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Title: To The Front
A Sequel to Cadet Days
Author: Charles King
Release Date: November 28, 2006 [EBook #19952]
Language: English
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* * * * *
[Illustration: [See p. 252]
THE OPENING OF THE BATTLE AT WOUNDED KNEE]
* * * * *
TO THE FRONT
A SEQUEL TO
CADET DAYS
BY
GENERAL CHARLES KING
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMVIII
* * * * *
Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published March, 1908.
* * * * *
TO
THREE BOYS, CADETS YET TO BE
TO "COPE" AND THE MAJOR
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PRELUDE 1
I. FROM THE GRAY TO THE BLUE 11
II. THE FIRST CALL 30
III. AWAY TO THE WEST 39
IV. "I'M READY NOW" 49
V. FIRST NIGHT ON THE RANGE 61
VI. FIRST AID TO THE WOUNDED 76
VII. A BALKED ARREST 89
VIII. A RACE TO THE FORT 102
IX. BAD NEWS FROM THE MINES 114
X. FIRST SHOTS OF THE SUMMER 128
XI. A NIGHT ON GUARD 142
XII. THE MAN OF THE SIEGE 156
XIII. AWAY ON THE WARPATH 168
XIV. A SCOUT FOR THE SIOUX 180
XV. FIRST SIGHT OF THE FOE 198
XVI. PROOF POSITIVE OF GUILT 213
XVII. THE WAR-DANCE AND THE CHARGE 224
XVIII. BATTLE AND VICTORY 239
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE OPENING OF THE BATTLE AT WOUNDED KNEE _Frontispiece_
CADETS AT DRILL, WEST POINT _Facing p._ 14
"BIG BEN WAS BUSY WITH HIS OIL-CAN" " 84
"NOT A WHIFF OF THE DRAUGHT COULD BE WASTED" " 102
SILVER SHIELD " 128
"'STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HERD, MEN. CH-A-A-A-RGE!'" " 236
UNITED STATES CAVALRY IN WINTER RIG " 242
"UP WENT TWO LITTLE PUFFS OF EARTH" " 248
TO THE FRONT
TO THE FRONT
PRELUDE
It was graduation day at West Point, and there had been a remarkable
scene at the morning ceremonies. In the presence of the Board of
Visitors, the full-uniformed officers of the academic and military
staff, the august professors and their many assistants, scores of
daintily dressed women and dozens of sober-garbed civilians, the
assembled Corps of Cadets, in their gray and white, had risen as one
man and cheered to the echo a soldierly young fellow, their "first
captain," as he received his diploma and then turned to rejoin them. It
was an unusual incident. Every man preceding had been applauded, some
of them vehemently. Every man after him, and they were many, received
his meed of greeting and congratulation, but the portion accorded Cadet
Captain "Geordie" Graham, like that of Little Benjamin, exceeded all
others, and a prominent banker and business man, visiting the Point for
the first time, was moved to inquire why.
"I think," said the officer addressed, a man of his own age, though his
spare form and smooth-shaven cheek and chin made him look ten years
younger--"I think it is that Graham has been tried in all manner of
ways and has proved equal to every occasion. They say he's sheer grit."
A keen and close observer was the banker--"a student of men," he called
himself. He had been tried in many a way and proved equal to every
occasion. He had risen from the ranks to the summit. He, too, they said
in Chicago, was "sheer grit." Moreover, they did not say he had "made
his pile out of others' losings"; but, like most men who have had to
work hard to win it, until it began to come so fast that it made
itself, John Bonner judged men very much by their power to earn money.
Money was his standard, his measure of success.
And this, perhaps, was why John Bonner could never understand his
brother-in-law, the colonel, a most distinguished soldier, a modest and
most enviable man.
Twenty-five years had Bonner known that now gray-haired, gray-mustached
veteran. Twenty-five years had he liked him, admired him, and much of
late had he sought to know him, but Hazzard was a man he could not
fathom.
"Fifteen years ago," said he to a fellow-magnate, "I told that man if
he'd quit soldiering, and bring Carrie and the children to Chicago, I'd
guarantee him an income ten times the regular pay he's getting; and he
smiled, thanked me, and said he was quite content--content, sir, on two
thousand a year, and so, too, was Sis. Now, think of that!"
And Bonner was bubbling over with the same idea to-day, yet beginning
to see light. Two prominent senators, men of world-wide renown, held
Hazzard long in close conference, and were merely civil to him, the
magnate, who, as he said, "could buy the three of 'em three times
over." A general whose name was but second to that of Grant seized his
brother-in-law by both hands, and seemed delighted to greet him, yet
had barely a word for "his millions," him to whom the Board of Trade
bowed humbly at home. A great war secretary, whom they had recently
dined at the Grand Pacific and whose dictum as to the purchase of
supplies meant much to Chicago, but vaguely remembered and absently
greeted the man of wealth, yet beamed with pleasure at sight of his
small-salaried soldier companion. The secretary drew Hazzard off to one
side, in fact, and left the man of stocks and the stock-yards standing.
That evening, after the simple home dinner, with Carrie and the young
people and the colonel smiling about the board, Bonner's vexation of
spirit found vent. Duties drew the soldier away, and the banker was
left with his sister.
"What is your pay _now_, Carrie?" he abruptly asked.
"A row of threes, John--$333.33 a month," was the amused answer.
"And Hazzard's been through two wars, Heaven knows how many campaigns
and vicissitudes, and been serving the United States, night and day,
some thirty years, and that's all he has to show for it, every cent of
which has to go for living expenses--rearing, feeding, clothing, and
educating these youngsters."
"Pretty nearly. We've a little laid by for Jack's college, and the
President gives Lou his cadetship, you know, but"--and here the
blithe-faced little woman looked archly at "Uncle John," though her
look was one that said, "I mean every word of this"--"we don't think
that's all there is to it, by any manner of means. Think of his war
record! Isn't that a proud thing to leave to our boys? See how he is
regarded by the best men in our country, from the President down! He is
not yet an old man, but he has 'all that should accompany old
age--love, honor, obedience, troops of friends'--and, honestly, John,
with health and competence and _us_, what more _should_ he want?"
"Well," said Bonner, tenaciously, "I could have put him where he would
have been worth three hundred thousand by this time."
"And it wouldn't have tempted him; and I'd rather see him as he is."
"Well, I'm blessed if I can understand it," said Bonner. Then callers
put a stop to the chat. Then the colonel himself came home to his cosey
quarters, and silence had settled down over the beautiful plain. The
lights were dimmed in the barracks; the sentries paced their measured
rounds; from the verandas of the hotel came the ripple of murmured
words and soft laughter, and a tinkle of banjo and guitar. At the gate
the colonel exchanged good-night greetings with a happy-faced, motherly
looking woman whom Bonner had noticed overwhelmed with pride and
emotion during the ceremonies in the morning. He did not at first
recognize the tall, erect young fellow on whose arm she proudly leaned
as she walked home through the shifting moonlight.
"That was young Graham, in whom you were so interested this morning,"
said Hazzard, briefly.
"_Was_ it? Oh, I thought he'd gone with the graduates."
"Only down to the city to say good-bye. He came back to his mother by
late train. I fancy she's more to him than a lot of fun with the boys."
"See here, Hazzard," observed Bonner, solemnly, "I've been looking into
things here nigh onto a week. It's fine! It's all right for a soldier
school! But, now take that young chap for a sample. What on earth does
he know outside of drill and mathematics and what you call discipline?
What could he do in case we cut off all this--this foolishness--and
came down to business? I'd be willing to bet a sweet sum that, take him
out of the army, turn him loose in the streets, and he'd starve, by
gad! before he could ever earn enough to pay for a quick lunch."
"I think you'd lose," was the quiet answer.
"Well, I'd just like to try it. Pit him and his kind against our
keen-witted, sharp, aggressive young _bus_iness men--men with
_bus_iness heads, _bus_iness experience"--Bonner's emphasis on the
first syllable was reinforced by a bang of the fist on the arm of his
chair--"and, and, by gad! they'd be skinned alive--skinned out of their
last cent, sir."
"That," said the colonel, dryly, "is not improbable. They are trained
as soldiers, not as sharpers. But, all the same, in spite, if you
please, of their soldier training, I fancy most of these lads that quit
us to-day, if brought face to face with sudden emergency,
responsibility, something calling for courage, coolness,
judgment--above all, for action--would hold their own, and I'd back
them even in competition with your aggressive young friends in business
life."
"Why, they're taught to deal only with soldiers--with machines--not
men," argued Bonner.
"Well, such as they have handled men not soldiers more than once, in
your own city, Bonner, and to your vast benefit. They'll come to it
again some day. As for that young man, I picked him a year ago from his
whole class for the place that calls for the most judgment, tact, quiet
force, capacity to command--the 'first captaincy'--and never did I see
it better filled."
"Oh, granted as to that! But strip off the uniform, sword, and
authority; set him among the men _we_ have to deal with--what could he
do with a railway strike? How could he handle maddened mill operatives,
laborers, switchmen, miners? Think of that, Hazzard! That isn't
fighting Indians, with a regiment at your back. You mark what I say!"
"Well, mobs, miners, or Indians, our young officers have had to meet
all kinds at times," said the colonel; "and if ever Graham is up
against them, Bonner, I'm thinking you'll hear of it."
And, oddly enough, before he was one month older, sitting in his office
in Chicago, Bonner was hearing it with a vengeance. There was the
mischief to pay in at least one of his mines. Oddly enough, before he
was one year older, George Montrose Graham, graduated cadet, was "up
against them," all three--mobs, miners, and Indians. How he met them
and how he merited the colonel's confidence let them judge who read.
CHAPTER I
FROM THE GRAY TO THE BLUE
It was just after sunset of one of the longest days of the loveliest of
our summer months. The roar of the evening gun had gone re-echoing
through the Highlands of the Hudson. The great garrison flag was still
slowly fluttering earthward, veiled partially from the view of the
throng of spectators by the snowy cloud of sulphur smoke drifting
lazily away upon the wing of the breeze. Afar over beyond the barren
level of the cavalry plain the gilded hands of the tower-clock on "the
old Academic" were blended into one in proclaiming to all whom it might
concern that it was five minutes past the half-hour 'twixt seven and
eight, and there were girls in every group, and many a young fellow in
the rigid line of gray and white before them, resentful of the fact
that dress parade was wofully late and long, with tattoo and taps only
two hours or so away. The season for the regular summer "hops" had not
yet begun, for this was away back in the eighties, when many another
old West Point fashion still prevailed; but there was to be an informal
dance in the dining-room of the hotel, and it couldn't come off until
after supper, and supper had to be served to some people who were
"pokey" enough to care to come by late boat, or later train, and were
more eager to see the cadets on parade than to seek Mine Host Craney's
once bountiful table.
What made it more exasperating was that rumors were afloat to the
effect that the adjutant had long and important orders to publish, and
this would still further prolong the parade. Cadet Private Frazier,
First Class, one of the best dancers in the battalion, was heard to
mutter to his next-door neighbor in the front rank of the color
company: "It'll be nine o'clock before we get things going at the
hotel, and we've got to quit at nine-thirty. _Con_found the orders!"
And yet, peering from under the visor of his shako, Mr. Frazier could
see without disturbing the requisite pose of his head, "up and straight
to the front, chin drawn in," that over near the south end of the row
of gayly attired visitors, seated or standing at the edge of the camp
parade-ground, there was one group, at least, to whom, as Frazier knew,
the orders meant much more than the dance. There, switching the short
grass with his stocky cane, stood their grim senior surgeon, Doctor, or
Major, Graham. There, close beside him and leaning on the arm of a
slender but athletic, sun-tanned young fellow in trim civilian dress,
stood the doctor's devoted wife. With them was a curly-headed youth,
perhaps seventeen years of age, restless, eager, and impatient for the
promised news. Making his way eagerly but gently through the dense
throng of onlookers, a bronze-faced, keen-eyed, powerfully built
officer in the uniform of the cavalry came up at the moment and joined
them. "Have you heard anything yet?" he murmured to Mrs. Graham, whose
kind and gentle eyes seemed to light at sound of his voice.
"Not yet," she answered, with a shake of the head. "All we learned just
a few minutes ago was that the order was here and would be published on
parade. The commandant returned only just in time."
"And there's been no telegram--no word from outside?"
"Not a thing, Mr. McCrea. It just so happened."
"Well, if that isn't odd! To begin with, it's most unusual to get out
the order so early. They must be in a hurry to assign the graduates
this year. Pops, old boy, if you don't get our regiment, I'll say the
secretary of war is deaf to the wishes of every officer and most of the
men. We told him when he came out to look over Fort Reynolds, and
incidentally look into the mines--but that was last year--Oh, bother,
Williams," he suddenly broke off, "what do you want to lose precious
time for, putting 'em through the manual?"
This sudden outbreak was levelled at the unconscious officer
commanding the parade (the "officer in charge," as he was termed), Mr.
Williams having replied, "Take your post, sir," to the adjutant's
stately salute in presenting the statuesque line. Whereupon the
adjutant "recovered" sword, strode briskly up, passed beyond the plumed
commander, and took his station to his left and rear. With much
deliberation of manner, Mr. Williams drew sabre and easily gave the
various orders for the showy manual of arms, the white-gloved hands
moving like clockwork in response to his command until, with
simultaneous thud, the battalion resumed the "order," certain
spectators with difficulty repressing the impulse to applaud.
[Illustration: CADETS AT DRILL, WEST POINT]
Then back to the centre stalked the young adjutant, Mrs. Graham
unconsciously drawing unflattering comparison between the present
incumbent, soldierly though he seemed, and her own boy's associate and
friend, Claude Benton, adjutant of the class graduated barely a
fortnight earlier, "her own boy," perhaps the most honored among them.
She was clinging to his arm now, her pride and joy through all his
years of sturdy boyhood and manly youth. She knew well that the hope
and longing of his heart was to be assigned to the cavalry regiment of
which Lieutenant McCrea was quartermaster, the regiment once stationed
at old Fort Reynolds, in the Rockies, when Dr. Graham was there as post
surgeon and Geordie was preparing for West Point. Indeed, Mr. McCrea
had "coached" her son in mathematics, and had been most helpful in
securing the appointment. And now here was the quartermaster on leave
of absence, the first he had had in years, spending several weeks of
his three months' rest at the scene of his own soldier school-days.
But it was "Bud," her younger son, who had come rushing down to the
surgeon's quarters only a few minutes before parade with the
all-important news. "Mither!--Geordie!" he cried, "Captain Cross says
the assignment order's come and will be published at parade. Hurry up!"
Dr. Graham could hardly believe it. As McCrea said, the War Department
seldom issued the order before mid-July. "Mac" even hoped to be in
Washington in time to say a word to the adjutant-general in Geordie's
behalf. It was known that many would be assigned to the artillery, to
which Cadet Graham had been recommended by the Academic Board. But all
his boyhood had been spent on the frontier; his earliest recollections
were of the adobe barracks and sun-dried, sun-cracked, sun-scorched
parade of old Camp Sandy in Arizona. He had learned to ride an Indian
pony in Wyoming before he was eight; he had learned to shoot in Montana
before he was twelve; and he had ridden, hunted, fished, and shot all
over the wide West before the happy days that sent him to the great
cadet school of the nation. And now that he was graduated, with all his
heart and hope and ambition he prayed that he might be commissioned in
a cavalry regiment, if possible in McCrea's. Give him _that_, he said,
and he would ask no favor from any man.
How his heart was beating as he watched the adjutant, whom he himself
had schooled and drilled and almost made, for Graham had been famous in
his cadet days as a most successful squad instructor, a model first
sergeant, and a great "first captain." How odd it seemed that he, a
graduate, and that all these people, officers, and children, should now
be hanging on the words that might fall from the younger soldier's
lips! A telegram from Washington had told a veteran general visiting at
the Point that his son had been assigned to the artillery, that the
order would doubtless be published that evening. But it so happened
that not until just before parade did the commandant return from a long
ride, and so had no time to read it through. He had simply handed it,
with others, to the silent young soldier, who had stood in full uniform
full five minutes awaiting his coming. "Better order 'parade rest' part
of time. It's a long read," he briefly said, and, stowing the orders
under his sash, the adjutant had saluted, faced about, and hastened
away.
And now that young official has received the reports of the first
sergeants and sent them, high-headed, martial, and precise, back to
their stations in the line. And now again he has faced the commanding
officer, saluted, and announced, "All are present, sir." And now that
deliberate functionary has at last said, "Publish the orders, sir." And
silence seems to fall, even upon the chatting groups of girls, as, with
brief "'Tentio-o-o-on to Orders," the adjutant drops the point of his
sword, letting it dangle from the gold swordknot on his wrist, and in
another moment the clear young voice is ringing over the attent and
martial audience.
"War Department, Washington, D.C., June 25, 189--," he begins, and then
briskly rattles away at the terse official paragraphs: "The following
assignment of graduates of the United States Military Academy are
hereby announced to take effect from June 14th." It begins with that
highly scientific and enviable body, the Corps of Engineers, and Mr.
George Graham, up to this moment still officially known as cadet,
touches his mother's arm at sound of the third name on the list--that
of Connell, his chum, his chosen comrade, his much-loved classmate
through the long four years. "Dear old Con," he murmurs into her ears.
"I'll telegraph my congratulations to him, whatever comes to me."
There are eight in all assigned to the engineers, and then come the
names of those gazetted to the artillery--five famous regiments, too,
and Graham notes with joy that Beard, Conway, Foster, and Lawrence, all
of whom were lower in general standing than himself, get their
longed-for billet with the "red legs," and his name is not mentioned.
That means he has not been assigned where he preferred not to go. But
would the war secretary assign him where he longed to be? Yes, here it
comes, first on the cavalry list, and his heart beats for joy.
"F----th Regiment of Cavalry.
"No. 15, Cadet George Montrose Graham to be Second Lieutenant,
Troop 'E,' _vice_ Fenton, promoted."
