Gold Part 30

We arrived in camp about ten o'clock, to find Johnny and Don Gaspar anxiously on the alert. When we had imparted our news, their faces, too, darkened with anger. Of us all Vasquez had been the only man who never lost his temper, who had always a flash of a smile for the hardest days.

Hastily we threw together provisions for several days, and arranged our affairs as well as we could. We all wanted to go; and Don Gaspar, in spite of the remains of his malarial fever, fairly insisted on accompanying the expedition.

"Senores," he said with dignity, "this was my own man from my own people."

Nevertheless somebody had to stay in camp, although at first some of us were inclined to slur over that necessity.

"There's a strong chance that Injuns will drift by and take all our supplies," Bagsby pointed out.

"Chances are slim--in only a day or so; you must admit that," argued Johnny. "Let's risk it. We can scratch along if they do take our stuff."

"And the gold?"

That nonplussed us for a moment.

"Why not bury it?" I suggested.

Bagsby and Pine snorted.

"Any Injun would find it in a minute," said Pine.

"And they know gold's worth something, too," put in Yank.

"This is a scout, not a house-moving expedition," said Bagsby decidedly, "and somebody's got to keep camp."

"I'll stay, fer one," offered old man Pine, his eyes twinkling from beneath his fierce brows. "I've fit enough Injuns in my time."

After some further wrangling we came to drawing lots. A number of small white pebbles and one darker were shaken up in a hat. I drew in the fourth turn, and got the black!

"Hard luck, son!" murmured old man Pine.

The rest were eager to be off. They leaped upon their horses, brandishing their long rifles, and rode off down the meadow. Old man Pine leaned on the muzzle of his gun, his eyes gleaming, uttering commands and admonitions to his five sons.

"You Old," he warned his youngest, "you mind and behave; and don't come back yere without'n you bring a skelp!"

We spent the next two days strictly in defence, for we dared not stay long from the stockade. I was so thoroughly downcast at missing the fight that I paid little attention to Pine's well-meant talk. My depression was enhanced by the performance of the duty the others had left to our leisure. I mean the interment of poor Vasquez. We buried him in a gra.s.sy little flat; and I occupied my time hewing and fashioning into the shape of a cross two pine logs, on the smoothed surface of which I carved our friend's name. Then I returned to the stockade, where old man Pine, a picturesque, tall figure in his fringed hunter's buckskin, sat motionless before the cabin door. From that point of vantage one could see a mile down the valley, and some distance upstream; and one or the other of us occupied it constantly.

About three o'clock of the second day Pine remarked quietly:

"Thar they come!"

I was instantly by his side, and we strained our eyesight in an attempt to count the shifting figures. Pine's vision was better and more practised than mine.

"They are all thar," said he, "and they're driving extry hosses."

Ten minutes later the cavalcade stopped and the men dismounted wearily.

They were, as the old man had said, driving before them a half dozen ponies, which Governor Boggs herded into the corral. n.o.body said a word.

One or two stretched themselves. Johnny seized the cup and took a long drink. Yank leaned his rifle against the wall. Old man Pine's keen, fierce eye had been roving over every detail, though he, too, had kept silent.

"Well, Old," he remarked, "I see you obeyed orders like a good sojer."

The boy grinned.

"Yes, dad," said he.

And then I saw what I had not noticed before: that at the belt of each of the tall, silent young backwoodsmen hung one or more wet, heavy, red and black soggy strips. The scalping had been no mere figure of speech!

Thank heaven! none of our own people were similarly decorated!

So horrified and revolted was I at this discovery that I hardly roused myself to greet the men. I looked with aversion, and yet with a certain fascination on the serene, clear features of these scalp takers. Yet, since, in the days following, this aversion could not but wear away in face of the simplicity and straightforwardness of the frontiersmen, I had to acknowledge that the atrocious deed was more a product of custom than of natural barbarity.

Old Pine, of course not at all affected, bustled about in the more practical matter of getting coffee and cutting meat; and after a moment I aroused myself to help him. The men lay about on the ground exhausted.

They drank the coffee and ate the meat, and so revived, little by little, arrived at the point of narration.

"It's sure one h.e.l.l of a ride down there," remarked McNally with a sigh.

"Good deal like the foothills of th' Snake Range, pop," put in President Tyler Pine.

"We been riding purty nigh every minute sence we left here," agreed Bagsby. "That rancheree was hard to find."

Little by little the tale developed. No one man, in the presence of all the others, felt like telling us the whole story. We gathered that they had ridden the canon for several hours, past our first camping grounds, and finally out into the lower ranges. Here they lost the trail left by the Indians when they had first visited our camp; but in casting in circles for it had come on fresher pony tracks. These they had followed persistently for many miles.

"_I_ couldn't see the sign of a track for a mile at a time, on that hard ground," interpolated Johnny.

At length the tracks had struck into a beaten trail.

"And then we knew we were on the way to the rancheree," said Bagsby.

The village they found located in a flat by the side of a stream, and they halted to determine just what to do. It was finally decided that while an attack on horseback would undoubtedly strike more instant terror, yet the difficulty of shooting accurately from a gallop would more than offset this effect. Therefore nine of the party crept up afoot, leaving three to lead forward the horses some distance in the rear.

"I was one of them," said Johnny. "They evidently have seen me shoot. I seem to be always out of it."

The men had wormed their way to within a hundred yards of the flimsy huts, or tepees, when they were discovered by the dogs. The Indians immediately rushed out pell-mell, in a crowd, and were met by a deadly volley from the white men's rifles. Caught absolutely by surprise, they turned and fled. Some few loosed random arrows. Their horses coming up at a run in convoy of the rear guard, each man threw himself into his saddle and started in pursuit, shooting right and left with the Colt's revolvers whenever they caught up with the fugitives. Johnny told admiringly how the backwoodsmen had reloaded their rifles while galloping.

"All I could do to shoot mine off, let alone loading!" he confessed.

There was no resistance, and little mortality after the first volley.

The Indians bolted like rabbits into the brush. The white men then returned leisurely to the village, which they proceeded to burn to the ground.

"It made a grand bonfire," interrupted Johnny. "Went up like gunpowder.

And the Indians yelled and howled at us from the sidehills all the time."

The raiders had fired a few defiant and random shots in the direction of the howling, and then, after collecting the ponies that had not stampeded, rode slowly back the way they had come.

"Didn't see anything of our three horses?" I asked.

"Nary hoss," said Buck Barry. "I figger they jest nat'rally stampeded off when the row started."

"Are you sure those were the same Indians?" I asked.

A long silence fell.