The Covered Wagon Part 33

The eyes of his a.s.sociates rested on Woodhull.

"I think one man would be safer than two," said he. "My own place is here if there's sure to be a fight."

"Mebbe so," a.s.sented Jackson. "In fack, I don't know as more'n one'd git through if you an' me both started." His cold gray eye was fixed on Woodhull carelessly. "An' ef hit was the wrong man got through he'd never lead them Missouri men for'rerd to where this fight'll be.

"An' hit'll be right here. Look yan!" he added.

He nodded to the westward, where a great dust cloud arose.

"More is comin'," said he. "Yan's Bannack's like as not, er even the Shoshones, all I know, though they're usual quiet. The runners is out atween all the tribes. I must be on my way."

He hurried to find his own horse, looked to its welfare, for it, too, had an arrow wound. As he pa.s.sed a certain wagon he heard a voice call to him, saw a hand at the curtained front.

"Miss Molly! Hit's you! Ye're not dead no ways, then?"

"Come," said the girl.

He drew near, fell back at sight of her thin face, her pallor; but again she commanded him.

"I know," said she. "He's--he's safe?"

"Yes, Miss Molly, a lot safer'n any of us here."

"You're going back to him?"

"Yes. When he knows ye're hurt he'll come. Nothin'll stop him, oncet I tell him."

"Wait!" she whispered. "I heard you talk. Take him this." She pushed into his hand a folded paper, unsealed, without address. "To him!" she said, and fell back on the blankets of her rude pallet.

At that moment her mother was approaching, and at her side walked Woodhull, actuated by his own suspicions about Jackson. He saw the transaction of the pa.s.sed note and guessed what he could not know. He tapped Jackson on the shoulder, drew him aside, his own face pale with anger.

"I'm one of the officers of this train," said he. "I want to know what's in that note. We have no truck with Banion, and you know that. Give it to me."

Jackson calmly tucked the paper into the fire bag that hung at his belt.

"Come an' take it, Sam, d.a.m.n ye!" said he. "I don't know what's in hit, an' won't know. Who it's to ain't none o' yore d.a.m.n business!"

"You're a cursed meddler!" broke out Woodhull. "You're a spy in our camp, that's all you are!"

"So! Well, cussed meddler er not, I'm a cussed sh.o.r.e shot. An' I advise ye to give over on all this an' mind yore business. Ye'll have plenty to do by midnight, an' by that time all yore womern an' children, all yore old men an' all yore cowards'll be prayin' fer Banion an' his men to come. That there includes you somewhere's, Sam. Don't temp' me too much ner too long. I'll kill ye yit ef ye do! Git on away!"

They parted, each with eye over shoulder. Their talk had been aside and none had heard it in full. But when Woodhull again joined Mrs. Wingate that lady conveyed to him Molly's refusal to see him or to set a time for seeing him. Bitterly angered, humiliated to the core, he turned back to the men who were completing the defenses of the wagon park.

"I kain't start now afore dark," said Jackson to the train command.

"They're a-goin' to jump the train. When they do come they'll surround ye an' try to keep ye back from the water till the stock goes crazy. Lay low an' don't let a Injun inside. Hit may be a hull day, er more, but when Banion's men come they'll come a-runnin'--allowin' I git through to tell 'em.

"Dig in a trench all the way aroun'," he added finally. "Put the womern an' children in hit an' pile up all yer flour on top. Don't waste no powder--let 'em come up clost as they will. Hold on ontel we come."

At dusk he slipped away, the splash of his horse's feet in the ford coming fainter and fainter, even as the hearts of some felt fainter as his wise and st.u.r.dy counsel left them. Naught to do now but to wait.

They did wait--the women and children, the old, the ill and the wounded huddled shivering and crying in the scooped-out sand, hardest and coldest of beds; the men in line against the barricade, a circle of guards outside the wagon park. But midnight pa.s.sed, and the cold hours of dawn, and still no sign came of an attack. Men began to believe the dust cloud of yesterday no more than a false alarm, and the leaders were of two minds, whether to take Jackson's counsel and wait for the Missourians, or to hook up and push on as fast as possible to Bridger's fort, scarce more than two hard days' journey on ahead. But before this breakfast-hour discussion had gone far events took the decision out of their hands.

"Look!" cried a voice. "Open the gate!"

The cattle guards and outposts who had just driven the herd to water were now spurring for shelter and hurrying on the loose stock ahead of them. And now, from the willow growth above them, from the trail that led to the ford and from the more open country to the westward there came, in three great detachments, not a band or a body, but an army of the savage tribesmen, converging steadily upon the wagon train.