And though her eyes are brimming and her lips _will_ quiver, Mrs.
Graham clasps both her boy's hands in her own in speechless sympathy.
It cannot all be joy, for this means miles and miles of separation that
must come all too soon. Geordie can scarce believe his ears. Oh, it is
too good! Not only the --th, but "E" Troop, Captain Lane's troop, the
troop of which Feeny was first sergeant, the troop in which veteran
Sergeant Nolan, two years ago at old Fort Reynolds, had said he and the
men so hoped to see the day when Mr. Geordie might come back to them to
be their lieutenant.
And now McCrea was grasping and wringing his hand, with a "Welcome to
the old regiment, Geordie," and blue-eyed "Bud" was dancing rapturously
about until the doctor sternly bade him cease. "Is that the way you
think they behave at Columbia, sir?" having never seen the behavior of
Columbiads, or other collegians, at a ball match or boat-race or any
public occasion of undergraduate rejoicing. Even among the spectators
were many who lost interest for the moment in what the adjutant was
reading, and watched, with kindling eyes, the unexpected little scene.
But when Colonel Hazzard himself, the soldierly commandant, with his
silver-gray mustache and hair, came striding through the crowd and held
forth his hand to the young soldier, who instantly and instinctively
faced him at attention, everybody within hearing noted the cordiality
in his hearty tones as he shook Geordie's hand: "Mr. Graham, I'm more
than glad you got the regiment of your choice, and you're going to one
of the best captains in the army. I was on duty in tactics when Lane
was in the Corps. Well, Mrs. Graham, we think we are sending him the
making of one of the best lieutenants," and with that the colonel bowed
as he took the hand of Geordie's mother. "Good sons make good soldiers
all the world over, Mrs. Graham, and we'll expect great things of
yours," he added, then grasped the doctor's out-stretched hand and gave
way to others who came crowding forward, among them a gentle, motherly
woman in half-mourning, whose eyes were moist as she exchanged greeting
with Mrs. Graham.
"Benny will be here the moment they break ranks," she said. "I know he,
too, will want to congratulate George."
And so there was quite a little gathering, and what the papers call an
"ovation," about the young graduate, who was blushing not a little
through his healthy tan. He was quite unable to hear where his
classmates had been distributed in the other regiments of cavalry and
infantry, and he was anxious to know, but even when the line of cadet
officers came marching to the front and stood at salute before the
battalion commander, and then broke ranks, and as many as a dozen made
a rush at their former first captain, eager to take him by the hand and
say a word of congratulation before they went bounding away to doff
dress hats, plumes, and sashes--even then Graham could not see the
order, for Colonel Hazzard called for it to show to a bevy of
bright-eyed girls, who knew the graduating class, now scattered all
over the United States, knew almost every one of them better than they
did this, their foremost cadet officer, for George Graham, though he
could dance, had seemed to care little for hops and less for girls. His
few leisure hours of the last year at the Point he had spent at the
side of his mother.
But at last, leaving Mrs. Frazier and Benny at camp, the Grahams were
walking slowly homeward in the wake of the brave young battalion,
marching away with its quick, elastic stride to the spirited music of
the fifes and drums. Lieutenant McCrea was still with them, while
Lieutenant Wood, another family friend, had taken to the telegraph
office Geordie's pencilled words of congratulation to his chum Connell,
now lieutenant of engineers. Mrs. Graham leaned heavily on the arm of
her sturdy son, thinking of all the joy that had been hers, after the
years of separation. It had been such a welcome, welcome order that
took Major Graham to duty at West Point the last lap of their boy's
cadet life. Every Saturday evening he had spent "at home" in the
surgeon's quarters, and many a Sunday afternoon. How she had looked
forward from week end to week end! How swiftly had the weeks slipped
by! How would she miss him in the years to come! How lonely would be
the Saturdays and Sundays without her boys, for "Buddy" too, was to
leave the home nest. He had passed for Columbia and was to have some
terms at what the doctor loved to call "the humanities" before taking
up the study of medicine. Her heart had been full of rejoicing and
thanksgiving when graduation came, barely a fortnight agone--yet when,
for the last time in cadet uniform Geordie stood before her, so
soldierly, so manly, so honored by his comrades in the Corps, and she
followed him with brimming eyes when, leaving his diploma in her hand,
he turned away to his room, in the tower of the old first division, to
lay aside forever the plume and sash, the sword and chevrons of the
first captaincy, to shed the academy uniform for good and all, she knew
she wished the whole year could be lived over again; she knew she would
rather the time were still far distant when her son should "change the
gray for the blue."
But now, now, every hour of every day for three glorious and beautiful
months, she was to have him by her side. She need not, she would not,
think of the separation to come late in September, when he must join
his regiment and be her boy no more. At least she would try not to
think, but here was this cold, stern, business-like order to remind her
that she had given her first-born to the service of his country--that
now he belonged to the general government and no longer to her. All too
soon--oh, many weeks too soon--had the mandate appeared, for it would
haunt her day and night until the hour for parting came. Ah, thank God,
that at least would not be for weeks! Even Geordie now had become
silent and serious. He was listening to McCrea's eager words to Dr.
Graham, all about the regiment and Fort Reynolds, and how he wished
they were back there again, the finest station the --th had ever had,
he declared, and "so near the mines!"
"Just think, Geordie," he cried, "if we were all at Reynolds we could
run up the range to the Silver Shield any day, and watch them dragging
out gold."
"You haven't lost faith in the Shield, then?" asked Mrs. Graham,
smilingly. She thought and cared so little herself. She knew that
several officers at Reynolds, her husband and McCrea among them, had
invested their scant savings in that most promising venture. She knew
that McCrea had vowed it would make them all rich if not famous one of
these days, and that her methodical, cautious "canny Scot" of a husband
had figured, pondered, and consulted long before he, too, had become
convinced. She knew their holdings had been quoted far above what was
paid for them, but what of all that? She had her boys, her husband, her
army home, her health, and high content. What was wealth to her?
"I own I was thinking more of the hunting and fishing, the scenery, and
the splendid range," said Geordie, "but no matter where 'E' Troop goes,
I want to be with it."
"If the Shield pans out according to promise," said McCrea, with a
laugh, "the regiment won't see me for many a day after I realize. I'm
going in for a year's leave--and Europe."
They had reached the front of Grant Hall by this time and were
strolling slowly along, their voices hushed for the moment by the
cheery hum of boyish talk and the clatter of mess furniture, as the
Corps sat at their late supper. Then several officers, gathered about
the steps of the club rooms in the south end, lifted their caps to Mrs.
Graham and smiled greeting to the party.
"Come back, Geordie!" was the cheery hail. "We want to wet that
assignment in cavalry fashion." But Graham laughed and shook his head.
"Can't break away just now," said he. "I'll look in later."
"What I can't understand," said McCrea, "is that we got no word. With
Freeman and Blake both on duty in Washington, one would think they'd
have wired if they knew."
"It's coming now," said the doctor, pointing to the telegraph orderly
turning away from the steps of his quarters and coming swiftly toward
them, brown envelope in hand. Just in front of the hospital gateway he
met the party, saluted, and tendered the uppermost of two or three
despatches to the doctor.
"Freeman, I'm betting," said McCrea, as the doctor tore it open and
read. They walked on slowly, expectant, but he did not speak. Then Mrs.
Graham turned, gave one look, dropped Geordie's arm and clasped that of
her husband. The rugged, weather-beaten face had grown suddenly gray.
"George! husband!" she cried. "What's gone wrong?"
For answer he simply handed her the paper.
"Designate proxy; meeting Monday. Fear everything lost. Come if
possible."
"Mac," said the old doctor, solemnly, "it's Silver Shield that's melted
away. Everything we had in the world."
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CALL
Fort Reynolds, as has been told in the earlier story of George Graham's
cadet days, lay among the eastward foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains,
with a bustling little frontier city only six miles away down the
winding valley of what was, in the early eighties, a clear, cold, and
beautiful mountain stream that shone in the sun like molten silver.
Silver Run it was called when Uncle Sam built the picturesque frontier
fort of hewn logs and unseasoned pine soon after the Civil War. Silver
Run, cold, pure, and glistening, it remained when Fort Reynolds became
an important military post. Then the --th Cavalry took station at
Reynolds, and there Geordie Graham found them when, with his father and
mother and "Bud," he had come from cold Montana to the finest station
they yet had known, and to the firmest friends, many of whom they had
met before, when Geordie, as a little boy, was "Corporal Pops" to every
man at old Camp Sandy.
But Silver Run, though it ran more silver than it ever knew before, was
beautiful no longer. Mines of remarkable value, mines of gold and
silver, had been discovered twenty and thirty miles back in the
mountains. Mining towns had sprung up along the steep and rocky banks.
Mining methods had turned a limpid stream into a turbid torrent. Two
railways had run their lines, hewing, blasting, boring, and tunnelling
up the narrow valley, first to reach the mines and finally to merge in
a "cut-off" to the great Transcontinental, so that now huge trains of
Pullmans went straining slowly up-grade past the site of old Fort
Reynolds, or came coasting down with smoking tires and fire-spitting
brake-shoes, and between the loss of the water for his horses, and the
hemming in of his rifle-ranges by rail right of way, Uncle Sam
declared Fort Reynolds no longer tenable for cavalry. The regiment had
been sent elsewhere, and only a quartermaster-sergeant and a squad of
men remained.
Yet Reynolds stood in the midst of thriving industries and swarming
men. The First National Bank in town had now a marble front and a
thousand depositors. The town was now a city and a railway centre, and
the backbone of its business was no longer cattle, but mines and
mining, full of fabulous wealth for those "on the inside," but of dark
and devious measures for those "on the outside" or away, and of these
were half a dozen army officers who had been dazzled by the easily
acquired dollars of the earliest arrivals, and of these officers was
one of the last men his friends thought possible to mislead--shrewd,
calculating, cautious, canny old "Sawny" Graham, post surgeon at Fort
Reynolds in the late eighties.
Yet prospectors and explorers ten years earlier had declared gold would
be found up the banks of Silver Run. In the glorious park country back
of Squaw Cañon, where Geordie and Bud had camped and fished and hunted
as boys, the signs of the restless scouts of the great army of miners
were to be seen at every hand. And then finally, in the very September
that followed the return of Graham and Connell to take up the last half
of their course at the Academy, there came sudden and thrilling
announcement of "big finds" along Lance Creek, the upper tributary of
Silver Run; then even finer indications on the Run itself, and the West
went wild. All of a sudden the mountain-sides bristled with armed men
and their _burros_. Camps sprang up in a night and shafts were sunk in
a day. Yampah County, from primeval wilderness, leaped to renown, with
a population of ten thousand. Gold and silver came "packed" down the
trails to the First National. Then, faster than the precious metal came
down, costly machinery, and prices, went up. Fortunes were declared in
a week. Officers and men at Reynolds caught the craze.
Many an old sergeant took his discharge and his savings and went to the
mines; and young troopers without discharges took their lead and
followed suit, and the colonel wired the War Department that if the
regiment wasn't ordered away there wouldn't be anything left to order
in the spring. Luckily, heavy snow-storms came and blocked the trails,
and there was a lull at the mines, but unluckily, not before the few
officers at Reynolds who had saved a dollar had invested every cent of
their savings in the shares of the Golconda, the White Eagle, the
Consolidated Denver, and especially the Silver Shield, and the man who,
through frugality and good management, had the most to invest, and who
had invested all, was Major Graham. When he left there for West Point
the August following he had refused four times what he paid for his
shares, and saw fortune smiling on his pathway to the Hudson. Now, less
than ten months thereafter, on the borders of the Hudson, he saw ruin
staring him in the face.
For there had been assessments, and he had borrowed to meet them. There
had come rumors of "leaks" and he had kept them to himself. McCrea,
his boy's best friend in the regiment, had consulted him only ten days
back as to whether it were not wise to realize on a portion at least of
their holdings, and Graham, dreading a "bear" movement on the market,
had said, "Hold fast."
And now McCrea had turned back. He must go at once, he said, to the
telegraph office. So Graham, his sorrowing wife, and his silent boys
went on. She led him into their cheery quarters, and seated him in his
old arm-chair and came and nestled beside him.
"What is there to grieve about, dear?" she pleaded. "What does it
really matter to us? We have health, home, our boys, each other--quite
enough to live on--Why should it so distress you? Indeed, I almost
cried aloud, 'Is that all?' when you showed me the message. I feared so
much worse. Why, think, Graeme, in all the gay crowd that comes here
every day, is there a woman half as happy as I am? Is there one of them
really as rich as we are--we who have so many blessings?"
"It's for 'Bud' I'm thinking most now," was the mournful answer. "There
can be no Columbia for him. I've borrowed money to meet the
assessments, and the money's got to be paid. This isn't like having
one's house burned, or his ranch blown away, his herds scattered, by
the act of God. This is being robbed of the savings of years by
organized, legalized swindlers, men who claimed to be our friends. It's
that--and my helplessness--that hurts."
The boys had remained without, talking in low, grave tones, Bud's
boisterous spirits suddenly quenched. Presently the sound of their
murmuring died away. There was no answer when Mrs. Graham called. Going
to the door she looked anxiously about her. From up the roadway to the
north came the sound of merry voices and the shuffle of many feet--the
battalion hurrying down the broad stone steps of Grant Hall and forming
for the march back to camp. The young "first captain" called them to
attention and gave the commands that swung them into column of platoons
and striding away under the leafy arch to the open plain. Oh, with
what pride had she not listened, night after night, from September to
mid-June, to Geordie's ringing, masterful tones, _her_ Geordie,
foremost officer of the Corps! And now all that was ended with the
graduation to which he had so long looked forward, and now, when but
half an hour ago he had so rejoiced in his assignment to the regiment
of his choice--now must come this cloud upon his young life, his and
blithe-hearted Bud, who so adored him. She knew well that his first act
would be to set aside a certain portion of his scanty pay for her use,
and for her own part she would not so have it.
But where were the boys, and why had they gone? It was some minutes
before Bud returned, alone.
"Where is Geordie?" she asked.
Bud dropped his cap on the hall table, looking dispirited and troubled.
"Gone to the hotel, mother--wants to see"--with a gulp--"McCrea--and
I'm of no use to anybody."
"You can be and will be," was the gentle answer, as the mother wound an
arm about and led him within. There in silence and semi-darkness they
sat awhile. The doctor had gone into his little library to look over
memoranda and accounts. It was nine o'clock when Geordie's quick,
soldierly step was heard on the walk without. He came bounding up and
in, alert, virile, and vigorous.
"You saw Mr. McCrea, Geordie?"
"Yes, mother. He's going to Newburg to catch the Pacific express on the
Central, and, mother--I'm going with him."
CHAPTER III
AWAY TO THE WEST
By the general regulations of the United States army there is granted
three months' leave of absence to graduated cadets of the Military
Academy, to be taken advantage of immediately after graduation. It is
given to these young men after their four years of rigorous discipline
and hard study, that they may have abundant time to visit home and
friends, and to enjoy a period of rest before reporting for duty again
to begin their careers as officers of the army.
For nearly two weeks since Graham's graduation day the mother had had
him for her very own, busying herself in the choice of his modest
outfit, and taking it not a little to heart that he declined to order
his uniform and equipment until, as he said, he knew where he was
going. She longed to see him in his "regimentals," yet shrank from it
as a reminder that all too soon he would be taken from her side to wear
it day after day with his comrades in arms. She could not think of that
parting to come late in September. She would think only of the glory
that was hers in having him here, having him now, with no bugle-call to
tear him from her side. She was just beginning to realize her
possession, her happiness, when that hateful telegram told of disaster
at the mines, and urged her husband to have a representative at the
spot. Within one hour of its receipt, George had come to say that he
would be that representative, and within two hours, with at least his
father's full consent, her dream was at an end and her boy was gone.
That night toward ten he and McCrea were spinning away up the west
shore under the lofty, rock-ribbed scarp of Crow Nest and Storm King,
to ferry over to Fishkill from Newburg, and there take the Pacific
express, making its first stop out of New York City. Each had hurriedly
packed such store of clothing as seemed most appropriate to the region
and the business to which he was bound. There was no vestige of uniform
or badge of rank and station. Geordie took with him his favorite rifle,
and in his valise, to be exhumed when they reached the Rockies, was a
revolver he knew, rather better than his classmates, how to use, for he
had learned as a lad on the plains. Each had his ticket for Chicago,
where they were to change for Denver. Each had a money belt and a
modest sum in currency. Each had his hopes of rescuing something if not
all of the imperilled property, and neither had even a vague idea of
the peril, difficulty, and treachery he was destined to encounter.
Everything had promised well when Silver Shield was first exploited.
Its promoters and agents showed high-grade ore, and reports of expert
mining engineers promised abundance of it. All that was needed was
development. "Come in now, on the ground-floor, and you'll be coining
money in a year's time," said Mr. Breifogle, and to the number of seven
the commissioned force at Fort Reynolds had "come." So long as they
remained close to the spot all seemed going well. But Graham had been
ordered to the Point, and the regiment over in the Oklahoma country.
Then came trouble.
It seemed odd that stock held so high should so soon have to be
assessed. But "some expensive machinery was necessary." Then came a
second and larger demand. Silver Shield was so valuable that envious
eyes had been directed to it, and fraudulent claims and claimants were
constantly turning up. Threatened litigation would be long and
expensive. It would be cheaper far to buy off the litigants. So Graham,
with a sigh and sore premonition of trouble, obtained the necessary
amount on his personal note. McCrea, with inward misgiving, borrowed
and sent it. Officers at Reno sent up what they could, but it wasn't
enough, and in May came a third appeal. The secretary wrote that
litigation had begun, and there was reason to believe the courts were
being "approached" by the enemy. It was absolutely essential that
"these parties should be bought off," and quite a sum would be
necessary. The First National Bank of Argenta (which had once been
robbed of a great sum by road-agents, who were run down and captured by
officers and men of the --th, and the money recovered) ought in all
conscience to be grateful to its benefactors, yet when Graham, McCrea,
and Major Lawrence wrote, begging advice in the premises, the bank was
non-committal. Some of its customers were among the litigants, as was
later discovered. And so it resulted that not until near the end of
June did it dawn upon the officers involved that the whole matter was
nothing more nor less than a well-conceived, but rascally, scheme to
"milk them dry," as was the expression, secure their shares at a
sacrifice, or drive them out entirely.
