The Mountain Divide. Spearman Frank Hamilton

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СКАЧАТЬ they tell me, general,” said Stanley, “you are laying a mile a day.”

      “If you would give us the ties, colonel,” returned Casement, short-bearded and energetic, “we should be laying two miles a day.”

      “I have turned the Missouri River country upside down for timber,” returned Stanley. “The trouble is to get the material forward over a single track so many hundred miles. However, we shall be getting ties down the Spider Water within two weeks. I am on my way up there now to see what the contractors are doing.”

      It was the first intimation Bucks had had as to the object of the trip. Casement had a number of subjects to lay before his superior while within consulting distance, and Bob Scott, an hour later, announced that Stanley would not move on for two days. This left his attendants free, and when Scott, low-voiced and good-natured, asked Bucks if he wanted to go out on the Sweet Grass Plains with him after an antelope, Bucks accepted eagerly. The two saddled horses and Bucks, with a rifle borrowed from Sublette, followed Scott across a low-lying range of hills broken by huge stone crags and studded with wind-blown and stunted cedars, out upon the far-reaching expanse of an open plain. The scene was inspiring, but impressions crowded so fast one upon another that the boy from the Alleghanies could realize only that he was filled with sensations of delight as his wiry buckskin clattered furiously along the faint trail that carried him and his guide to the north and west. The sun was high when Scott reined up and, dismounting, tethered his horse in a glade hidden by a grove of aspens and bade Bucks do the same.

      “Getting hungry?” asked Scott, smiling at his companion. An answer was written pretty plainly on Bucks’s face.

      “Didn’t bring anything to eat, did you?” suggested Scott.

      Bucks looked blank. “I never thought of it,” he exclaimed. “Did you bring anything?”

      “Nothing but this,” answered Scott, holding up a small buckskin sack fitted with drawing strings.

      “What is that, Bob?”

      “It is what I carry wherever I ride. I carry nothing else. And it is only a little bag of salt.”

      “A bag of salt!” cried Bucks. “Do you eat salt?”

      “Wait and see,” answered the scout. “Pull your belt up a notch. We’ve got a little walking to do.”

      Scott, though of Chippewa blood, had been captured when a boy by the Sioux and, adopted into the tribe, had lived with them for years. He knew the mountains better than any man that served Stanley, and the latter trusted him implicitly–nor was the confidence ever betrayed.

      Walking rapidly over a low-lying divide beyond which lay a broad valley marking the course of a shallow creek, Scott paused behind a clump of cedars to scan the country. He expected to find antelope along the creek, but could see none in any direction. Half a mile more of scouting explained the absence of game, and Scott pointed out to Bucks the trail of an Indian hunting party that had passed up the valley in the morning. They were Cheyennes, Scott told his companion, three warriors and two squaws–reading the information from signs that were as plain to him as print–though Bucks understood nothing of it. In the circumstances there was nothing for it but a fresh venture, and, remounting, the Indian led the boy ten miles farther north to where the plains stretched in a succession of magnificent plateaus, toward the Sleepy Cat Mountains.

      “We are in real Sioux country now,” observed Scott, as he again dismounted. “And we are as likely now to uncover a war party as a herd of antelope.”

      “What should you do, Bob, if we met Sioux?”

      “Run,” smiled Bob, with Indian terseness. Yet somehow the boy felt that Bob, in spite of what he said, would not run, and he realized for a moment the apprehension of one but newly arrived on the frontier, and still subject to tremors for his scalp. The scout took his stand near a thicket of quaking asp and almost at once sighted a band of antelope. Taking Bucks, he worked around the wind toward the band, and directed him how and when to shoot if he got a chance. Bucks, highly wrought up after the long crawl to get within range, did get a chance, and with his heart beating like a trip-hammer, covered a buck and fired. The scout shot immediately afterward, and the herd broke swiftly for the timber along the creek. But Bucks, as well as his experienced companion, had brought down an antelope.

      Scott, as he joined his companion, looked at him with curiosity. “Where did you learn to shoot?”

      “I couldn’t do it again, Bob,” exclaimed Bucks frankly. “The only shooting I’ve ever done is rabbit-shooting, or squirrel-shooting. I was lucky for once, that’s all.”

      “I hope your luck stays with us. If it does we may get back with all of our hair,” returned Scott. “The thing to do now is to lose no time in leaving here. We are farther from camp than we ought to be. When I get to running antelope I am apt to go as far as they do.”

      The two hunters got the carcasses across their horses, and acting on Scott’s admonition started to cover a good bit of the distance toward camp before stopping.

      The sun was already low in the west and Bucks realized that they had been out all day. The hunters rode due southeast, to put every mile possible between them and the Indian country before dark. They were riding along in this manner at dusk, when Scott, leading, pointed to a canyon that offered a hiding-place for the night, and directed his horse into it. Scarcely had the two passed within the canyon walls when Scott halted and, with a quick, low command to the boy, sprang from his horse. Bucks lost no time in following suit: they had ridden almost into an Indian camp, and when Bucks’s feet touched the ground Scott was covering with his rifle a Sioux brave who with two squaws rose out of the darkness before him. Quick words passed between Scott and the Indian in the Sioux tongue. Bucks’s hair rose on end until the confab quieted, and the scout’s rifle came down. In an instant it was all over, but in that instant the Easterner had lived years.

      “It is all right,” said Bob, turning to reassure his charge. “He is a young chief–Iron Hand. I know his father. These three are alone. Eight of them went out after buffalo five days ago. The second day they fell in with Turkey Leg and a Cheyenne war party. Two of Iron Hand’s warriors were killed. The rest got separated and these three lost their horses. Iron Hand,” Scott nodded toward the silent Indian, “was hit in the arm, and with his squaw and her sister has been trying to get north, hiding by day and travelling by night. He can’t shoot his rifle; he thinks his arm is broken; and the squaws haven’t been able to kill anything. They are hungry, I guess.”

      “And did they tell you all this in those few words?” demanded Bucks incredulously.

      “It doesn’t take many words to tell stories in this country. If a man talked much he would be dead and buried before he got through.”

      “Bob, if they are hungry, give them some antelope.”

      Scott, who had meant to suggest the same thing, was pleased that the offer should come from his companion, and so told the wounded Indian. The latter drew himself up with dignity and spoke a few rapid words. “He says he is glad,” translated Bob, “that your heart is big. And that it will be safer to go farther into the canyon. The Cheyennes are hunting for them all around here, and if you are not afraid to camp with the Sioux, we will stay with them here to-night. While the Cheyennes are hunting them, they might find us. It will be about the safest thing we can do.”

      “You know best,” said his companion. “Can you trust this man?”

      “Trust him?” echoed Bob mildly. “I wish I could trust the word of a white man half as far as I can that of a Sioux. He understands СКАЧАТЬ