They came slowly, not in a wild charge, not yelling, but chanting. The upper and right-hand bodies were Crows. Their faces were painted black, for war and for revenge. The band on the left were wild men, on active half-broke horses, their weapons for the most part bows and arrows. They later found these to be Bannacks, belonging anywhere but here, and in any alliance rather than with the Crows from east of the Pa.s.s.

Nor did the latter belong here to the south and west, far off their own great hunting range. Obviously what Carson, Bridger, Jackson had said was true. All the tribes were in league to stop the great invasion of the white nation, who now were bringing their women and children and this thing with which they buried the buffalo. They meant extermination now. They were taking their time and would take their revenge for the dead who lay piled before the white man's barricade.

The emigrants rolled back a pair of wagons, and the cattle were crowded through, almost over the human occupants of the oblong. The gap was closed. All the remaining cargo packages were piled against the wheels, and the noncombatants sheltered in that way. Shovels deepened the trench here or there as men sought better to protect their families.

And now in a sudden _melee_ of shouts and yells, of trampling hoofs and whirling colors, the first bands of the Crows came charging up in the attempt to carry away their dead of yesterday. Men stooped to grasp a stiffened wrist, a leg, a belt; the ponies squatted under ghastly dragging burdens.

But this brought them within pistol range. The reports of the white men's weapons began, carefully, methodically, with deadly accuracy.

There was no panic. The motionless or the struggling blotches ahead of the wagon park grew and grew. A few only of the Crows got off with bodies of their friend's or relatives. One warrior after another dropped. They were used to killing buffalo at ten yards. The white rifles killed their men now regularly at a hundred. They drew off, out of range.

Meantime the band from the westward was rounding up and driving off every animal that had not been corralled. The emigrants saw themselves in fair way to be set on foot.

Now the savage strategy became plain. The fight was to be a siege.

"Look!" Again a leader pointed.

Crouched now, advancing under cover of the shallow cut-bank, the headdresses of a score of the Western tribesmen could be seen. They sank down. The ford was held, the water was cut off! The last covering fringe of willows also was held. On every side the black-painted savages sat their ponies, out of range. There could be no more water or gra.s.s for the horses and cattle, no wood for the camp.

There was no other concerted charge for a long time. Now and then some painted brave, chanting a death song, would ride slowly toward the wagon park, some dervish vow actuating him or some bravado impelling him. But usually he fell.

It all became a quiet, steady, matter-of-fact performance on both sides.

This very freedom from action and excitement, so different from the gallant riding of the Sioux, was more terrifying than direct attack _en ma.s.se_, so that when it came to a matter of shaken morale the whites were in as bad case as their foes, although thus far they had had no casualty at all.

There lacked the one leader, cool, calm, skilled, experienced, although courage did not lack. Yet even the best courage suffers when a man hears the wailing of his children back of him, the groans of his wife. As the hours pa.s.sed, with no more than an occasional rifle shot or the zhut! of an arrow ending its high arc, the tension on the nerves of the beleaguered began to manifest itself.

At midday the children began to cry for water. They were appeased with milk from the few cows offering milk; but how long might that last, with the cattle themselves beginning to moan and low?

"How far are they back?"

It was Hall, leader of the Ohio wagons. But none could tell him where the Missouri train had paused. Wingate alone knew why Banion had not advanced. He doubted if he would come now.

"And this all was over the quarrel between two men," said Caleb Price to his friend Wingate.

"The other man is a thief, Cale," reiterated Wingate. "He was court-martialed and broke, dishonorably discharged from the Army. He was under Colonel Doniphan, and had control of subsistence in upper Mexico for some time. He had the regimental funds. Doniphan was irregular. He ran his regiment like a mess, and might order first this officer, then that, of the line or staff, to take on his free-for-all quartermaster trains. But he was honest. Banion was not. He had him broken. The charges were filed by Captain Woodhull. Well, is it any wonder there is no love lost? And is it any wonder I wouldn't train up with a thief, or allow him to visit in my family? By G.o.d! right now I wouldn't; and I didn't send for him to help us!"

"So!" said Caleb Price. "So! And that was why the wedding--"

"Yes! A foolish fancy of a girl. I don't know what pa.s.sed between her and Banion. I felt it safer for my daughter to be married, as soon as could be, to another man, an honest man. You know how that came out. And now, when she's as apt to die as live, and we're all as apt to, you others send for that renegade to save us! I have no confidence that he will come. I hope he will not. I'd like his rifles, but I don't want him."

"Well," said Caleb Price, "it is odd how his rifles depend on him and not on the other man. Yet they both lived in the same town."

"Yes, one man may be more plausible than another."