And they, the absentees, were only seven against seventy or more, who
were experienced in all the crafts and devices by which mines have been
dug at the expense of the many and then made to enrich the few.
It was late at night when the fellow-travellers reached Denver. McCrea
was depressed and silent, Geordie eager to push ahead. The former had
had time to think over the situation, and in Chicago, while waiting for
the Pacific express to start, he had had a fifteen-minute talk with a
relative, a Western business man, to whom mining and undermining were
matters well understood, and what this expert said had filled him with
dismay. "You've simply been bled until you could bleed no more," said
he. "Now they've no further use for you. What they want is your stock
at five cents on the dollar, to sell to some new gudgeon at fifty. Why
on earth, Mac, when you were considering this, didn't you consult me?"
Why, indeed! Like many another man, Mac's eyes had been blinded, his
ears deafened to everything but the wiles of the charmer. But with
Geordie it was different. He had come because his father was bound to
the wheel of duty and could not. Moreover, barring inexperience and
youth, Geordie was better fitted to go and do than was his father, the
doctor.
He would waste no time with agents. He would employ no lawyer--that was
simply waste of both time and money. Of the former they had little and
of the latter even less. But his brain was active and fertile. He had
slept but little on their swift westward way until after crossing the
Mississippi. His mother's grief at parting, and her speechless anxiety
as to the dangers that might beset him, had affected him deeply, and at
first his silence and preoccupation were due to that. But the fighting
blood of the Graeme was in his veins, and against the abominable wrong
these "sharks" would do his father and his scattered friends the young
fellow was bent on giving valiant battle; and he thought he saw his way
to strike and to strike hard.
McCrea had given him the names of most of the sergeants of the old
regiment who, when their time expired, had taken their discharge and
gone to the mines. Among them were three on whom he believed he could
count to back him in a pinch. Among them was the veteran Nolan, on whom
he _knew_ he could count.
McCrea had wired ahead to an old and trusted friend, a resident of
Denver and a successful railway engineer. He was at the station waiting
when the two alighted from their train. It was McCrea's plan to spend
one day in Denver in consultation with certain officials, and then to
spring a surprise on the "board" at Argenta two days later. He had
wired to Fort Reno on the way, urging that one officer, at least, of
those most interested should hasten to Denver and meet him, and in the
hands of Mr. Warden, their engineer friend, was the reply: Captain Lee
would be with them in the morning. To register at a prominent hotel
would simply advertise their coming. Warden had seen to that and
engaged quarters for them near his own. Thither they were to go at
once, and, valises in hand, they followed Warden's lead, McCrea and
their guide talking eagerly together, Geordie following, silent and
observant. Toward the iron gateway they pressed, jostled and elbowed by
hurrying passengers.
"It's but a few blocks' walk," Warden was saying. "I've a cart to take
your grips and we can chat as we go. I thought you'd be glad of a bite
or a cup of tea or something before turning in. Mr. Ross, who wired Dr.
Graham, is here, and he'll meet us at the restaurant. He thinks they
are following him--shadowing him."
"Who?" asked McCrea.
"Why, the crowd that are trying to get control there of Silver Shield.
Some of them live in Argenta, he says, and found out he had been in
correspondence with the doctor, and that it was he who had given
warning." Then, glancing over his shoulder as they neared the gate, and
speaking to Geordie, he continued, "What is the name of the brewer up
there who wanted your place at the Point for his son?"
"Breifogle."
"That's the man," answered Warden. "Ross says he's one of the leaders
of the move. Most of his money has been made by freezing out other
men."
And just at that moment, moving leisurely along in the rear of the
train-load of belated passengers, they reached the exit gate, and the
instant they came under the broad, blue-white glare of the electric
globe overhead there was a sudden stir in the little gathering along
the iron fence. A burly young man darted swiftly away, and in his haste
tripped backward over an empty baby carriage. In a second he was
floundering on the floor, his bowler hat rolling one way, his stick
flying another. A shrill voice began to berate him as he struggled to
his feet, but he paused neither to explain nor listen. He swooped for
his hat and shot for a dark passage, but not before Geordie had caught
a glimpse of his face.
"That was young Breifogle," said he.
CHAPTER IV
"I'M READY NOW"
There was no other train over the Transcontinental, westward, before
7.30 A.M. They had reached Denver by the Pacific express, and in five
minutes the sleeper in which the two had journeyed from Chicago would
be whirling swiftly away for "The Springs" before beginning the long,
tortuous climb over the huge bulwark between them and the watershed of
the great Colorado beyond. There had really been no reason why Graham
should stop over at Denver. He knew none of the officials of the Silver
Shield there resident. He did not wish to know them. They had doubtless
conspired with their associates at Argenta to "squeeze out" his father
and friends. They hoped and expected to buy in for a song the valuable
stock held by this scattered band of soldiers and some twenty or
thirty prospective victims in the distant East. This would give them a
controlling interest in the property. It would make them virtual owners
of a valuable mine. It would make them richer by far than they were
beforehand. This would impoverish, and it might ruin, many of the
absent who had furnished the means by which Silver Shield was
developed. It was robbery outright, but robbery of a kind so common in
our country that people have become callous to it. It was by just such
means and methods that many of the great fortunes of America have been
won, and the winners ride to-day on the topmost wave of prosperity and
popular acclaim, when, if the people but realized the truth, many an
object of their adulation would be wearing convict stripes and prison
pallor to the end of his dishonored days.
But Graham had journeyed with his long-time friend and senior
officer--senior by seven years--and McCrea's plans, to a certain point,
seemed to dominate those of the younger and less experienced man.
McCrea's idea was to "tackle" the local directors first and compel
recognition of their rights. He, as post quartermaster, had had
business dealings with bankers and merchants both in Denver and
Chicago. He believed that, reinforced by the presence of Captain Lee
from Reno, he could make a certain impression, or else certain threats,
that would bring these magnates to time.
But Dr. Graham, an older head, thought otherwise, had so instructed
Geordie and so endeavored to impress McCrea. The men, said he, had
planned this out. "They stand to lose little in the market if the
stocks are 'beared.' They have invested little; we have invested our
all. If nothing was found they could quit. If good ore was found, then
it was their game to conceal the fact, to demand more and more money
for more and more development, force us out, get our shares, and own
the property. Why, laddie, the man that warned me dared not sign his
name, for every wire was watched; yet I'd stake six months' pay he's
got the rights of it. There's ore there in plenty!"
And so every indication said at the start. It wasn't until many Eastern
people had been induced to invest (Dr. Graham's New York friends, the
Fraziers, among them) that managers and directors began to tell dismal
tales and ask for more and more. It was then that Dr. Graham bethought
him of a brother Scot who dwelt near Argenta, a man once so poor that
when his bairns were down with diphtheria he could not coax Argenta
doctors out across the five-mile stretch of storm-swept, frozen
prairie. It was the burly post surgeon from the fort who rode eight
miles to and eight miles back in any kind of weather, night or day,
until he snatched those babies back from death, and gave them, weak and
gasping, yet alive, to the arms of their weeping and imploring and at
last rejoicing mother. Oh, those are deeds that women remember so long
as life remains to them, and that but few men forget, and the clansman,
who couldn't begin to pay in cash for what "the Graeme" had done for
him and his, could reward in fealty now. It was Donald Ross to whom the
doctor had written, and Ross who made investigation and reply.
And yet, though he had taken precaution to send his letter from a
village post-office, and his message from a railway station ten miles
east of Argenta, the spies of Silver Shield had heard of one or both,
and now their watcher knew that two at least of the enemy were in their
camp. For what else was young Breifogle there? For what but to give
warning had he so suddenly vanished?
It was of all this that Geordie was thinking, as silently he strode
along by the side of the two elders, hearing yet scarcely heeding their
eager talk. He had plans and projects of his own. Father was not the
only one who had a friend or two in Yampah and up the range. Veteran
troopers of the old regiment were scouting there for gold and silver,
where ten years earlier they had scouted for the red warriors of
Colorow and Yampah Jack. If he could but get in touch with Nolan, with
Feeny, with almost any one of those now mining who once rode in "E"
Troop! If he could only reach some of the men he guided over the
Divide to the successful capture of the gang that looted the First
National! Oh, the shame of Breifogle's ingratitude! As one of the
bank's directors at that time, he had pledged everlasting gratitude to
the officers and troopers who had restored their treasure.
Suddenly Warden turned a corner, pushed back a swinging door, led the
way into a clean, brightly lighted little "dairy" restaurant, passed on
through to the less public tables partitioned off in alcoves of their
own, and here, behind an outspread newspaper, sat, lonely and
expectant, a broad-shouldered ranchman whose weather-beaten face beamed
joyously at sight of the three, and whose big hands were on young
Graham's squared shoulders before they had fairly shaken greeting to
any one. "Geordie, mon, but it's glad I am to see ye!" was the
whispered welcome. "Softly, now, there's--others here."
Quickly they were served with steaks, scrambled eggs, toast, tea or
coffee, as they chose, and two at least were hungry, yet Geordie,
brimful of eagerness to put his plan into execution, could hardly
spare time to eat. Yes, Ross knew Nolan and Feeny of old. Many's the
time they'd dropped in at the ranch when antelope-stalking down the
foot-hills. Nolan had prospered. He and Feeny, both, when last heard of
were somewhere up among the mines. Burns was in Collins's Camp on Lance
Creek. Toomey and Scully had got "cleaned out" and were firing on the
Transcontinental.
"Where?" demanded Geordie, his eyes dilating.
"Mountain Division, both of 'em. Toomey on the Mogul that pulls the
Time Freight over the range--" And here Geordie stopped him.
"Hear this, Mr. McCrea," said he. "Toomey, of 'E' Troop, fireman on the
big freight-engine! He'll surely know where the others are. Now, _you_
know the railway people. You say you've got to stay here a day or two.
Get _me_ permission to ride on any freight-engine, Mountain Division,
for the next three days, and I'm off for the mines before we're half a
day older, and no man here or there the wiser."
"They'd spot you as you went through Argenta," said McCrea. "Breifogle
will be watching every train."
"Every _car_ of every train, perhaps; but I'll be firing by the time we
get there, black with soot and coal-dust, and they wouldn't know me if
they saw me. If the division superintendent doesn't give it away--and
you--who's to know I've turned fireman on a freight? There's my chance,
McCrea, and you know it!"
"By Jove, Geordie, but I believe you're right," was McCrea's answer,
rising to his feet and facing the eager young fellow across the table.
"You're a 'dandy,' as was said of you on graduation day, only it was
meant in a different sense. Who's in charge at the station now,
Warden?" he asked, with sudden resolution. "I knew most of their
traffic men when I was quartermaster."
Warden whipped out a railway folder. "Colorado Transcontinental," he
read, and began skimming down a long list of official titles and names.
Traffic managers, freight and passenger agents, superintendents,
division superintendents, and then, "Here we are, Mountain Division:
W.B. Anthony."
"Know him well," cried McCrea. "He brought the first passengers up to
Argenta in eighty-seven. He was freight conductor on the U.P. when I
was a boy at Cheyenne. We'll nab him first thing in the morning."
"Can't we nab him to-night?" asked Geordie.
McCrea laughed. "You're keen as your father, Pops," said he. "Niver put
off till t'-morrow what can be done the day."
"The laddie's right," said Ross. "I'm betting you'll find him at the
yards till after No. 2 comes in--the Flyer--that's due at 12.40."
And so it happened that, as the clocks were pointing to the quarter
after midnight, Lieutenant Ralph McCrea and the newly appointed
subaltern, both in plain travelling dress, once more appeared at the
Union Station, and presently learned that Mr. Anthony was about the
yard. It was not long thereafter that they found him, busy, as such men
must ever be, yet recognizing McCrea at a glance and giving him
cordial welcome.
But when McCrea presented his friend, "Lieutenant Graham, whose father
you probably knew as post surgeon at Reynolds," and then made his
request, the official looked grave.
"It's against orders," said he. "The Old Man has jacked up more than
one of the best engineers for allowing it. Why, the Governor had to get
a permit from the general manager for his son to ride in the cab of the
Flyer only last week, and for some reason they've shut down on our
freight people entirely. Gil Frost, bringing his own brother, who used
to fire on the Union Pacific, over on old 550 two weeks ago, had to
dance the carpet the next morning right here in Denver."
"How do you break in your _new_ firemen?" asked Geordie. "Some of our
best men are firing for you now. They had to begin somehow, I suppose."
"Pitch 'em neck and crop into a cab, with a short-handled shovel and a
sharp-tongued old hand. It nigh breaks their backs, but they learn
quick that way."
"Well, pitch me, neck and crop, into a cab, with as short a handle and
sharp a tongue as you like, Mr. Anthony. I'm on three months' leave,
and for reasons of my own want to learn how to fire an engine."
For a moment Anthony looked at the young fellow in amaze. Then the
resolute, square-jawed, clean-cut face began to impress him.
"Well, I've been dealing with you army men out here nigh onto twenty
years," said he, "and I'm blessed if I ever heard the like of that."
"Don't let it surprise you into telling it, Anthony, that's all," put
in McCrea. "Here! Let me give you a pointer--you've got a West Pointer.
I've known you for a square man ever since we were stationed at
Russell," and, linking his arm in that of the astonished official,
McCrea drew him a few paces away from the point where they found him,
with a great passenger-engine hissing and throbbing close at hand,
waiting to take the Flyer whirling eastward toward the Missouri.
Geordie stood silently and watched them. He saw the wonderment in
Anthony's strong face give way to interest as McCrea talked rapidly on;
saw interest deepen to sympathy and a certain excitement. In three
minutes Anthony broke away and came hurrying back, looking at his
watch.
"Mr. Graham," said he, "d' you want to go up the line this very night?
Could you be ready in two hours?"
"I'm ready now," was the instant reply. "All I want is an old cap and
overalls--the blacker the better."
CHAPTER V
FIRST NIGHT ON THE RANGE
Away up among the Rockies, with towering, pine-fringed, snow-sprinkled
crests looming dimly about them in the moonlight, two young men stood
waiting by a switch-target of the Transcontinental. Facing westward,
they could see the huge bulk of the mountain range rolling up between
them and the starry sky-line, black and forbidding in the middle
distance, yet fading away northward and southward into faint and tender
outlines--soft grays and violets--and with the earliest signals in the
East of the speedy coming of the long summer's day. Facing eastward,
there confronted them close at hand the huge black bulk of the mammoth
Mogul engine, its dazzling head-light shining afar up the westward
right of way, and throwing into heavier shade, by force of contrast,
every object outside its beams. In the solemn stillness of nature in
those high levels, almost the only sound was the soft hiss of escaping
steam from the cylinder-cocks or an occasional rumble from the boiler.
Even murmured words seemed audible and intelligible sixty feet away,
and twice big Ben Tillson, the engineer of 705, had pricked up his ears
as he circled about his giant steed, oiling the grimy joints, elbows,
and bearings, and pondering in his heavy, methodical way over certain
parting instructions that had come to him from the lips of the division
superintendent. "A young feller learning firing" would board him at
Chimney Switch, forty miles out from the Springs, and the Boss desired
Ben Tillson to understand that "The Road" had its reasons, and the
"young feller" was to be spared the customary quizzing. Furthermore,
Ben Tillson was to understand that nothing was to be said about it. If
anybody at Argenta or among the mines had any questions to ask, Ben was
to know next to nothing.
But what set Ben's wits to work was the odd behavior of his fireman,
Jim Toomey. Toomey was a silent sort of chap as a rule, and surely,
too, with a grudge against the gang over in Hatch's Cove and up the
Run. Toomey had taken to firing because he had got cleaned out at the
mines. Toomey ordinarily wasn't over-civil to anybody. Toomey, too, had
been favored with a word from Mr. Anthony, and never had Big Ben seen
his fireman more cheery over his work than he was that night as they
panted and strained up the foot-hills to Chimney Switch. Ben could have
sworn Toomey was "excited like" when they side-tracked there for a
way-train, and never in the course of Big Ben's experience had he seen
an old fireman greet a would-be as Toomey welcomed the tall "young
feller" in the dirty cap, shirt, and overalls who there clambered into
the cab. Twice, Ben could have further sworn, he had heard Toomey say
"sir," a word Toomey used to no one less than the division
superintendent.
Somewhat grudgingly and suspiciously, therefore, had Ben nodded
greeting and looked the "young feller" over. He did not extend his
hand. The new-comer had on a pair of oiled-buck gauntlets, "soldier
gauntlets," such as the cavalry used to have at Reynolds, that "all the
boys in the cabs are stuck on." Even at the hardest kind of shovelling
they outlived every other kind a dozen weeks, and the fireman was a
lucky malefactor who could induce a soldier to part with his.
