts. They will say they came back from the captain, who requites every spare hand, and decoy them into the bushes, where they must roaster them. The remainder should be but a gulp and they're gone, to us."
All is fair in war as in love. Dearborn accepted the task.
"Can you spare your son?" asked Jim of Filditch, beside whom stood Leon.
"I would like to go with him, Jim. I want a good deal to see this young lady who was such a comfort to Rosa."
"Go along, then."
Into the fog dived the detachment—Dearborn, Filditch, and Leon; Cherokee Bill as conductor, and a few men.
The others concluded all preparations for the desperate fight.
But it was not till half after ten that the stubborn fog, torn and drifted away by the sun and one of those strong gales which sweep up a canyon so lofty at the sides, melted away like a playhouse gauze and unmasked the sunny landscape.
Spite of this theatrical discovery, no one betrayed himself. Never had the desert seemed more untroubled. An undisturbed calm soothed the majestic solitude, and yet many men, strangers to one another, were straining to fly at the throat with ferocious rage fur gains vaguely defined.
At this moment, a red scout leaped up among the hunters' pickets, with the sign of friendliness and that he was a Blood Indian.
"Well, brother?" demanded Ridge.
"The Half-breeds slipped us during the fog, and have joined the gold robbers though not intermixing."
"They had some suspicion."
"The chiefs conjecture that something evil before them in the mad root swamp appalled them."
"Maybe Ahnemekee is heading them off there."
The scout shook his head as if he did not believe the Crows would venture so near the hallowed ground.
"In any case, we are ready. Return to your comrades and begin the battle. We shall also advance if we are not attacked."
"Good!" and the grinning demon bounded away along the hillside.
Very soon the scream of the grey eagle arose, shrill and prolonged.
Firing was opened with that absence of unison betokening that both sides were irregulars. The sound seemed to approach. All at once the war whoops of the savage union resounded like a cannon shot. The gunfire became more intense, and painful cries were tempering cheers and yells of triumph.
Kidd had indeed found the Crows in the dwarf wood, and feared to cross a mad root (Indian turnip) marsh in their teeth. He began a feigned retreat and enticed them into the mouth of the canyon where the Bois-Brulés fell on them, running down the slopes and almost annihilating them in the charge. The few survivors were carried by the impetus in among the rocks and pools of the bottomland, where they were slaughtered almost to a man. But even as the Canadians raised a cry of victory, the Piegans and their allies were rushing upon the white men in much the same manner. The Half-breeds hastened to coalesce with their confederates, and strengthen them against this onset. There was an obstinate struggle, the Indians seeking to detain the whole whilst they encircled them. Kidd, on the contrary, endeavoured to retire up the canyon and regain the tableland on high, where Joe and the rearguard were posted. It was a natural fort.
But suddenly, out of the most innocent bushes, but which had not been planted there across the way when they passed along, a deadly fire gushed from rifles far more potent than the Indians.
The bandits and the Manitobans were caught between two fires. Nevertheless, whilst the red men seemed the more numerous, the firing elsewhere allowed a sanguine man to believe that these new assailants were so limited in force that they were obliged to ambush themselves.
Kidd flourished his Spanish rapier, rallied his men, and shouted:
"Over them! Through them! It's our only chance. Come on, boys, where we have comrades!" and the column ran into the hunters' fire. At the same time, common enough when an enemy falter, the Indians whooped diabolically and charged the Half-breeds.
They and Kidd had not only the flank but the front fire to sustain, and nearly every second man seemed to fall.
However, those who escaped death, if not wounds, scrambled into the bushes. They were ungarrisoned, being merely a line beyond the real entrenchment, moat, and brushwoodchevaux de frize.
The conflict became horrible when the bandits and Half-breeds, now serried together with little order, were brought up, all standing, against the barricades. They gave up hope, and so furiously fought that none dreamt of asking quarter. Forming a rampart of their own dead, and of those of the redskins who had rushed on the guns too rashly, the determined remnant held out, dumb, calm, and gloomy, like men of stone, certain of death, but bravely selling their lives.
Overcome with horror and pity for such a sublime resolution, Jim Ridge unexpectedly sprang over the breastwork, followed by Leon, who knew most of the sufferers, and shouted in a voice everybody heard:
"Quit of shooting! It's too all-fired mean to butcher them when they stand out so well."
On both sides he was obeyed; so much authority was in the voice of one for whom the reds and whites felt a profound respect, and to whom they knew they owed so much of success.
Without any weapons, the Yager, still accompanied by the generous boys, advanced up to the resistants till near enough to pull hair. At the wall of dead men they stopped.
Kidd was binding up a wound; Dagard was the ostensible leader.
"What do you want?" he asked, lowering his rifle and pistol, both hands being thus occupied.
"We come to offer you life. Injins like 'sand' in a man, and your grit is first brand."
"We asked no quarter," was the proud reply. "We would have given none, I daresay. We are not plumb played out, and we mean to die pulling trigger."