The Girl at the Halfway House Part 7

"The hunt's over," said Franklin, looking at the dead animals. "We've enough for us all."

"Yes, sir," said Curly, "we sh.o.r.e got meat, and got it plenty sudden.--Juan, _vamos, p.r.o.nto_!" He made signs showing that he wished the Mexican to skin and dress the buffalo, and the latter, as usual, proceeded to give immediate and unhesitating obedience.

CHAPTER XI

THE BATTLE

Occupied for a few moments with the other at the wagon, Franklin ceased to watch Juan, as he went slowly but not unskilfully about the work of dressing the dead buffalo. Suddenly he heard a cry, and looking up, saw the Mexican running hurriedly toward the wagon and displaying an animation entirely foreign to his ordinary apathetic habit. He pointed out over the plain as he came on, and called out excitedly: "_Indios!

Los Indios_!"

The little party cast one long, careful look out toward the horizon, upon which now appeared a thin, waving line of dust. A moment later the two wagons were rolled up side by side, the horses were fastened securely as possible, the saddles and blanket rolls were tossed into breastworks at the ends of the barricade, and all the feeble defences possible were completed. Four rifles looked steadily out, and every face was set and anxious, except that of the Mexican who had given the alarm. Juan was restless, and made as though to go forth to meet the advancing line.

"_Vamos--me vamos_!" he said, struggling to get past Curly, who pushed him back.

"Set down, d----n you--set down!" said Curly, and with his strange, childlike obedience, the great creature sat down and remained for a moment submissively silent.

The indefinite dust line turned from gray to dark, and soon began to show colours--black, red, roan, piebald--as the ponies came on with what seemed an effect of a tossing sea of waving manes and tails, blending and composing with the deep sweeping feather trails of the grand war bonnets. Hands rose and fell with whips, and digging heels kept up the unison. Above the rushing of the hoofs there came forward now and then a keen ululation. Red-brown bodies, leaning, working up and down, rising and falling with the motion of the ponies, came into view, dozens of them--scores of them. Their moccasined feet were turned back under the horses' bellies, the sinewy legs clamping the horse from thigh to ankle as the wild riders came on, with no bridle governing their steeds other than the jaw rope's single strand.

"Good cavalry, b'gad!" said Battersleigh calmly, as he watched them in their perfect horsemanship. "See 'em come!" Franklin's eyes drew their brows down in a narrowing frown, though he remained silent, as was his wont at any time of stress.

The Indians came on, close up to the barricade, where they saw the muzzles of four rifles following them steadily, a sight which to them carried a certain significance. The line broke and wheeled, scattering, circling, still rising and falling, streaming in hair and feathers, and now attended with a wild discord of high-keyed yells.

"Keep still, boys; don't shoot!" cried Franklin instinctively. "Wait!"

It was good advice. The mingling, shifting line, obedient to some loud word of commando swept again up near to the front of the barricade, then came to a sudden halt with half the forefeet off the ground. The ponies shuffled and fidgeted, and the men still yelled and called out unintelligible sounds, but the line halted. It parted, and there rode forward an imposing figure.

Gigantic, savage, stern, clad in the barbaric finery of his race, his body nearly nude, his legs and his little feet covered with bead-laden buckskin, his head surmounted with a horned war bonnet whose eagle plumes trailed down the pony's side almost to the ground, this Indian headman made a picture not easily to be forgotten nor immediately to be despised. He sat his piebald stallion with no heed to its restive prancing. Erect, immobile as a statue, such was the dignity of his carriage, such the stroke of his untamed eye, that each man behind the barricade sank lower and gripped his gun more tightly. This was a personality not to be held in any hasty or ill-advised contempt.

The Indian walked his horse directly up to the barricade, his eye apparently scorning to take in its crude details.

"Me, White Calf!" he exclaimed in English, like the croak of a parrot, striking his hand upon his breast with a gesture which should have been ludicrous or pompous, but was neither. "Me, White Calf!" said the chief again, and lifted the medal which lay upon his breast. "Good.

White man come. White man go. Me hunt, now!"

He swept his arm about in a gesture which included the horizon, and indicated plainly his conviction that all the land belonged to him and his own people. So he stood, silent, and waiting with no nervousness for the diplomacy of the others.

Franklin stepped boldly out from the barricade and extended his hand.

"White Calf, good friend," said he. The Indian took his hand without a smile, and with a look which Franklin felt go through him. At last the chief grunted out something, and, dismounting, seated himself down upon the ground, young men taking his horse and leading it away. Others, apparently also of rank, came and sat down. Franklin and his friends joined the rude circle of what they were glad to see was meant to be an impromptu council.

White Calf arose and faced the white men.

"White men go!" he said, his voice rising. "Injun heap shoot!"

"B'gad, I believe the haythen thinks he can scare us," said Battersleigh, calmly.

Franklin pointed to the carca.s.ses of the buffalo, and made signs that after they had taken the meat of the buffalo they would go. Apparently he was understood. Loud words arose among the Indians, and White Calf answered, gesticulating excitedly:

"Heap good horse!" he said, pointing to the horses of the party.