And though the "young feller's" cap and clothing were strictly and
unimpeachably professional and grimy, it was the face no less than the
gloves and boots that told Ben Tillson this was no needy seeker after a
job. The boots were new and fine, laced daintily up the front, and
showed their style even through the lack of polish and the coating of
dust and ashes. The gauntlets also, though worn and old, were innocent
of grease. This was no cub fireman, said Ben, resentfully, as he
revolved in mind a scheme or two that should take the stuffing of
conceit out of him, when suddenly he paused. "Why, certainly," Ben had
it, just another case such as he had been reading about, how the sons
of successful railway magnates, discarding wealth and luxuries, had
determined to learn the business from the bottom up and fit themselves
for future eminence in railway circles. The "young feller" must be a
Gould or a Vanderbilt, a Ledyard, a Huntington, a son of somebody at
the financial head of things. While sacrificing none of his steady
self-reliance or self-respect, Ben Tillson decided to treat his new
fireman, assistant to the old, with all due civility. He would cringe
or kowtow to no one, but, like the sturdy citizen he was, Ben deemed it
wise to keep on the good side of the powers. It was necessary, however,
that the new-comer should understand who was boss on that engine, and
even as they stood waiting at the Chimney Ben had taken occasion to
say, "I see you're not stuck on shovelling, young man"; then with a
most knowing and suggestive wink, "I reckon you'd rather do tennis or
tiddlywinks," and was surprised at the answer.
"As matters stand, I'd rather be shovelling here than playing
tennis--anywhere."
"It's the first time you ever saw the West from a cab-window, I'm
betting," said Ben. And George Graham, who had seen more of the West
than Ben could ever hope to see, and who knew the Silver Run country
before ever the railway reached the foot-hills, had the wisdom to
answer, "You'd win."
And now at Buffalo Butte 705 was side-tracked, awaiting the coming of
passenger No. 4, east bound, and then--then there would be a clear run
to and through Argenta. Then would come the familiar scenes about old
Fort Reynolds; then the wild and picturesque beauty of Squaw Cañon and
Hatch's Cove, and then George Graham would be able to judge by surface
indications how far his disguise had really disguised him. Toomey had
already told him where Nolan and Feeny could be found. Toomey was to
send word or a letter to both of them, and then it would be time to
decide on the next move.
For now the scheme was to reach the heart of what might be called the
enemy's country, and to get there unsuspected, unobserved, and thus far
all was working well.
It was the second morning after his reaching Denver. Mr. Anthony had
put him through to the Springs, and then to Chimney Switch, where he
was to wait for 705 and Toomey. And even now as they stood there, he
and Toomey, exchanging at intervals some low-toned words at the switch,
the eastward skies were slowly taking on their early morning garb of
pink and violet, the eastward fronts of the snow-sifted peaks and domes
far to the north and south were lighting up with wondrous hues of gold
and crimson; the stars aloft were paling and the moon was sinking low,
and still big 705 stood hissing and grumbling placidly on the long
siding, and the green lights back at the caboose blinked sleepily
against the dawn. Two glimmering threads of light in rigid right lines,
converging far beyond the rear of the train, stretched eastward from
their feet until lost in the shadows of Buffalo Butte, and not yet had
Toomey's accustomed ear been able to detect the faint, whirring, song
of the rails that tells of the coming of far-distant, thundering
wheels. "She's late again," said Toomey, uneasily. "We should have
heard her whistling for Spearman's Ranch five minutes ago, and I wanted
to pull you out of Argenta before seven o'clock."
"You still think I'm not grimy enough," said Geordie, with a grin. "I
can lay on a coat of coal-dust--"
"'Tisn't that," came the murmured answer, with a shake of the head.
"It's the back and shoulders, sir. You couldn't turn yourself
hindside-foremost, could you, and get your chest between your
shoulder-blades?"
"I can cultivate a stoop," said Geordie, with a forward hunch of the
shoulders. "But there you go with that 'sir' again. We're in uniform,
but not that of the cavalry. You'll betray me yet, Toomey, if you're
not careful. Now, about the stoop--"
"It might do, s--, if you could keep it, but from the time you came to
Reynolds you were the straightest boy in the garrison, and now, with
four years at West Point, you've got a back on you flat as a board.
That's what's going to queer us in passing you off for a kid fireman.
It was hard enough going through before it was fairly light. Now,
unless No. 4 gets in in five minutes, the sun will be lighting the
length of the shed at Argenta, and we've got cars to cut out there,
too. Confound No. 4!"
And then a certain superfluous lantern, bleary with a night of service,
came dawdling up the side of the train, and the conductor hove in
sight, watch in hand. "Four left Argenta on time," said he to the
engineer. "What the mischief keeps her? She ought to have gone by five
minutes ago. Who's yonder with Toomey?"
"Friend of his; young feller from Chimney, learning firing. Old man's
orders," he added, at sight of rebuke in the conductor's eyes. "Told me
himself to take him along and give him a show."
The conductor set his lantern down near the fore truck of the tender.
He did not half like it that a superior should give orders to his
engineer that did not come through him. He had been a soldier in his
day and accustomed to military ways of doing things. He was already
chafing over a delay that would bring him behind time to Argenta. Now
he was nettled at this apparent slight. "When did he tell you, and
where?" was the demand. "He was at Denver the last I saw of him."
"He ran out to the Springs on No. 5; passed you at Monument, probably;
spoke to me at the round-house about ten o'clock." And having thus
summarily settled the matter, Big Ben clambered sulkily once more into
the cab.
The conductor made a grimace expressive of much disgust. Presently he
turned, left his lantern by the side of the engine, and then came
angering on to the switch. He decided to see for himself what the
stranger was like.
In the gray light of the dawn the two young men, one of them stockily,
strongly built, the other very slender and erect, were absorbed in
eager talk. Not until the conductor was within five yards of them did
Graham note his coming and signal "Hush." Abruptly came the challenge:
"'Ain't you heard her whistle yet, Toomey?" and the tone implied that
sheer neglect could be the only explanation for Toomey's failure in
case no whistle had been heard.
"Nary whistle," was the indifferent answer.
"Well, how could you expect to hear it? You were talking a blue
streak." And while the conductor's rebuke was levelled at Toomey, his
sombre eyes were on Graham.
"Doing that to keep awake," was the blunt reply. "Haven't been to bed
for thirty hours."
"That's nothing. In my day a-soldiering we didn't get to bed once a
week. That's when we was after Morgan. You regulars couldn't stand
that, I s'pose."
"In my day we didn't get to bed once a month," answered Toomey, with
equal truth. "That was when we was after Sittin' Bull. The volunteers
that started on _that_ chase petered out at Powder River."
The conductor sniffed. It had been give and take 'twixt him and Toomey
ever since the discovery that each had served in the cavalry. Beaten
thus far in the battle of chaff, the conductor tried another as he
studied Geordie with unfriendly eyes.
"Got a kid fireman here--'nother of y'r officers' dog-robbers?" he
demanded.
Toomey whirled on him in an instant, in spite of Geordie's
quick-gripping hand. "You're boss on this train, Cullin," said he,
savagely, "and you know I can't jaw back as you deserve, but if Bob
Anthony happens to be where he can hear of _that_ remark, you'll get
your time or _I'm_ a liar."
For a moment Cullin stood and glared, wrath and humiliation
commingling. Graham it was who quickly stepped forward and interposed.
"Yes, I'm playing kid fireman, Mr. Cullin," said he, quietly, "and I
was told by the division superintendent if any trouble arose to give
this to the conductor," whereat he held forth a card on the back of
which dimly appeared some written words. Over these Cullin glanced,
unappeased, until he came to the last line and signature. Then a
curious change swept slowly over his face. He looked Graham carefully,
doubtfully from head to foot, slowly thrust the card in a
waistcoat-pocket, and was turning silently away when Geordie hailed
him, a ready smile on his young face.
"I'll trouble you for the card," said he. "I may meet _other_
conductors."
Slowly Cullin fumbled for it, twiddled it between his fingers, and
finally, half reluctant, restored it. At that instant, faint, distant,
but distinct, came the sound of the whistle of the belated No. 4.
"That's for Spearman's now," thought Geordie, but so tense had been the
scene that for a moment no man spoke.
Then Toomey gave tongue.
"She'll go by here kiting," said he. "Ten miles down-grade and a
two-mile straightaway from Cimarron Bend, out yonder." Again the
whistle, and nearer. "That's for the crossing at the creek. By gad,
she's just jumping! Hang onto your hair when you see her head-light and
scramble for the cab."
Another whistle, two short blasts and a long. Nearer still, yet still
out of sight; and then presently there shot into view, over a mile
away to the west, even though the gray light of the summer's dawn now
overspread the landscape, the glare of a head-light. It was No. 4
coming full tilt.
And then--surprise! From steam-drum and 'scape-valve jetted clouds of
flat-driven steam. No. 4 had suddenly "shut off," and was now coasting
downhill like a huge toboggan.
Another blast came from the whistle. "By Jove, she's going to stop!"
said Cullin. "What on earth's the meaning of that?"
With prodigious shriek and roar of steam, with clinching, crunching
air-brakes on the glistening tires, with sparks flying from the
whirring wheels and signal-lanterns swinging at the side, No. 4 came
rushing in. As the baggage-car shot by, a little group of men stood by
the doorway about a recumbent figure, and the conductor whisked up his
lantern and started after it. When nearly opposite the caboose the big
train settled to a stop. Four pairs of strong arms lifted the prostrate
figure from one car to the other. There were brief, hurried words. A
lantern waved; the whistle sounded two quick blasts; No. 4 slowly
started, quickly gained speed, and, almost as quickly as it came, was
steaming away for Buffalo Butte, its pale lamps gleaming dimly in the
gathering light. The conductor came running forward.
"Pull out for Argenta, Ben!" he shouted. "Say, young feller, drop
shovelling and come back. I've got nobody to help me, and here No. 4's
loaded me with a half-dead man to be taken home. There's a row at the
mines. Every man is out from Silver Shield!"
CHAPTER VI
FIRST AID TO THE WOUNDED
Slowly, jerkily, the Time Freight began to gather headway as the big
Mogul pulled, hissing loudly, from the siding to the main track, the
ugly brown cars winding grudgingly after. This was before the days of
mile-long freight-trains with air-brakes and patent couplers. Over the
grades of the Transcontinental no engine yet had pulled more than
twenty "empties." There was ever the danger of breaking in two. In the
dim interior of the caboose the conductor, with Geordie Graham by his
side, was bending over a battered and dishevelled form. As the rear
trucks went clicking over the switch-points, the former sprang to the
open doorway to see that his brakeman reset and locked the switch, and
with a swift run overtook the caboose and swung himself aboard.
"I'll be up in a minute, Andy," cried Cullin to his aid, already
scrambling up the iron ladder for his station on the roof. "This poor
devil's battered into pulp and I can't leave him." And again he was by
Graham's side--Graham who, kneeling now and sponging with cold water
the bruised, hacked, disfigured face of the senseless victim, had made
a startling discovery.
Here, with his clothing ripped, torn, and covered with dirt and blood,
with one arm obviously broken and his head beaten, kicked, and cruelly
gashed--here, beyond a doubt, lay the man who nearly five years earlier
had been the one obstacle between him and the goal of his ambition, the
cadetship at West Point; here lay the son of the man probably most
prominent in the conspiracy against the absent shareholders of Silver
Shield; here, in fine, lay the almost lifeless body of the youth he had
seen spying upon their arrival at Denver--young Breifogle himself.
By this time the Mogul was grinding her way up the track, in determined
effort to land the Time Freight in the yards at Argenta before the
whistle blew for seven o'clock. It was a twelve-mile pull up-grade,
every inch of the way--twisting, turning, and tunnelling, as has been
said--and the caboose reeled and swayed from side to side as it rounded
the reverse curves and swung at the tail of the train. Cullin, lantern
in hand, had climbed to his seat in the lookout.
"I've got to be up here," he explained, "till we are through the
tunnels. Do what you can. I suppose sponging is all we _can_ do."
Graham nodded. He had stripped the leather-covered cushion from the
conductor's chair, and with this and a rolled coat made a support for
the senseless head. He had a fire-bucket of cold water, and even as he
plied the wet sponge and sought to stanch the trickling blood, his wits
were at work. The men on No. 4 had only time to say that four miles out
from Argenta, down the Run beyond Narrow Gauge Junction, their whistle
suddenly shrieked, the air-brakes were set with a clamp that jolted the
whole train, and they slowed down just enough not to knock into
flinders a hand-car that was sailing ahead of them, down-grade. "The
pilot hit it a lick that tossed it into the ditch," No. 4's crew had
explained, and beside it they had found--this.
And "this" it was now Geordie's task and duty to keep alive until they
could turn it over to competent hands at Argenta. "This," which others
failed to know, he had recognized. "This" it was for him to make known,
yet in so doing he might betray himself and the purpose of his coming,
and so undo every hope and plan he had made. There was no Toomey to
help him now--no devoted ex-trooper and friend to back him. Engineer,
fireman, conductor, and brakemen, every man of the crew had to be at
his post as the freight panted away up the winding mountain road. The
crew of No. 4 had searched the pockets in vain for a clew as to the
injured man's identity. Everything was gone. His assailants had seen to
that. Not a scrap had been found that could account for him. Even the
shirt "tab" bore no initials; the watch-pocket of the trousers bore no
name. The garments had been purchased ready-made and gave no sign.
Then there was another matter to be considered. Badly as he was
battered and bruised, the man was not dying. Graham knew how to test
the pulse, and its strength told him not to fear. The chances were that
his patient would return to consciousness before very long. Then
recognition of his grimy attendant would probably follow. Breifogle was
no fool, as Graham remembered, and a fireman's black cap and sooty
shirt and overalls would be but scant disguise.
And to carry out his plan it was essential that he should pass through
Argenta, reach Hatch's Cove and eventually the Silver Shield mine, and
reach this latter unknown and unsuspected. Toomey and he had hit on a
plan--once Toomey could succeed in getting word to Nolan. But that,
reasoned Geordie, might be impossible now in view of this new
complication--serious trouble at the mines, and "every man out at
Silver Shield."
If only he could see Toomey again for a moment! That was impossible.
Toomey's every muscle was needed to keep that fiery and insatiable
monster fed with fuel every rod of the way to Argenta. There was no
intermediate stop. There could be no signals--no sending of a message.
Half the distance had they gone, panting and straining, barely fifteen
miles to the hour. Broad daylight, and then the rejoicing sunshine, had
come to cheer and gladden and revive, and Cullin shouted inquiry, as he
bent down from his perch, and Graham nodded or shook his head by way of
reply. Swiftly and scientifically he kept up the play of the sponges;
shook his head to Cullin's suggestion of a little more whiskey--the
frontier's "first aid" for every kind of mishap. The pulse said there
was no further need of it, at the moment at least. And then, as they
rumbled over some resounding bridge-work and crossed the swift and
foaming Run, the train crept under the shadow of the cliff and
stretched away over a bit of open, undulating grassland, and then the
racket ceased for a while and it was possible, by bending down, to
catch the patient's breathing.
And it gave Geordie an idea.
The poor, bruised head was turning in restless pain; the puffed and
swollen lips were moving; the still unconscious man was muttering. Not
a word could Geordie distinguish. It was all guesswork. But, glancing
up at Cullin, he called: "He's trying to talk. Perhaps I can get his
name," and again inclined his ear and bent down over the luckless
fellow's face. "Yes," he said, loudly, so that Cullin could hear--"yes,
I understand.... Don't worry.... You're with friends.... Tell us your
name and home.... What? Try once again.... Bry--what? Oh, Breifogle?...
Yes. Argenta? That's just where we're going. We'll be there very soon.
Don't try to talk more now." And again the sponge was busily plied, and
then the grimy nurse glanced upward at Cullin, now shinning down from
his perch in the skylight. "His home's right ahead at Argenta.
Breifogle's the name."
"Breifogle!" shouted Cullin, aghast. "Why, that's the big brewer,
banker, mine-owner, and Lord knows what all--that owns half of Yampah
County and wants to own the rest. Could he tell who slugged him? Does
he know anything about it? Ask him."
Obediently Geordie put the question, but no answer came. "Seems to have
wandered off," he said. "Perhaps we'd be wise to worry him with no more
questions. If he's what you say, they'll be looking everywhere for him.
When did the men at Silver Shield go out?"
"Yesterday morning at ten o'clock, so they said on No. 4. There was a
pack of 'em come down to Argenta to get to the owners, they said. By
gad, they seem to have got _at_ one of 'em!"
A moan from the sufferer was the only answer. Graham shook his head.
"How soon can you make it?" he asked. "The sooner this man's in expert
hands the better 'twill be."
"Twelve minutes," said Cullin, with a snap of his silver watch-lid.
"_You_ seem no slouch of a handler yourself. Where'd you learn?"
"I lived with a doctor awhile," was the quiet answer. "He had to patch
men up occasionally." And Geordie could barely suppress the grin that
twitched the corners of his mouth. How strangely already his adventure
was faring! "I suppose after hammering him senseless they set him
adrift on that hand-car, hoping it would finish him and hide their
crime," he hazarded.
"Looks like it," was Cullin's short answer as once more he climbed to
his station.
Ten minutes later they were slowly trundling in among a maze of tracks
and sidings, with long trains of gondolas, coal-cars, and dingy-brown
freight-boxes on both sides. Cullin was shouting to invisible
switchmen, and presently the train came bumping to a stand. Another
minute and two or three early birds among the yardmen were climbing
aboard and curiously, excitedly, peering over Geordie's head. He never
looked up. Calmly he continued his sponging. Then Cullin's voice was
heard again. A stretcher was thrust in at the rear door. Three or four
men, roughly dressed, but with sorrow and sympathy in their careworn
faces, bent over the prostrate body. They seemed to look to Graham
for instructions.
[Illustration: "BIG BEN WAS BUSY WITH HIS OIL-CAN"]
"You know where to take him?" he asked. "All right, then, I'll leave
him with you." And before the station-master or other official could
come, Graham had seen his patient transferred to the stretcher, borne
forth into the sunshine and away to the passenger-room. Then, slipping
from the left rear steps, with the train between him and the building,
Geordie sauntered, softly whistling, up to the front again, and in five
minutes was helping Toomey at the cab.
It was not yet seven. Big Ben was busy with his oil-can. Three cars had
been cut out from the train and run to a platform close at hand. It was
high time they were off again, but the conductor was held in the
office, whither he had gone for orders, as well as to report concerning
their unsought passenger. Toomey was still angered against Cullin,
between whom and himself there was ever more or less friction, but
Geordie had begun to take a fancy to him. Cullin would never have said
what he did had he known the identity of Toomey's pupil, and Geordie
argued that Cullin's gruff and insolent greeting was in reality a
tribute to his powers--a recognition of the fact that he looked the
part he was trying to play.
With so very much at stake depending on Graham's remaining
unrecognized, with old Fort Reynolds only six miles ahead, and Silver
Shield only twenty-six farther, it would be foolish to become involved
in a squabble. But Toomey had been nursing his wrath. Big Ben was not
too fond of Cullin, and Geordie found that they were quite bent on
making trouble at first opportunity. In spite of the early hour an air
of excitement pervaded the station. Many men were idling about the
passenger platform, and here and there little groups could be seen in
muttered conversation. There was no laughter, no light-hearted chaff.
It was noted by both men in the cab, before Geordie rejoined them, that
as the injured man was borne on his stretcher across the yard into the
passenger station, these groups seemed rather to edge away instead of
crowding about in morbid curiosity.
No need to ask who or what they were. The pallor of the faces, so
startling in contrast to the healthy tan of the ranch folk or the
swarthy grime of the railway men--the mud-splashed boots and trousers
told their tale. They were miners to a man, and miners in ugly mood.
"The town's been full of 'em since noon yesterday," said a yardman to
Ben, in answer to his question. "They are here to see the Silver Shield
officers, and have been told they'd be up from Denver on No. 3. They
chased old Breifogle out of his office yesterday afternoon, and he's
been hiding ever since. Young Breifogle has been missing ever since
yesterday noon."
"That's him on the stretcher," said Big Ben, gloomily, for the news was
already flying round. "Cullin says he's about done for. This young
feller in here took care of him all the way up from Buffalo Butte. No.
4 picked him up down the gulch and put him aboard us there."
A long whistle was the only comment. At the first words spoken by the
yardman, a quick glance passed between the two young men on the
opposite, the fireman's, side of the cab. They could not see the
speaker, but they knew the voice. It was that of a former trooper of
the --th, another soldier who had sought to treble his savings at the
mines and had lost them all; then, too proud to return and "take on"
again, had found starvation-wages at Argenta.
"Stay here," whispered Toomey, "and keep sittin'." Then, wiping his
hands on a wad of waste, and with an affable grin on his face, he swung
over behind Ben and leaned out of the cab.
"Hullo, Scotty! Any of our fellers in that outfit?"
"Hullo, Toomey! None of 'em with _that_ gang, but there's three of 'em
came, and old Nolan's head of the whole caboodle. He's their cap' and
spokesman."
"Nolan! Nolan here?" cried Toomey, in great excitement, while Geordie
felt his heart beating hard.
"Nolan, as big as life and twice as wicked."
CHAPTER VII
A BALKED ARREST
For a moment Graham's spirits sank like lead. Nolan, the stanch old
soldier who had been his foremost trooper friend and guide, was the man
of all others on whom he pinned his faith, on whose help he had relied,
and upon whose loyalty and devotion he was ready to stake his every
hope of success. And now--so said this former soldier and comrade--now
Nolan was here in Argenta, instead of up at the mines, here with a mob
of strikers, their leader and spokesman, chief of the crew, possibly,
that had nearly done to death the son of one of the principal directors
of Silver Shield.
That Breifogle was his father's enemy, and a leading spirit in the plot
to rob him, Geordie Graham knew full well. That Breifogle the younger
had been sent to Denver to watch for the coming of Dr. Graham, McCrea,
or others of the officers, all of whom he knew by sight and name, there
was every reason to believe; but that Nolan should take part in or
countenance the mobbing of the Breifogles, or any others of the
mine-owners, was abhorrent, if not impossible.
Now for the moment Geordie longed for the presence of McCrea, who had
remained in Denver in hopes of bringing local officials to their senses
and his terms. And McCrea, for his part, was at the same moment wishing
to Heaven he had followed Geordie's lead and pushed ahead for the field
of battle. The Denverite members of the board, warned of his presence,
had easily managed to elude him, and with others were now on their way
to Argenta for a special meeting, while McCrea was still held at a
distance, lured by an appointment for a conference to come off that
very morning at eleven, long three hours after the other conferees had
vanished from town.
But no older head was there to advise. Graham alone, representing the
aggrieved shareholders, was at the scene of action. He could take
counsel with no man on the ground. Win or lose he must decide and act
for himself. Here he sat in the cab of the Mogul, impatient only five
minutes back to push ahead for the mines, to get away without
recognition. Now it might well be that the point at which to act was
right here in town.
"The mine is being operated at heavy expense and loss," had been the
latest wail from the secretary. "There is not ore enough in sight to
begin to pay the wages of the men. Yet every test convinces us that
abundant results must follow further development." Another assessment,
therefore, on top of all previous levies, had been the imperative
demand. Geordie did not know it, but that pound was the last that broke
the hold of three. They had sold their stock for what it would bring,
and Breifogle and his clique were laughing in their sleeves. They knew
there was ore in abundance, both in sight and touch. Geordie and McCrea
believed it, and believed that if the one could establish the fact,
and the other could bring the directors to book with proof of foul
measures to squeeze out the small shareholders, victory would be in
their hands.
But what was to be done now? By this time the fact that young Breifogle
had been fearfully beaten must be known to every man about the station,
and was swiftly racing to the opening doors of every shop, office, and
homestead in town. By this act the miners had destroyed every hope of
sympathy, or even, possibly, of justice. Whatever their grievance it
could not warrant murder. But what _was_ their grievance? What could
have precipitated trouble at the mines and a wholesale walkout at
Silver Shield? What could have brought the miners, nearly a hundred
strong, here to Argenta, with Nolan at their head--Nolan, who had been
the company's faithful servant, the best manager of men, the most
level-headed and reliable "boss" at the Silver Shield?
Toomey's friend had hurried away, for sound of increasing excitement
came from the groups, now merging into one, about the telegraph
office. Big Ben swung himself out of the cab once more, and with arms
akimbo stood watching the distant gathering, wishing Cullin would come
with orders or else with explanation of the delay. This left Graham and
Toomey alone in the cab, and Toomey's first question was, "What can you
do now, sir?"
"Find Nolan," was the brief answer, "and get to the bottom of this."
"Orders may come any minute," said Toomey, looking anxiously over his
shoulder. "We'll have to pull out and go ahead. You couldn't--stay here
at Argenta, could you?"
"I may _have_ to. Here's Cullin now."
"But no orders," said Toomey, with a gasp of relief, for from far over
the tracks, catching sight of his watchful engineer, Cullin had waved
his hand, palm towards them, twice to and fro, a gesture so like the
Indian sign "No go" that Geordie knew its meaning at a glance. Silently
they awaited his coming and listened, breathless, for his tidings when
he came.
"What's the row about?" asked Ben, as Cullin reached them, breathing
hard.
"Why, about their boss, it seems. The company gave him the bounce
yesterday, and ordered him off the premises. He demanded fair play and
a hearing, and then young Breifogle, who had gone up with the order for
his discharge, began abusing him. Nolan--that's the man's name--called
him down, and then Breifogle broke loose and cursed him, called him
traitor and all manner of names, and ordered some of his men to throw
him out. They did it, too, and brought on a fight. Breifogle and his
friends were armed and the men were not. They shot two miners, arrested
the 'ringleaders,' as they called 'em, and locked 'em up. Then the men
quit the mine and laid for Breifogle when he tried to get out. He hired
a rig and drove t'other way, out to Miners' Joy, slid out on the Narrow
Gauge last night, and there was a dozen of 'em headed him off down at
the Junction. Nolan and his crowd had come down here to see the
directors and get their rights. Of course some of them did it, and
there you are!"
"Where's Nolan now?" asked Toomey.
"Where _is_ he? Over at the company's office waiting for the directors,
when he ought to be making tracks for Mexico."
Graham's heart had been beating harder with every word. It bounded with
wrath as he listened to this, yet listened in silence and stern
self-control. But Toomey got a dig in the ribs that plainly said, "Make
him say why."
"'Twouldn't be like Long Nolan to be skipping when he's needed by his
friends," growled Toomey. "He's no quitter, if he _was_ at Powder
River," whereby it was Cullin's turn to get a dig, and little did he
relish it.
"That's another I owe you, Toomey," said he, "and we'll settle it
by-and-by. Just now I'm thinking for your friend, if you are not. I
knew him before ever you did, and would go ten miles to your one to
help him. What you haven't sense enough to see is, that it won't be an
hour before the sheriff's after him with a warrant, and if Breifogle
dies he'll swing, sure as death. He was raving when they threw him out
of the gate, and swore he would get even with Breifogle, and when it
comes to trial there'll be a dozen witnesses to swear that he _did_.
What kind of a trial do you think he'd have here at Argenta, with half
the town owned by Breifogle & Co.?"
This was, indeed, putting a new face on it, and still Graham listened
in silence, trying to control the quiver and tingle of his nerves.
There came a sudden call from the office. Shoving his way through the
little mass of miners on the platform, the station-agent stepped to the
edge and waved a hand to Cullin, but the hand was empty. The release
order had not come. The big Mogul and the freight were still held, and
now it was much after seven, and Argenta all astir. Cullin turned
doggedly away. He seemed to know what was coming and did not half like
it. Leaping down from the platform and striding over the
cinder-blackened ties, the agent met him before he crossed the second
track--met him and spoke in tone so low even Big Ben could not hear.
All three men at the cab, they could not help it, were listening
eagerly. It was easy to see, however, that the station-master was
seeking information Cullin could not or dared not give. Every gesture,
the upheaved shoulders, the sideward droop of the head, the forward
toss of the hands, palms to the front, all as much as said, "Don't ask
me." Then the agent turned slowly away, walked a dozen steps, looked
back, and called:
"I'll tell 'em what you say, but you'd better come yourself. Narrow
Gauge'll get 'the Old Man' on the wire presently, then you'll have to.
I'm betting they hold you here till you do."
"Not if I know myself or--my orders," growled Cullin, as he returned,
black-browed, to the cab.
"What's up?" asked Big Ben, presently, seeing that the conductor waited
to be asked.
"Why, those Narrow Gauge fellows--they're owned here, you know--claim
that two of their men were shot by the same gang that did up Breifogle.
They're wiring both ways from the Junction, up here for sheriff and
detectives, and down to the Springs for Bob Anthony. They say No. 4
and I both know things about the slugging we haven't told. They say No.
4 took three of the sluggers away, and that we're hiding some to take
up into the mountains and turn 'em loose where they'll be safe. The
only man with us is--this kid," and Cullin looked up darkly into the
cab, his gloomy eyes on Geordie's coal-blackened face.
Now, indeed, it was time for action, and, quietly as he could, Geordie
put the question:
"Did you tell them you had a stranger in the cab?"
"Told 'em you were the only thing--or kind--I had."
"But you told them I'd come all the way with you from Chimney Switch,
did you not?"
"I didn't tell 'em anything except what I said to Folder here--the
station-master. I told 'em, through him, if they wanted anything on
this train they needn't ask me. I wasn't responsible."
Graham and Toomey exchanged quick glances. A wretched end would it be
to all their planning if Geordie should now be dragged off the cab as
accessory to the assault on young Breifogle, his helpless charge and
patient of the early morning hours.
Yet that was just what now was likely to happen. Resentful of there
being a mystery about the cab, a secret he was not allowed to share--an
outsider made known by Cullin's superiors to Cullin's subordinates, yet
not presented to him--true to human nature Cullin had told what Geordie
would conceal. In less than no time the enemy would know 705 had
brought a stranger within their gates who was too wary to come by
passenger-train. In less than ten minutes they might be there with a
warrant for his arrest.
And at that very moment there went up a shout from the group of miners
at the office. One of their kind had come running in, breathless and
alarmed. Three or four words only had he spoken, but they were enough.
As one man the twoscore turned and ran for the broad street beyond the
passenger station, were swallowed up in the gap between the express and
baggage sheds and the passenger waiting-rooms, and could be heard
shouting loudly beyond the high board fence--a chorus of cheers that
seemed to start near the main entrance and went travelling on the wings
of the wind westward up the lively street.
And a moment later, even while they were wondering, out came "Folder
here," the agent--this time paper in hand and waving for Cullin.
"Orders at last," said Cullin, and sprang to get them. And this time
both Graham and Toomey swung from the cab and eagerly followed.
"Warrant out for Nolan!" they heard Folder say, "but they'll not get
him here. The gang has whisked him away to the Fort and beyond, I
reckon; and the sheriff who goes to Silver Shield takes his life in his
hands." Then his eyes fell on the two firemen. "One of _you's_ wanted,"
he added, "but I don't know which, and they're coming now."
He pointed down the yard toward the east entrance. Almost on the run,
two men came hurrying in. Toomey grabbed Geordie's sleeve. "They
sha'n't have you _here_, anyhow. Jump for the cab." And jump they did,
all three. Moved now by some indefinable sympathy he had not felt
before, Cullin urged them on, and thrust the order into Big Ben's hairy
fist as it swung from the window. Ben gave one glance, his left hand
grasping the lever; Toomey made a flying leap for the bell-cord;
Geordie scrambled in after; hiss went the steam-cocks; clang went the
bell, and with an explosive cough that shook her big frame almost free
of the rails the Mogul heaved slowly ahead. The shortened "Time
Freight" picked up its heels and came jerkily after, and with her
ponderous drivers rolling swifter and swifter, and the heavy panting
speedily changing to short, quick, and quickening puffs, faster and
faster big 705 swung clear of the switch-points, smoothly rounded to
the main line, and with its dozen brown chickens following close,
Indian file, after the fussy old hen in the lead, away went the fast
freight, flaunting its green flags at the rear in the face of the
pursuit, and the deputies drew up disgusted at the edge of the yard,
their signals and their shouts unheeded.
CHAPTER VIII
A RACE TO THE FORT
Three miles out and the Mogul's six drivers were spinning like so many
tops. Flat along the grimy roofs of the heaving freight-cars behind,
the cloud of coal smoke from her stunted chimney fled rearward until
clear of the train, then drifted idly across the rolling uplands. Ahead
and to right and left, distant, snow-capped summits barred the
sky-line. On either side the gray-green slopes, bare and treeless,
billowed away, higher and higher toward the range, with here and there
a bunch of fattening cattle gazing stupidly at the invaders of their
peace and quietude. Close at hand to the left the murky waters of the
stream flashed quickly by. Close at hand to the right the hard-beaten
prairie road meandered over the sod. There had been a ridge or two
and some sharp curves just west of town, and now, as they rounded
the last of these and flew out upon an almost level track, the bottom
of some prehistoric mountain lake, the eyes of two of the three silent
occupants of the cab were strained along the gleaming rails ahead, and
almost at the same instant the same thought sprang to the lips of
each--Big Ben, with his left hand at the throttle, hunched up on his
shelf, his cap pulled down over the bushy brows, and Geordie, across
the cab on the fireman's seat, clinging to the window-frame to
withstand the lurching of the throbbing monster, while between them, on
the coal-blackened floor, Toomey, with his big shovel flinging open the
iron gate to the blazing furnace for every new mouthful he fed it, and
snapping it shut when he turned away for another, for not a whiff of
the draught could be wasted. Once past the deserted station at the Fort
there would come eight miles of twisting and turning and struggling
up-grade, and every pound of steam would be needed to pull even this
baker's dozen of heavily laden cars now thundering merrily along
behind.
[Illustration: "NOT A WHIFF OF THE DRAUGHT COULD BE WASTED"]
Only two short, smooth miles ahead lay the low ridge that formed the
eastern boundary of the old reservation. Beyond it, on the broad
_mesa_, stood the buildings of the frontier garrison, once Geordie's
home and refuge. The tall flag-staff came suddenly into view, and in
less than four minutes they would be rushing by. Over forty miles to
the hour were they flying now. Big Ben had just let out another notch
as they swung into the two-mile tangent, when at the same instant he
and Geordie caught sight of three or four black dots dimly bobbing in
the midst of a little dust-cloud on the roadway far ahead, and almost
at the same instant came from each the low cry, "There they are!"
Toomey dropped his shovel and glanced forward over Ben's burly
shoulder, then, grabbing the vertical handrails on cab and tender,
leaned out and gazed astern. The wagon road twisted over the bleak
"divide" the train had just rounded, and, barring a team or two jogging
slowly into town, was bare of traffic. "No chasers so far," he shouted,
as he again stooped to his tools.
"No chasers but us could catch 'em," growled Ben. "We'll give 'em a
toot of the whistle!" he shouted across to Geordie, and the steam blast
shrieked through the keen morning air in obedience to the quick pull at
the cord.
And now 705 was fairly flying, the green flags at the rear flattened
like shingles in the whistling wind, and a cloud of mingled dust and
smoke rolling furiously after the caboose. Big Ben had "pulled her wide
open," and under full head of steam the powerful engine tore like a
black meteor up the glistening track. In eagerness and excitement
almost uncontrollable George Graham clung to his perch and gazed with
all his eyes. Barely a mile ahead now spurred the fugitives, his old
friend Nolan in their midst--Nolan whom he had come all those miles to
see!
And then a strange thing happened. So far from finding reassurance,
friendship, sympathy in the whistle blast, the riders had read the very
opposite. So far from slackening speed and letting the signalling train
come up on them, they had suddenly veered to the left, the south, and,
bending low like jockies over their coursers' manes, they shot across
the track, dived down into the pebbly bottom, and the next thing
Geordie saw they were plunging breast-deep through the brown and
heaving torrent, the waters foaming at their knees.
"Might 'a' known it!" bellowed Toomey, disgusted. "'Course they reason
we've got the sheriff and posse aboard, and they're taking the
short-cut to the--you know," he said, with a sudden significant gulp,
to Geordie, and a warning glance at Ben. Even now that he had left the
trooper habits months behind, Toomey could not forget or disregard
trooper ethics. Ben might be friendly to Nolan, just as he claimed,
but--would Ben keep other's secrets?