"White man go! Injun heap get horse! Injun heap shoot!"

"This is d----d intimidation!" shouted Battersleigh, starting up and shaking a fist in White Calf's face.

"Give up our horses? Not by a d----d sight!" said Curly. "You can heap shoot if you want to turn loose, but you'll never set me afoot out here, not while I'm a-knowin' it!"

The situation was tense, and Franklin felt his heart thumping, soldier though he was. He began to step back toward the wagons with his friends. A confused and threatening uproar arose among the Indians, who now began to crowd forward. It was an edged instant. Any second might bring on the climax.

And suddenly the climax came. From the barricade at the rear there rose a cry, half roar and half challenge. The giant Mexican Juan, for a time quieted by Curly's commands, was now seized upon by some impulse which he could no longer control. He came leaping from behind the wagons, brandishing the long knife with which he had been engaged upon the fallen buffalo.

"_Indios_!" he cried, "_Indios_!" and what followed of his speech was only incoherent savage babblings. He would have darted alone into the thick of the band had not Franklin and Curly caught him each by a leg as he pa.s.sed.

The chief, White Calf, moved never a muscle in his face as he saw his formidable adversary coming on, nor did he join in the murmurs that arose among his people. Rather there came a glint into his eye, a shade of exultation in his heavy face. "Big chief!" he said, simply.

"Heap fight!"

"You bet your blame life he'll heap fight!" said Curly, from his position upon Juan's brawny breast as he held him down. "He's good for any two of you, you screechin' cowards!"

Curly's words were perhaps not fully understood, yet the import of his tone was unmistakable. There was a stirring along the line, as though a snake rustled in the gra.s.s. The horse-holders were crowding up closer. There were bows drawn forward over the shoulders of many young men, and arrows began to shiver on the string under their itching fingers. Once more Franklin felt that the last moment had come, and he and Battersleigh still pressed back to the wagons where the rifles lay.

The Indian chief raised his hand and came forward, upon his face some indescribable emotion which removed it from mere savagery, some half-chivalrous impulse born perhaps of a barbaric egotism and self-confidence, perhaps of that foolhardy and vain love of risk which had made White Calf chief of his people and kept him so. He stood silent for a moment, his arms folded across his breast with that dramatic instinct never absent from the Indian's mind. When he spoke, the scorn and bravado in his voice were apparent, and his words were understood though his speech was broken.

"Big chief!" he said, pointing toward Juan. "White Calf, me big chief," pointing to himself. "Heap fight!" Then he clinched his hands and thrust them forward, knuckles downward, the Indian sign for death, for falling dead or being struck down. With his delivery this was unmistakable. "Me," he said, "me dead; white man go. Big chief"

(meaning Juan), "him dead; Injun heap take horse," including in the sweep of his gesture all the outfit of the white men.

"He wants to fight Juan by himself," cried Franklin.

"Yes, and b'gad he's doin' it for pure love of a fight, and hurray for him!" cried Battersleigh. "Hurray, boys! Give him a cheer!" And, carried away for the moment by Battersleigh's own dare-deviltry, as well as a man's admiration for pluck, they did rise and give him a cheer, even to Sam, who had hitherto been in line, but very silent.

They cheered old White Calf, self-offered champion, knowing that he had death in a hundred blankets at his back.

The meaning of the white men was also clear. The grim face of White Calf relaxed for a moment into something like a half-smile of pride.

"Heap fight!" he repeated simply, his eyes fixed on the vast form of the babbling giant. He dropped his blanket fully back from his body and stood with his eyes boring forward at his foe, his arms crossed arrogantly over his naked, ridging trunk, proud, confident, superb, a dull-hued statue whose outlines none who witnessed ever again forgot.

There was no time to parley or to decide. Fate acted rapidly through the agency of a half-witted mind. Juan the Mexican was regarding the Indian intently. Perhaps he gathered but little of the real meaning of that which had transpired, but something in the act or look of the chieftain aroused and enraged him. He saw and understood the challenge, and he counted nothing further. With one swift upheaval of his giant body, he shook off restraining hands and sprang forward. He stripped off his own light upper garment, and stood as naked and more colossal than his foe. Weapon of his own he had none, nor cared for any. More primitive even than his antagonist, he sought for nothing letter than the first weapon of primeval man, a club, which should extend the sweep of his own arm. From the hand of the nearest Indian he s.n.a.t.c.hed a war club, not dissimilar to that which hung at White Calf's wrist, a stone-headed beetle, grooved and bound fast with rawhide to a long, slender, hard-wood handle, which in turn was sheathed in a heavy rawhide covering, shrunk into a steel-like re-enforcement. Armed alike, naked alike, savage alike, and purely animal in the blind desire of battle, the two were at issue before a hand could stay them. All chance of delay or separation was gone.

Both white and red men fell back and made arena for a unique and awful combat.