And even under his coat of coal and tan Geordie's face blazed suddenly.
As a lad whom the troopers knew and loved and trusted, he could not
help knowing in by-gone days of the ranch just south of the
post--"Saints' Rest," they called it, laughingly--the shack owned and
occupied by an old soldier with a numerous family: the rendezvous for
many a revel, the resting-place of many a hunting-party, the refuge of
many a home-bound squad of "the boys," before the days of the canteen
that brought comfort and temperance into the army for the short but
blessed spell of its existence--boys just back from an unhallowed
frolic in town, and not yet sober enough to face their first sergeant
and "the Old Man" at the orderly room. Oh, wonderful things were told
of old Shiner and his ranch! In the eyes of some straitlaced commanders
he had been little better than a receiver of stolen goods, a soldier
Shylock who loaned moneys at usurious interest, a gambler who fleeced
the trooper folk of their scanty pay, a dispenser of bad liquors and
worse morals. Some truth there may have been in some of these tales,
yet Shiner had been a strangely useful man. He supplied the post with
milk and cream, butter and eggs, of better quality and lower price than
could possibly be had in town. He knew the best hunting and fishing on
the range. He had teams and "rigs" at all times at the service of
officers and soldiers, when the post ambulance was forbidden by an
unfeeling government. He had a corral and stockade that had more than
once bidden stout defiance to both the law and the lawless. He had, so
the fort children firmly believed, a subterranean passage from his
stockade to the sentry-lines. He was hated by both sheriff and sutler
in days when the latter lived and thrived; he overreached the one,
undersold the other, and outwitted both. He befriended every soldier in
a scrape, whether the offence were against the majestic letter of the
civil law or only the unimportant spirit of the military. In the eyes
of the few he was much of a sinner; in the eyes of the many no less of
a saint; and, after careful casting up of accounts, the colonel of the
--th Cavalry had declared Shiner far more good than bad, treated him
accordingly, and won a surprised and devoted friend and ally. Another
officer Shiner swore by was Dr. Graham, and for reasons similar to
those of his fellow, and farther-distant, ranchman Ross.
Yet Geordie had often heard of mysterious doings at Shiner's that would
not bear official investigation--had heard and kept silent. In those
days Shiner dwelt close under the sheltering wing of a sympathetic
garrison. Now, if still there, he must be living in the light, and for
the first time it dawned upon Geordie that what he heard of Shiner in
by-gone days and kept to himself, he could not hear and know and keep
to himself now. It was one thing to be a garrison boy; it was another
to be an officer in the army of the United States.
The instant that it dawned upon him that Nolan and his friends were
heading across country for Shiner's old plant, riding hard in the
belief that they were pursued by rail, it flashed upon him that he
could not join Nolan there--indeed, he must, if a possible thing, guide
or direct him elsewhere.
Already the pursued were through the ford and, with dripping flanks,
were scrambling up the opposite shore. Already big 705 was almost
abreast of them, and in another moment would be swiftly speeding by.
It was two years since Geordie last set eyes on Nolan, but there was no
mistaking, even at that distance, the tall, gaunt figure and the
practised seat in saddle. Behind him trailed three comrades, two of
whom, at least, were tyros in the art of horsemanship. They were
hanging on for dear life as their steeds labored on after the leader.
The object of all four was obviously to get beyond easy rifle range of
the rushing train before drawing rein to reconnoitre, and now, probably
noting that the engine was driving on full speed, with no sign of
stopping, the tall horseman in the lead circled swiftly to his right,
along the crest of a low ridge perhaps three hundred yards away, then
peered from under his broad hatbrim at the supposed enemy.
And then it was that Graham and Toomey, both, sprang back to the
coal-pile in the tender, clambered high as possible on the shifting
slope, and, balancing as best they could, whipped off their caps, swung
them joyously about their heads, and eagerly gave the old-time,
well-known cavalry signal, "Forward!" "Forward!" They saw Nolan and
his friends seated on their panting horses, staring after them in amaze
and wonderment, then resolutely following.
A mile now would bring them whistling by the site of old Fort Reynolds,
and a lump rose in Geordie's throat, for the weather-beaten, ramshackle
stables came in view as the Mogul rounded a long, easy curve, and
there, beyond them and on the level bench before them, stood the trim
rows of officers' quarters, now deserted and tenantless, yet guarded by
the single sergeant and his little squad of men. To the right, afar up
the track near the foot-bridge and ford, lay the station building,
wellnigh useless now since the greater interests and industries, that
had made the railway possible and forced the Indian farther back, had
also fouled the mountain stream and spoiled the site for a cavalry
post.
There stood the freight sheds; there were the chutes for horses and
mules; there, beyond them, the now abandoned office and waiting-room;
and there, still glistening white and towering, the semaphore
signal-mast of the railway; and then and there, sure and sudden, there
dropped the black arm straight across and above their glistening path
in the never-to-be-neglected order--Stop!
Big Ben's lined face went swiftly gray through its coat of grime, but
the firm hand did its instant work with the throttle. Then, swinging
from his seat, he grasped the glistening lever and, peering intently
forward, stood ready to throw it in reverse. Toomey sprang for the cord
and jerked one fierce toot out of the whistle, the old-time signal for
down-brakes before Westinghouse and his science put everything at the
touch of the engineer. Almost at the moment the swift rush of the train
became jarring and rough. Two daring men scampered, monkey-like, along
the top of the cars, twisting a brake on each, then darting to the
next. A furious gust of steam tore from the escape-valve and streamed
away overhead. Not a thing was in sight on the track, not a soul on the
platform, to account for the alarming signal. A switch-target clanked
as they tore over the points; a vagrant dog scurried away toward the
once thriving saloon, and not until they drove in, hissing, grinding,
and bumping, to the side of the dusty platform, did Ben's keen eyes
catch sight of two herdsmen's horses--cow ponies--tethered back of the
shanty beside the saloon, and up went the lid of his box at the
instant, in went his right hand, and then out it came full grasp on a
brown-barrelled six-shooter.
CHAPTER IX
BAD NEWS FROM THE MINES
"A hold-up," muttered Toomey, as, obedient to Big Ben's orders, "Duck,
you two!" he and Geordie crouched for the moment in the dark interior
of the cab. But who would hold up a freight bound to, not away from,
the mines? Twice, thrice, indeed, since the cavalry had been sent from
Fort Reynolds, the overland express had been flagged between Argenta
and Summit Siding, and masked men had boarded the train, despoiled the
passengers and Pullmans; and once old Shiner had come under suspicion
because certain plunder was found at his place.
"The robbers are discharged soldiers," swore the sheriff of Yampah;
"their haunt is at Shiner's." Yet not so much as a scrap of other
evidence was there found. Shiner threw open his doors to the officers,
bade them search high and low, declared upon honor as he would upon
oath that he himself had found the damaging evidence--two pocket-books
and some valueless papers--on the open prairie a mile from his place
the day after the third of the "hold-ups." There had long been bad
blood betwixt him and the sheriff, and this time the man of the law
gave the lie, and but for prompt work of bystanders--deputy Shiners and
sheriffs both--there would have been cause for a coroner's inquest on
the spot. Before that day it had been avowed hostility between them;
now it was war to the knife. Much of this was known to the men of the
railway, who sided according to their lights. Few of them knew Shiner;
many knew the sheriff. It was patent at a glance that Big Ben held to
the views of the latter and looked upon Shiner's hand, or Shiner's
hands, as the cause of the hold-up. Nor was he entirely wrong. Even as
Cullin came running up the track from the rear of the train, and
brakemen running atop of it, eager to learn the cause of the stop, two
men with saddle-bags slung over the left arm stepped out from behind
the passenger depot and met the conductor half-way. Glancing back, Ben
caught sight of them and, pistol in hand, started to swing from the
engine, crying "Come on!" to Toomey. Springing to his feet, Toomey gave
one look back to the platform. His keen eyes danced with excitement and
joy. "Hold on!" he shouted to Ben. "It's all right. Lay low," he
whispered to Geordie. "It's Shiner himself!"
And old Shiner it was, cool, quiet, pale, resolute in face of a furious
conductor and a threatening crew--Shiner, presently backed by a
sergeant of regulars and two of his men, who had come running over the
foot-bridge at the stop of the train, and now silently ranged
themselves in tacit support. What Cullin had demanded was how Shiner
dared tamper with the signals--how, in fact, he had managed to, since
they had been carefully locked--and who was he, anyhow. And Shiner had
simply answered: "I've a boy shot and dying at Silver Shield. I only
heard it late in the night. There's no other way to get to him. I pay
full fare and all damages"--but he got no further, for Toomey came
atrot from the engine, threw himself upon him, and grasped his hand.
"What's the trouble, old man?" was the instant question.
And Shiner, turning, saw an old friend and beneficiary, and should have
taken heart at the sight. Instead of which, at sound of a sympathetic
voice, he who had been firm and fearless in the face of abuse and
opposition now wellnigh broke down. "They've killed--little Jack!" he
almost sobbed. "Thank God _you're_ here, Toomey!"
"Of course you'll take him!" cried Toomey, turning sharp on Cullin.
"Of course I _won't_ take him!" snarled Cullin, wrath and temper
stiffening his back, "but the law shall, quick as I can fix it. Back to
your cab, both of you!" he waved, for Ben, too, was bulkily climbing
the platform steps. "Pull out at once and don't you stop for no more
snidework!"
"And leave this man here?" shouted Toomey. "Then you can do your own
firing from here on, Cullin. Hold on, Ben, till I get my things off.
You can obey if you like, but it's the last run I make with
this--faugh! And you say _you've_ been a soldier!" It was Toomey's
chance, after weeks of pent-up rage for battle, and he couldn't throw
it away. Seeing that Ben, dull, heavy, and uncomprehending, was staring
stupidly about him, not knowing what to do; seeing that even Cullin was
melting at sight of the grief in Shiner's face; seeing the sympathy in
the eyes of the bluecoats and the shame in those of the brakemen,
Toomey turned loose on his adversary, and Toomey, when fairly started,
could talk to the point. It was a tongue-lashing, indeed, and one that
left the conductor no chance to reply.
"It's 'gainst orders, and you know it, Toomey," was his futile gasp,
when Toomey stopped for breath.
"'Gainst orders you've broken time and again, and you know it! 'Gainst
orders Bob Anthony would break your head for not breaking! It's 'gainst
orders for you to pull out now when you're blocked, till you get
further orders--and yet you say go."
"How can I get orders without a man or a wire at the station?" burst in
Cullin, grasping at straws. "How can I get authority to take this man
along? He's liable to arrest anyhow for tampering with the signals."
And then another voice was interjected, another disputant stepped
quickly forward, and Toomey checked himself in the first breath of an
impassioned outburst; his black hand suddenly shot half-way up to the
cap-visor, then came down with a jerk; his heels had clicked together
and his knees straightened out, then as suddenly went limp. The
new-comer had sprung up the steps. The form was slender and sinewy.
Hands, face, and dress were black with soot, but the young voice was
deep and the ring of accustomed command was in every word. "That's your
cue, Mr. Cullin. Arrest him and fetch him along." Then turning to
Toomey: "There's no one at the cab. Better get back, quick!" he added.
And Toomey went.
Big Ben gave one look and, without a word, waddled after his fireman.
The tears that stood in old Shiner's eyes dashed away at the brush of a
sleeve. A light of astonishment, comprehension, relief suddenly gleamed
in their place. The sergeant stared for a moment, looked blankly at his
men, then side-stepped for another long gaze at the new-comer's face.
Cullin turned sharply, resentful at first at the tone of authority,
wrath in his heart and rebuke on his tongue, but then came sudden
reminder of Anthony's card--the card the strange young fellow had
presented only when needed to convince, the card he had been so
sagacious as to retain, the card that proclaimed him a friend of the
powers and a person to be considered. Moreover, the friend and person
had suggested a means by which actual surrender to the situation might
appear as virtual and moral victory. One more look at Shiner and then
Shiner settled it. "I submit to arrest, Mr. Cullin. Let me go with
you--and settle."
"Get aboard the caboose," was the gruff answer, and, all apparent
meekness, Shiner obeyed. "Not you," added Cullin, as Shiner's
saddle-bag-bearing friend would have followed. "Give me the bags," said
Shiner, "and you look to--" A significant glance at the signal told the
rest. Cullin followed it with his eyes, saw the arm still lowered to
the "stop," knew that it should not be left there, and for a moment
held back.
"_He_'ll fix it," said Shiner, from the platform of the caboose, while
his eyes sought the face of the tall young fellow at Cullin's back.
Cullin strode to the corner of the office and followed the ranchman
with curious eyes. That sun-tanned, bow-legged person straddled down
the back steps, his big spurs jingling, a high boot-heel catching on
next to the lowermost and pitching him forward. He clamped his
broadbrim on his head with one hand and steadied his holster with the
other, straightened up with half-stifled expletive, and the next minute
was swarming up the slender iron rungs of the signal-ladder. "He's got
to prop it up where it belongs," said the sergeant. "Reckon he must
have shot the wire that held it." And of a truth the wire was severed.
But when Cullin turned back to his train with the mystery cleared, the
sight and sound of new commotion blocked his own signal to start.
Two horsemen, on foam-spattered broncos, were spurring vehemently down
the road from the eastward ridge. Two others were trailing exhaustedly
two hundred lengths behind, only just feebly popping over the divide.
And to these persons both his prisoner and his prisoner's advocate, who
were clasping hands as he whirled and saw them, were now signalling
cheer and encouragement. Ten cars ahead, at the cab, Big Ben and
Toomey, too, were leaning far out and eagerly watching the chase; the
sergeant and his men, wondering much at the sight, but professionally
impassive, strode to the end of the platform for better view, then all
of a sudden began to shout and swing their caps, and before Cullin
could recover from his surprise the foremost rider, tall, spare, with
long, grizzled mustache and fiery eyes, threw himself from saddle and
came bounding up the steps. He was surrounded in an instant, only one
man hanging back. The slender young fellow in the grimy cap and
overalls quietly stepped into the dark interior of the caboose.
In the glare of the unclouded sunshine, breathing hard from his
exertion, his hand grasped successively by Shiner and the three
soldiers, the veteran trooper told his hurried tale, while, one after
another, his followers, wellnigh exhausted, labored after him, and
finally rolled stiffly to _terra firma_ at the station, their wretched
livery mounts, with dripping, quivering flanks and drooping heads,
stood straddling close at hand, too utterly used up to stagger away.
Nolan's story was brief but explicit. Somebody in the swarm that
overwhelmed the Narrow Gauge train the previous night had crept back to
town after midnight and started the story that young Breifogle had been
slugged by the gang. By early morning it got to the father's ears. With
the sheriff and some friends he had driven down in the wake of No. 4,
found plenty of men who could tell of the mobbing, but none who could
tell of his son. The miners had scattered; the few passengers also,
glad that they were not "wanted" by that infuriated crowd. It was then
after sunrise, and, almost crazed by anxiety and wrath, Breifogle had
hurried back to Argenta. His first thought seemed to be vengeance on
Nolan, whom rumor declared the ringleader of his son's assailants, and
a warrant was out for his arrest, even as the big Mogul was rolling
into the yard, with its dingy-brown train of freight-cars and the
battered body of that luckless youth, Nolan's assailant at Silver
Shield.
The first full peril of his situation broke upon Nolan the instant the
news was rushed to him. Innocent of any part in the assault though he
was--ignorant of it, in fact, until dawn--he well knew that every
artifice would be played against him, and that all the power, the
means, and methods of the Breifogle clique would be lavishly used. Long
imprisonment would be sure, harsh trial certain, acquittal improbable,
hanging almost a certainty.
"Away with you! Get back to the mines and the mountains!" was the
instant warning, and without the loss of a minute, mounted on such
horses as his friends could hire, he and three of his trustiest
followers had galloped away. They thought the sheriff was at their
heels when the Fast Freight came thundering after them, but hailed,
with amaze and joy, the signal from the tender, and, feeling sure the
train would await them here, had spurred on to the station.
"You'll send the horses back for us, will you, sergeant?" he finished.
Then eagerly, "Now, conductor, shall we pull out for Summit?"
"Pull out for nothing," was the astounding answer. "You know perfectly
no Time Freight on this road takes a passenger of any kind, and it
would be more'n my job's worth to take you!"
"Then, in God's name, why did you signal?" was the almost agonized
question.
"Signal be jiggered! I never signalled. No man of _my_ crew signalled.
If you want to get back to the mines, stay here and flag No. 5. She'll
be along at eleven."
"Along at _eleven_! Man alive, the sheriff will be here with a posse of
forty long before that!"
"_Long_ before that!" almost screamed old Shiner. "Look, there, what
you see! He's coming now!"
And then Geordie Graham, listening with beating heart within the open
doorway of the caboose, could stand the strain no longer. The man he
must see, the man on whom everything depended, the old friend whom he
most trusted and believed in stood in sore peril. The cause for which
he had come all these miles must fail so sure as Nolan slipped into the
power of the adversary, even though grasped by the hand of the law. It
was no time for ethics--no time for casuists. He let his voice out in
the old tone of authority:
"You've no time to lose, Mr. Cullin. Arrest them, too, and come on!"
With wonderment in his eyes, with Shiner whispering caution in his ear,
"Long" Nolan was hustled aboard the caboose just as the wheels began to
turn, his breathless followers clambering after, while afar up the
divide toward the east, by twos and threes, in eager pursuit, egged on
by lavish promise of reward, the sheriff of Yampah, with a score of his
men, spurred furiously on the trail of a train that, starting slowly
and heavily, speedily gained headway and soon went thundering up the
grade, "leaving the wolves behind."
CHAPTER X
FIRST SHOTS OF THE SUMMER
Half-way up the scarred slope of mountain-side, and opposite the mouth
of a deep ravine, hung the crude wooden buildings and costly machinery
of a modern mine. Zigzagging up the heights, the road that led to it
from the ramshackle town in the valley was dotted with groups of
rough-coated men, all plodding steadily onward. Perched on "benches"
and shelves and dumps of blasted rock and fresh-heaped earth, similar
though smaller clusters of buildings dotted the lower slopes, marring
the grand outlines and sweeping curves of the great upheavals, cutting
ugly gashes in the green and swelling billows, yet eagerly sought in
the race for wealth and the greed for gold, because of the treasures
they wrested from the bowels of the everlasting hills. Afar down the
winding valley a turbid stream went frothing away to the foot-hills,
telling of labor, turmoil, and strife. Beside it twisted and turned the
railway that burrowed through the range barely five miles back of the
town, and reappeared on the westward face of the Silver Bow, clinging
dizzily to heights that looked down on rolling miles of pine, cedar,
stunted oak, and almost primeval loneliness. The mineral wealth, said
the experts, lay on the eastward side, and by thousands the miners were
there, swarming like ants all over the surface seeking their golden
gain.
[Illustration: SILVER SHIELD]
And something was surely amiss at the mines when the chimneys of as
many as six of the "plants" gave forth no smoke, when the fires were
out and the men adrift. Something had happened that called the
craftsmen from a dozen other burrows to the aid of those at the new and
lately thronging works, on that shoulder at the mouth of the gorge--the
mine of the Silver Shield. Murder most foul, said the story, had been
done in the name of the law. Armed guards of the property had shot
down, it was said, a half-score of workmen, clamoring only for their
pay and their rights. A son of the principal owner, so it was known,
had ordered his men to fire. A son of an old soldier and settler,
living in peace barely forty miles away, was one of the victims, for he
had taken sides with Long Nolan, who without rhyme or reason had been
discharged, and violently flung from the premises. There had been a
wild rush on the guard, a volley, a recoil, a rally in force, and an
outcry for vengeance. Then the guard had to shoot in earnest and
self-defence, for their lives were at stake. Some of the men had gone
to Argenta to plead with the owners, but most had remained to stir all
hands within ten miles to the support of their fellows. The miscreant
who had ordered "fire" had escaped across to Miners' Joy, only to be
dealt with by sympathizers on the Narrow Gauge; but the men who fired
and who shot to kill were trapped like rats in a hole. Surrounded on
every side, every avenue of escape now guarded, they and the luckless
manager of the mine were cooped in their log fortification, with two
lives and several serious wounds to answer for, and as the sun went
westering this long summer's day they had two hours left in which to
decide--come out and surrender or be burned out where they lay.
Half the village had gone to swell the ranks of the rioters; another
half--slatternly women and unkempt children--swarmed in the single
street and gazed upward at the heights. Every ledge about the
threatened buildings was black with men, men furious with hate and mad
with liquor, men needing only determined and resolute leaders to go in
and finish their fearful work.
But here was their lack. The men they had counted on, one man in
particular on whose account many of their number had braved the guard
and threatened the owners--one man, Long Nolan himself, refused point
blank to have aught to do with them or their plans. Another man, he
whose son lay dying in the village, shot down by the guards, was there,
sad-eyed yet stern-faced, to stay and dissuade them. The one train up
from the East that day--the only one that could come, for now the road
was blown out in a dozen places down the gorge--had brought with it
Nolan and Shiner, with two or three friends at their back, and Nolan
and Shiner, in spite of their wrongs, were pleading hard for peace,
pleading so hard, so earnestly, that by 5 P.M. many a man, American
born, had seen the force of their reasoning and had stepped back from
the front.
But among the killed was a poor lad from the mountains of Bohemia.
Among the vengeful throng were swarms of foreigners who could
understand little or nothing of what Nolan and his friends were saying,
and who speedily would have scorned it could they have understood, for
at five o'clock another speaker took the stand, a man of the people he
called himself, a foreigner long on our shores, yet fluent in the
language of the Slavs, and in ten minutes the torrent was turned. With
terror in his eyes, a man who had long worked with Nolan, a foreigner,
too, came running to the silent, anxious little group of Anglo-Saxons.
"Nolan--Nolan," he cried. "He says you was traitor! He says you was
gone to Argenta and told all their secrets, and you was bought
off--bribed--and you bring strangers to help you! He says you and they
are just spies, an' now they come for _you_!"
One glance from where the little group were crouching, sheltered from
possible shots from the buildings, yet between them and the throng,
told Nolan and Shiner the alarm was real, the words were true. Like so
many maddened beasts, a gang of uncouth, unkempt, blood-thirsty beings
were now crowding up the narrow roadway from the bench below.
"My God, Mr. Geordie!" cried Nolan, in sudden agony of spirit, "I never
once dreamed of this!"
It was, indeed, a moment of terror. Here, barely a dozen in all, were
Nolan, Shiner, George Graham, and a few of the more intelligent, the
Americans, among the miners. There, possibly a hundred yards away, and
to the number of at least three hundred, a throng of human brutes,
utterly ignorant, superstitious, credulous, craftily inspired, were
now surging slowly forward up the heights. Two minutes would bring them
about the little party in overwhelming strength. Flight anywhere
downhill was impossible. The one refuge in sight was that beleaguered
little clump of buildings just beyond them up the slope, garrisoned by
a dozen desperate men who had shouted warning again and again, they'd
shoot down the first man that showed a head above the rocks.
But desperate straits need desperate measures. All on a sudden a tall,
slender youth, in the coarse dress of a railway fireman, sprang from
the midst of the pallid-faced group and, waving his handkerchief over
his head, called back, "Stay where you are one minute!" and then,
without a second's falter or swerve, straight for the nearest building,
a low, one-story log-house, the manager's office near the mouth of the
mine, waving his white signal high as his arm could reach, and
shouting, "Don't fire--we are friends!" George Graham swiftly climbed
for the upper level. One rifle flashed. One bullet whizzed over his
head, but he reached the road, then, both arms extended, rushed
straight for the door.
It was thrown open to admit him by Cawker, the manager, white-faced
almost as they whom Geordie had left. "Come out here!" cried Graham.
"See for yourself. Nolan, Shiner, with those few lads, are all that
have stood between you and the mob below. Every American is out of it.
They're coming to kill Nolan for turning against them. Call him up!
Call them all--There's barely a dozen. Then you've got just as many
more to stand by you!"
And Cawker had sense to see and to realize. "Call 'em yourself," said
he. "Don't shoot, men! These are friends come to aid us!" he cried,
running up and down in front of the loop-holes. "Come on, Nolan and all
of you," he added, for Graham had gone bounding half-way back again,
and, like so many goats, the threatened party came scrambling out of
their shelter and up the steep incline, while afar down the hill-side
rose a yell of baffled rage and vengeance.
"Hold the rest of them whatever you do!" shouted Geordie, again racing
back. "Don't let that gang over the edge or you're gone!" And again the
brown barrels of the rifles thrust forth from the wooden walls and were
turned on the bend of the road. Almost breathless, Long Nolan, and with
him the little squad of adherents, came running up to the door.
"Inside, quick as you can!" shouted Cawker. "We've got to give those
blood-hounds a lesson."
Even as he spoke a shot struck the thick, iron hinge of the heavy door,
the lead spattering viciously. Another ripped through the casement of
the nearest window, and a shiver of glass was heard within, as the
bullet spun through the shade of a lamp swinging from the beam above.
Cawker ducked, unaccustomed to such sounds, and dove to the interior.
Old Nolan, soldier of the Civil War and veteran of many an Indian
skirmish, disdained to notice it. Geordie, bemoaning the luck that had
left his pet rifle in Denver, busied himself with Nolan in "herding"
the party within before himself following. Then Shiner was found
missing.
"He started with us," cried Nolan. "He wanted to go back to be with his
boy, but we showed him he'd never get through. Those brutes would head
him off and kick his life out. He must have--Good God, Mr. Geordie!
Look where he lies!"
And then they saw that the old plainsman, in his eagerness to make a
way back to his possibly dying son, had quit the rush when half-way up,
had turned eastward and sought a foot-path down the mountain-side, had
found it guarded, like the rest, by a gang that yelled savage welcome
at sight of him. Then, too late, he had turned again, had managed to
run some fifty yards along the jagged slope, when a shot from a
well-aimed rifle laid him low. With a leg broken just above the knee,
poor Shiner went down, and without so much as a word, with only one
glance into each other's eyes, Long Nolan and Geordie swooped down to
the rescue.
Breasting the hill fifty yards below him came the heaving throng of
rioters, few of them, luckily, with fire-arms, but all bent on
vengeance. Darting downhill to Shiner came the old and the new of the
regiment he had known for years and swore by to the end--Nolan, its
oldest sergeant when discharged; Graham, its youngest subaltern when so
recently commissioned. But, old and new, they were one in purpose and
in spirit. The trained muscles, the lithe young limbs of the new bore
him bounding down the slope in half the time it took the elder. Shiner
lay facing the coming throng, grim hate in his eyes and revolver in
hand. In the fury of yells that arose he never heard the shout of
encouragement from above. Geordie was bending over him, had seized him
by the arm, was slinging him on his broad young back before ever Shiner
saw the face of his rescuer, and Geordie, with his helpless burden, was
stumbling up the height again before Nolan could join and aid him.
By that time the peering guardians of the office had caught sight of
the cause of the pandemonium of howls and curses from below, and the
onward rush was stayed by the sound of shots from the hill and bullets
whistling overhead. Yet only for a moment. Bullets sent downhill almost
always fly high, and finding this to be so the mob took courage and
came on again, those who had guns or revolvers shooting frantically up
the slope, splintering rocks and spattering dirt as they bit at the
heels of the rescuers. It was a desperate, do or die, neck or nothing,
bit of daring and devotion--Nolan's third and Geordie's first
experience in just such a feat. But the blood of the Graemes was up,
and the younger soldier was not to be outdone by the old. The guards at
the office burst into a cheer as the two came staggering up to the
level, with poor Shiner groaning between them, and then quick work and
hot was needed, for the mob came fierce on their trail.
"There's more Winchesters there in the gun-rack," shouted Cawker, as
Shiner was laid on a bunk in a back room. "They'll be all round us here
in a minute."
"Aim low and pick out the leaders, d'ye hear?" panted Nolan. "Don't let
'em get within reach of the buildings, whatever you do. They'll burn
'em over our heads. Let me have your loop-hole, _you_!" he ordered a
young fellow, whose lips were blue with excitement and dread. "Go sit
by Shiner and give him water till I spoil a few of these voters." And
the presence of the veteran, the confident ring of his voice, seemed to
lend instant courage to the defence.
And courage, cool courage and grit, were needed, for the situation was
difficult, if not, indeed, desperate. With any skilled leader to direct
the mob, the refuge sought by the defence would already have been
ruined. The office building, made of hewn logs laid horizontally and
with possible view of defence, had been placed at the brow of the slope
on one side and near the mouth of the mine on the other. Later,
however, rude structures of unplaned pine sprung up--compressor-plant,
blacksmith-shop, and the like--about it, no one of them strong enough
to serve as a fort, and all of them a menace now because they screened
the approaches on two sides and could be fired in a dozen places.
And now that Graham and Nolan were here to aid, this defect was noticed
at once.
"This won't do at all, Mr. Cawker," said Graham, as he sprung the lever
of a new Winchester and glanced into the chamber. "We'll be surrounded
and burned out of here in ten minutes. We've got to occupy those
others, too."
Cawker stared at the "young feller" with angering eyes. A moment agone
and he was praising his daring, but that astonishing tone of authority
nettled him. What business had a railway fireman telling him, a mine
manager, what to do in case of a row?
"_You_ get to a loop-hole and 'tend to that," snapped he. "I'll 'tend
to my business," and he turned to Long Nolan, just heaving up from a
peep-hole, for support and approval. Nolan he knew for a soldier of
old. He had learned to respect him quite as much as he jealously
feared, and Nolan's answer took him utterly aback:
"You do as he tells you and do it quick. He knows his business better'n
ever you'll begin to know yours."
CHAPTER XI
A NIGHT ON GUARD
Two minutes more, with eight men to back him, George Graham was
knocking or sawing out holes in the blacksmith-shop, and presently a
man with a reliable Winchester was crouched by each opening watching
the next move of the foe. The shop was perched at the edge of a
flat-topped "dump", commanding the rocky slopes to the roadway on one
side, the hill on the other. It was exposed to shots from below, yet
the hardest to reach by direct assault. In the larger building a bit
farther back, the compressor-house, Cawker and four others were
stationed, guarding the approach from the north. The manager had taken
Nolan's broad hint, and the subsequent orders, with one long look of
amaze, then with the light of comprehension in his eyes and the
silence of consent on his lips. Did he not know that the main charge
against Nolan had been loyalty to his old comrades rather than his new
employers? Did he not know, or at least more than suspect, that the
company was trying to "freeze out" the distant holders? Did he not
know, down in his heart, that it was out and out robbery? And now, in
spite of youth and disguise, the manager saw in this masterful stranger
one of the very elements the owners had sought to keep at a distance
and in ignorance of true conditions. So far from resenting, he now
thanked God for his coming. What else could explain Nolan's
deference--Nolan, the most independent and self-respecting man at the
mines? What else could it mean but that this youth was one of his
officers--men skilled and schooled in warfare if not in mining--men
taught to face danger with stout heart and stubborn front? All in the
space of a few seconds the truth had flashed upon Cawker. It might not
be just what the owners would want, thought he, but it's almighty good
for us all.
Nolan, with a handful of men, still clung to the stoutest of the
buildings. It stood without the entrance to the ravine in which had
been discovered the outcropping that started the fame of Silver Shield.
In this, also, stood two other buildings, but these were so far from
the outer shop that flames need not be feared. Nolan was to care for
the wounded and guard the outward approach, and all three were in close
support of each other. Whoever managed to rush that little group of
buildings would know, if he lived, that he had been through a fight.
And now it was after six of the long summer day. The rioters had
received a wholesome lesson in the volley that met their first attempt
to swarm up from the south. They had gone tumbling and cursing back to
shelter, with three men wounded and many of the others badly scared,
and now were being harangued by their vociferous leader, and hundreds
had come to hear. Graham turned to the young Slav who had borne the
first news to Nolan. "Creep out there as far as you can," he ordered,
"listen to what is said, and tell me. They cannot reach you." But the
frightened lad crouched and whimpered. He _dared_ not.
"Come on, then," answered Geordie, grasping the stout collar of the
hickory shirt, and come he had to, moaning and imploring. With revolver
in his right hand, his unwilling interpreter in the left, Geordie
scrambled down to the roadway, and then, coming in view of the gang,
crouched with his prisoner behind sheltering bowlders, regardless of
the shots which began to hiss from below. The speaker was still
shouting; his words were easily heard. Yells of approval and savage
delight punctuated every other sentence. "What was that?" demanded
Geordie, as the applause became furious.
"He say they make circle--all sides, uphill, sidehill, downhill. They
all together run in when he give the word."
"He fights like a Cheyenne," grinned the young commander. "How soon do
they begin?"
"Right off; now! They come from _all_ round!" was the almost agonized
cry.
"Then I won't have to lug you back. You can go!"
And like a frightened hare the young foreigner darted away, dodging and
diving up the slope, only to fall exhausted at the top, and then to
creep on all-fours to the shelter of the office. Already some of the
armed rioters had managed to climb far up the hill-side and from behind
rock or ledge to open fire on the platform. The range was full three
hundred yards, their aim was poor, and the bullets flew wild, but the
effect on this poor lad was all they could ask. He collapsed at the
opening door.
Leisurely, yet cautiously, Geordie climbed in his tracks--went first to
the office to give warning to Nolan, then round to the compressor to
instruct the little guard. Cawker poked a head from a window and looked
anxiously toward the gaping mouth of the ravine. The darkness of night
was already settling in its gloomy depths. The homely shed looked black
and forbidding. Aloft on each side were precipitous slopes affording
but slight foothold. Little likelihood was there of rioters sliding
down to attack them, but, suppose they pried loose, or blasted out,
some of those huge rocks up the mountain and sent them rolling,
bounding, crashing down? What might _then_ happen?
A bullet tearing through the shingling, ten feet above Cawker's
protruding head, made him jerk it in, like a turtle, but presently it
reappeared at the window.
"It's the dynamite I'm thinking of," said he. "A rock lighting on that
now--"
"Where is it?" interrupted Graham.
"In that first shed yonder--a dozen boxes."
"Bring two men and come along," was the quick order, and it was no time
now for reluctance, resentment, much less refusal. The two men summoned
shrank back and would not come, but Cawker found two who dared to
follow. It was a case of "duck and run" for all.
"Watch the hill-side above!" shouted Graham, in tones that rang through
every building and reached every ear. "Shoot down every man that tries
to heave rocks into the ravine, or fire at us. We're going to move
that dynamite."
Once within the shelter of the gorge, with comrades carefully sighting
the slopes, Geordie felt the danger would not be very great. A swift
rush carried all four over the open space of twenty yards. Three or
four shots came zipping from aloft, but the instant ring of Winchesters
back of them told that watchful eyes had noted every head that
appeared, and the swift crackle of fire from the shop put instant stop
to the fun up the slope. Into the store-room the manager led them, and
unlocked a heavy little trap-door within; then, one by one, the
ominous-looking cases were dragged forth, hoisted, and swiftly borne to
the mouth of the mine. Three tunnels there seemed to be, as Geordie
hurriedly noted, but into the largest and lowermost they shouldered
their perilous burden and carefully, cautiously, stacked the boxes well
inside; went back, and searched out, and followed with all the fuse and
powder stored at the top. Then, with rock and ore and barrels of earth,
they built a stout barrier in front of the tunnel, blocking it from
without, and the sun was down and night was upon them when they
stumbled back to their posts.
For now still a weightier problem remained to them--how to defend those
works in the dark.