There was a moment of measuring, that grim advance balance struck when two strong men meet for a struggle which for either may end alone in death. The Indian was magnificent in mien, superb in confidence. Fear was not in him. His vast figure, nourished on sweet meat of the plains, fed by pure air and developed by continual exercise, showed like the torso of a minor Hercules, powerful but not sluggish in its power. His broad and deep chest, here and there spotted with white scars, arched widely for the vital organs, but showed no clogging fat.

His legs were corded and thin. His arms were also slender, but showing full of easy-playing muscles with power of rapid and unhampered strength. Two or three inches above the six-feet mark he stood as he cast off his war bonnet and swept back a hand over the standing eagle plumes, whipped fast to his braided hair. White Calf was himself a giant.

Yet huge and menacing as he stood, the figure opposed to him was still more formidable. Juan, the _mozo_ overtopped him by nearly half a head, and was as broad or broader in the shoulder. His body, a dull brown in colour, showed smoother than that of his enemy, the muscles not having been brought out by unremitted exercise. Yet under that bulk of flesh there lay no man might tell how much of awful vigour.

The loop of the war club would not slip over his great hand. He caught it in his fingers and made the weapon hum about his head, as some forgotten ancestor of his, tall Navajo, or forgotten cave dweller, may have done before the Spaniard came. The weapon seemed to him like a toy, and he cast his eye about for another more commensurate with his strength, but, seeing none, forgot the want, and in the sheer ignorance of fear which made his bravery, began the fight as though altogether careless of its end.

White Calf was before his people, whose chief he was by reason of his personal prowess, and with all the vanity of his kind he exulted in this opportunity of displaying his fitness for his place. Yet in him natural bravery had a qualifying caution, which was here obviously well justified. The Mexican made direct a.s.sault, rushing on with battle axe poised as though to end it all with one immediate blow. With guard and parry he was more careless than the wild bull of the Plains, which meets his foe in direct impetuous a.s.sault. White Calf was not so rash.

He stepped quickly back from the attack, and as the _mozo_ plunged forward from the impulse of his unchecked blow, the Indian swept sternly at him with the full force of his extended arm. The caution of the chief, and the luck of a little thing, each in turn prevented the ending of the combat at its outset. Half falling onward, the Mexican slipped upon a tuft of the hard gray gra.s.s and went down headlong. A murmur arose from the Indians, who thought at first that their leader's blow had proved fatal. A sharp call from Curly seemed to bring the Mexican to his feet at once. The Indian lost the half moment which was his own. Again the two engaged, White Calf now seeking to disconcert the Mexican, whom he discovered to be less agile than himself. Darting in and out, jumping rapidly from side to side, and uttering the while the sharp staccato of his war call, he pa.s.sed about the Mexican, half circling and returning, his eye fixed straight upon the other's, and his war club again and again hurtling dangerously close to his opponents head. One shade more of courage, one touch more of the daring necessary to carry him a single foot closer in, and the victory had been with him, for no human skull could have withstood the impact of a pound of flint impelled by an arm so powerful.

Juan the _mozo_ stood almost motionless, his own club half raised, the great muscles of his arm now showing under the brown skin as he clinched hard the tiny stem of the weapon. He seemed not perturbed by the menaces of the chieftain, and though unaware that the latter must in time suffer from the violence of his own exertions, nevertheless remained the fuller master of his own forces by simply waiting in this one position. His readiness for offence was the one defence that he offered. His brute courage had no mental side. The whistling of this threatening weapon was unheeded, since it did not hurt him. He glared in fury at the Indian, but always his arm remained half raised, his foot, but shifted, side stepping and turning only enough to keep him with front toward his antagonist. The desperate, eager waiting of his att.i.tude was awful. The whisper of the wings of death was on the air about this place. The faces of the white men witnessing the spectacle were drawn and haggard. A gulp, a sigh, a half groan now and again came from their parted lips.

White Calf pursued his rapid tactics for some moments, and a dozen times sped a blow which still fell short. He gained confidence, and edged closer in. He feinted and sprang from side to side, but gained little ground. His people saw his purpose, and murmurs of approval urged him on. It seemed that in a moment he must land the fatal blow upon his apparently half-stupefied opponent. He sought finally to deliver this blow, but the effort was near to proving his ruin. Just as he swung forward, the giant, with a sudden contraction of all his vast frame, sprang out and brought down his war axe in a sheer downward blow at half-arm's length. White Calf with lightning speed changed his own attack into defence, sweeping up his weapon to defend his head. On the instant his arm was beaten down. It fell helpless at his side, the axe only hanging to his hand by means of the loop pa.s.sed around the wrist. A spasm of pain crossed his face at the racking agony in the nerves of his arm, yet he retained energy enough to spring back, and still he stood erect. A cry of dismay burst from the followers of the red champion and a keen yell from the whites, unable to suppress their exultation, Yet at the next moment the partisans of either had become silent; for, though the Indian seemed disabled, the _mozo_ stood before him weaponless. The tough, slender rod which made the handle of his war axe had snapped like a pipestem under the force of his blow, and even the rawhide covering was torn loose from the head of stone, which lay, with a foot of the broken hard-wood staff still attached, upon the ground between the two antagonists.