In all, Geordie Graham found they had just twenty men on whom he could
count. The trembling young Slav at the blacksmith-shop, the blue-lipped
boy in the office, and sorely wounded old Shiner were out of the fight.
But Cawker's mine-guards were native born, or Irish, and most of the
reinforcements that came with Nolan and himself were Americans, and all
were good men and true. By day they could see and shoot at any man or
men who sought to approach them with hostile intent. By night they
could see nothing. There was only one way, said Graham, to prevent the
more daring among the rioters crawling in on them and firing some of
the shops, and that was to throw out strong pickets on every side, then
trust to their ears, their grit, and their guns.
Already he had been selecting good positions in which to post his
sentries. Ten at least, full half his force, would be needed, and while
vigilant watch was kept through the twilight, and a warning shot sent
at every hat that showed within dangerous range, Geordie went from
building to building picking out his men.
Arms, ammunition, and provisions, fortunately, they had in abundance.
The company had long since seen to that. Nolan already had set "Blue
Lips" to work building a fire in the big kitchen stove at the office
and setting the kettle to boil. Coffee, hard bread, and bacon, with
canned pork and beans, were served to all hands, about five at a time,
and then, with Nolan to station the watchers on the south and west
fronts, George and his five stole out on the northward slope, alert,
cautious, and silent, moving only a few paces at a time.
Afar down in the depths of the valley the clustered lights of the
excited town shone brilliantly through the gloaming. Every now and then
through the surrounding silence came the bark of dogs, the shrill
voices of clamoring women, and occasionally a burst of howls and yells.
Some rude orator was still preaching death and destruction to a more
than half-drunken gang, urging them on to the aid of their brethren up
the levels above. All about the Silver Shield, however, was ominously
still. Over on opposite heights and down in stray gulches could be seen
the flitting lights of rival establishments, and away to the west,
around the base of the mountain where the railway squirmed by the side
of the tortuous stream, two or three locomotive-engines, on stalled
trains, had been whistling long and hard for aid. All that was useless.
Above for a mile, below for a league, the track had been torn up in
places, and down along Silver Run, toward Hatch's Cove and the
foot-hills, culverts and cuts had been mined and blown out for five
miles more. No sheriff's posses from below, no hated Pinkertons, no
despised militia, no dreaded regulars, should come to the aid of Silver
Shield till there was nothing left worth saving.
And up here on the northward flank of the bold, rounded heights that
overhung the town, and harbored now both besieged and besiegers,
invisible to each other and to the lower world in the darkness, Geordie
Graham lay crouching behind a little bowlder, every sense on edge, for
to his left front, a little higher up, he could distinctly hear low,
gruff voices, confused murmurings and movements, sounds that told him
that, relying on their overwhelming numbers, the mob was coming slowly,
surely, down to carry out their threat to fire the buildings and to
finish as they pleased the wretched defenders.
It was barely nine o'clock. Below him, perhaps twenty yards downhill,
was his nearest sentry. Above him, and a little retired, was another, a
silent young German-American who had been at the head of the men
working tunnel Number Two. Beyond him still, and thrown back toward the
head of the ravine, was one of Cawker's guard, a sharp-eyed,
sharp-witted chap who had seemed at first to chafe at Graham's hints
and orders, yet had acted on them. And on these two, so far as sound
could enable him to judge, all ignorant of their presence and purpose,
this uncouth mass of men was bearing down. Winchester in hand and, as
he himself said later, his heart in his mouth, Geordie stole swiftly
uphill to the post of the German and found him kneeling and all aquiver
with excitement. He, too, had just heard.
"Don't fire till I do," said Graham. "I'll be right out where you can
hear me challenge." A few steps higher he climbed, and then called low
and clear:
"D'you hear them coming, guard? Can you see anything?"
And the answer came in the drawl of the Southland:
"Hyuh 'em plain 'nuff, but they don't show a light yet. Reckon they
don't mean tuh."
"We'll give them the fill of our magazines if they don't halt at the
word. Wait till I let drive, then let them have it!"
And so, crouching low, straightforward along the slope he sped, till,
perhaps twenty yards out, the black bulk of the mountain-side loomed
between him and the westward heaven, while against the stars of the
northern horizon he could dimly determine, heaving steadily toward him,
not fifty paces away, some huge, murmuring, moving mass. And then there
rang out on the silence of the night, clear, stern, and commanding, a
voice the like of which their ears had never heard, in words that even
they could not fail to comprehend:
"Halt where you are--or we fire!"
There was an instant of recoil and confusion and fear. Then furious
tones from far back in the throng and guttural shoutings that seemed
urging them on, for, presently, on they came, but in the silence and
dread of death.
Back went the lever of Graham's Winchester; slap went the bolt to its
seat, with the shining cartridge ahead of it; up came the butt to the
shoulder; and then, once more, that deep, virile voice rang along the
heights and went echoing away across the gorge. Back at the mine
Nolan's heart leaped at the sound of it. Away down in the village they
heard it and shrank, for the next instant set them all shrieking; for
the lightning flashed and the rifles barked loud and swift, and strong
men howled and turned and fled, anywhere out of the way, and some fell
headlong, screaming and cursing, in the rush and panic that spread from
one stern and sudden word--the soldier command: "Fire!"
CHAPTER XII
THE MAN OF THE SIEGE
Down in the valley that night there was commotion and uproar for hours,
but there was quiet at Silver Shield. One after another furious
speeches were made in foreign tongues, speeches in which the murderous
occupants of the mine buildings were doomed to an eternity of torment,
and the would-be murderous element among the miners was lauded to the
skies and urged to further effort.
But the astonishing repulse, the fact that they had been met in the
open as well as in the dark, and that a swift and sudden fire had been
poured into their very midst, had shattered the nerve of men already
shaken, although it later turned out that only three of their number
had really been shot (two of them in the back), and that twoscore had
been trampled and torn by their own people, while some thirty or more
were missing, "left dead on the hill," said their fellows, in the mad
rush for safety that followed the first flash. That sharp, stern order
and the instant response had started the rumor that soldiers, regulars,
had come up from the fort. It was pointed out that while the
Transcontinental was blocked down the Run, no one had thought to
cripple the Narrow Gauge over in the valley beyond. The road was open
to Miners' Joy, the road by which young Breifogle had made his escape,
and by this roundabout route had succor reached the besieged garrison.
All that liquor and eloquence could do was tried on the raging townsmen
that night, but not until broad daylight could they be induced to make
another trial, and by that time few were able to keep their feet on the
level.
Less than half a dozen shots from each of five Winchesters had been
enough, combined with darkness, to utterly rout the mass of rioters.
Mindful of the lesson well learned at the Point--to instantly follow a
staggering blow--Graham had sprung from his cover, called to his
fellows to "come on," and so, shouting and shooting at the very heels
of the panic, had not only chased them in headlong flight, but,
returning, had picked up half a dozen terrified prisoners and herded
them back to Nolan for such reassurance and comfort as that grim old
trooper saw fit to administer. When morning broke the depths of the
valley were still shrouded in mist and gloom. Up on the heights the
brilliant hues of the dawn shone far and wide on rocky peak and
pinnacle and, above the wooden tower of the office building, on the
fluttering folds of an American flag.
That was a grewsome day on Lance Creek. Four of the mines, temporarily
bereft of hands, had fired up and gone to work with such force as they
had, and declined to take back the men who had quit. The managers,
superintendents, bosses, and owners held council together and started
out with what they termed a relief expedition to rescue the garrison of
Silver Shield. They were seen as they came solemnly marching uphill,
waving a white flag by way of assurance, and were met on the roadway
by Nolan and Geordie. Cawker was taking a much-needed nap.
"Are you all safe?" was the eager question from below.
"Safe from what?" asked Nolan, from above.
"Why, the mob, the rioters. Didn't they try to clean you out last
night?"
"Did they?" asked Nolan turning to his silent young friend the fireman.
"Was that what those fellows were thinking of that you chased off the
hill? Why, maybe it was! But here, what we came down to find out was
about Shiner's boy. How's he?"
Then the rescuers looked at one another in some bewilderment. The
leaders were friends of Cawker. They hardly knew Nolan. They did not
know his companion the fireman.
"D'you mean to tell us you've had no trouble up there?" was the eager
demand.
"Why, lots of it, four days ago--'t least _I_ had," answered Nolan,
grimly, "but nothin' worth mention last night."
"Why, man," cried the manager of the White Eagle, "there were a
thousand riotous Bohemians and Dagoes, and Lord knows what all, went up
there last night to burn those buildings over your heads and you with
'em."
"Why, cert'nly," said Nolan, with preternatural gravity and a wink at
his comrade, who was doing his utmost to keep a straight face. "It must
have been some of those fellows _you_ blew in about ten o'clock. But
say," he broke off, as though this matter bored him, "what we want to
know is about Shiner's boy. They didn't seem to have time to talk."
By which time it dawned upon the officials present that Nolan was
having fun with them, and though the spokesmen were nettled, many
others, with genuine American sense of humor, felt that he couldn't be
blamed.
"Your name is Nolan, I think," said a man from the Denver. "We've heard
of you. Shiner's boy is better, though still weak. You mustn't feel we
left you to shift for yourselves up there. Our men were all out, and
we didn't know how soon they'd be swooping on us. 'Twasn't until last
night it was generally known that you were back, and that you and your
friends were what saved Cawker and the Silver Shield yesterday. How's
_he_?"
"Cawker? Oh, Cawker's probably about got dinner ready for you gentlemen
by this time. If you are sure about Shiner we won't go down."
"Go down? Why, Nolan, they'd murder you!"
But there came a sudden shot, and then a shout, from somewhere uphill.
On the edge of the dump a man was eagerly waving his hat, pointing away
to the northeast along the massive slope of the mountain.
"Well, Mr. Fireman," said Nolan, "I guess we'll have to go back. But
you are sure about Shiner, are you?"--this again to the visitors, as he
persisted in calling them. "Well, come right along up and see the old
man himself. Dinner ought to be ready now."
But, once back at the buildings, Nolan left to Cawker and his guard
the pleasure of receiving the crowd from across the creek. He and
Geordie were needed at once at the lookout on top of the office, the
little tower above which fluttered the flag. Down on the platform
anxious faces were upturned, for the sentry had seen a countless throng
of men, so he said, coming over from Miners' Joy. To Cawker and his
fellows it meant but one thing: The miners in the northward valley,
more numerous than these along Lance Creek, reinforced, probably, by a
swarm of the idlers from Hatch's Cove, were coming to the aid of their
friends and fellow-countrymen in the strike at Silver Shield.
For two miles out the road from the village meandered up a winding
ravine, then went twisting and turning along the eastward face of the
mountain until it dipped out of sight over the massive divide. Down in
the depths of the gorge little dots of men could be seen hurrying away
up the trail as though going to meet the coming concourse. Away out
along the mountain-side not to exceed three or four vehicles and a
scant dozen of horsemen could dimly be made out, crawling slowly
southward, coming gingerly towards them. Where, then, was the
"countless throng"?
"They were in sight on yonder ridge," said the lookout, "not ten
minutes ago. They must be hiding in the hollows, waiting for the others
to catch up," whereupon Nolan, looking daggers, had called him a
scarehead, and Geordie shouted for Cawker's glass. It was sent up the
stairway in less than a minute and focussed on Porphyry Point, a
massive buttress overhanging the farther valley. For long seconds
Geordie steadied the binocular against the staff and peered silently
through. At last he said: "Some riders and two or three livery-rigs are
coming, but I see no men afoot." Then, turning over his shoulder to
Cawker, standing in the midst of his friends and fellow-managers, and
looking eagerly aloft, he called: "Better have dinner now, if it's
ready. It will take 'em an hour to get here."
"Who is that young fellow, anyhow?" asked Townsend, of the Vanguard
Mine, and the ears of a score of men awaited the answer.
"That young feller," said Cawker, in low tone, and impressively, "was a
stranger to every one here, except old Nolan and Shiner, just
twenty-four hours ago. Now there ain't one of 'em but swears by him. I
don't know him from Adam, and Nolan won't tell, but, gentlemen--that
young feller's a dandy!"
And this of a youth in grimy cap, flannels, and overalls, with a pair
of smouched soldier gauntlets hiding the white of his hands, and a
coating of coal-dust and smudge hiding all but the clear, healthy white
of his eyes!
But an hour later came at least partial enlightenment. Picking their
way, afoot and a few in saddle, welcomed by shouts from the lately
besieged, and escorted by a deputation sent forward to meet them, there
began to arrive certain citizens well known to the neighborhood by name
and reputation.
There was the sheriff of Yampah, with a small squad of deputies. There
was the mayor of Argenta, a director in the mines, and with him,
puffing prodigiously and slowly up the ramp from the wagon-road, two
brother directors away out from Denver. There were certain prominent
citizens of Argenta and Hatch's Cove. There were certain railway men,
with men and tools at their back and no time to waste. There were two
men in civilian dress whom many a man of Silver Run knew for soldiers
at once, for as such had they known them before--Captain Lee and
Quartermaster McCrea of the old --th Cavalry--and there had been a
remarkable meeting and hand-shaking between them and Nolan, and a
whispered confabulation, at the end of which the two dove into the
office building where Shiner still lay, comforted by better news of his
boy, by good surgical aid, and by a skilful and competent nurse who,
for more than one reason, preferred to keep out of sight for the time
being. There had been a face-to-face meeting between sergeant and
sheriff when Nolan came forth from a rapturous scene at old Shiner's
bedside. But this time the sheriff looked sheepish, and there was no
talk of arrest. Young Breifogle, it seems, would not die of his
wounds. One of the culprits had "split" and the real assailants were
known.
And there had been a fine shower of congratulation on Cawker for his
heroic defence and determined stand against tremendous odds, and the
three magnates present of Silver Shield had begun with much unction to
talk of reward and appreciation, and very probably Cawker felt both
heroic and deserving, and quite ready to accept all credit and pay, but
there were too many witnesses, too many wise men, too many suggestive
smiles and snickers and audible remarks, and Cawker had sense to see
and then to rise manfully to the occasion.
"We did the best we knew how, gentlemen," said he, "but I am bound to
say Silver Shield would have been in ruins this minute, and most of us
dead, if it hadn't been for Nolan--the man you ordered thrown out."
There was a silence almost dramatic for a moment.
"Who ordered him thrown out?" asked Mr. Stoner, of Denver.
"The directors, sir, unless young Mr. Breifogle lied. These men are my
witnesses."
And the answer came straightway.
"No such orders were given by the board. If Mr. Breifogle gave them,
they were his alone."
Whereupon a shout went up that shook the roof. But the end was not yet.
Nolan was dragged forward to be grasped by the hand and smothered with
congratulations, and old Nolan, in turn, would have none of it. A dozen
men had seized Geordie Graham, even as his classmates and comrades had
chaired him a few weeks back at the Point, and black, grimy, and
protesting, he was heaved forward and deposited in front of the
astonished trio. But the shout that went up from all sides was
significant. Lee and McCrea were shouting, too.
"More heroes?" asked Mr. Stoner, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
"Well--er, Nolan, they told us on the way over that there must be a
hundred soldiers here."
"That's about right, sir," grinned Nolan; then, reaching forth, he laid
a hand lightly on Graham's broad shoulder, "and here stands--most of
'em."
CHAPTER XIII
AWAY ON THE WARPATH
And all these chapters it has taken to tell how it came about that
Second Lieutenant George Montrose Graham was quite a celebrity in the
--th Cavalry before ever he reported for duty with his troop. Several
weeks the Silver Shield Mining Company spent in a squabble among
themselves that ended in the smothering of "the Breifogle interest,"
and came near to sending "the Boss of Argenta" to jail. Several days
elapsed before Captain Lee and Lieutenants McCrea and Graham felt it
entirely prudent to leave, but when they did it was with the assurance
that stockholders who had endured to the end, as had Graham, Lee, and
McCrea, were now to reap the reward of their tenacity.
It is a recorded fact that, within three weeks after the departure of
McCrea and Geordie from West Point for the West, there came an offer to
Dr. Graham of something like six times the cost price of his shares,
and the offer was declined, with thanks.
It is a recorded fact that Silver Shield was reorganized within the
summer, to the end that the controlling interest passed from Colorado
to Chicago.
It is a recorded fact that, from afar out in the Rockies, there came to
Lieutenant Colonel Hazzard, Commandant of Cadets, a "wire" that puzzled
him not a little until he laid it before his clear-headed wife, who
gave him a delighted kiss and scurried away to show it to Mrs. Graham.
It read:
"You win. I lose; and, losing, am a heavy winner."
For Bonner had supplied the money that paid for much of that costly
plant, most of which would have gone up in smoke and down in ruin could
the mob have had its way. Bonner himself had rushed out to Denver at
news of the trouble. Bonner sent for Cawker and Nolan, and others of
the employés, and learned for himself how things had been going, and
was not too civil to Stoner and his Denver colleagues. Bonner, a
director in the Transcontinental, heard from Anthony and Cullin all
about the young fireman they spirited up to the mines, and the elder
Breifogle had to hear how that young fireman cared for the battered son
and heir, after his "beating up" at the fists and feet of the rioters,
and if Breifogle bore no love for the Grahams, he at least loved his
own.
It is a recorded fact that old Shiner got well of his wound after many
long weeks, and his brave boy in much shorter time, and that both were
handsomely rewarded. Cawker came in for a good thing by way of a raise,
but it was Long Nolan whom Bonner and the magnates set on a
pinnacle--Long Nolan, and, as Nolan would have it, Nolan's young
commander.
It is a matter of record that when Captain Lee went back to the
regiment he congratulated Lane, for one thing, on having held on to his
stocks--almost the only one at Reno who did--and, for another, on
having such a youngster for second lieutenant. "He has won his spurs,"
said Lee, "before ever he donned his uniform." And there was rejoicing
in the regiment over Lee's description of events, for five of the
younger officers, graduated within three years, knew "Pops" in his
cadet days and remembered him well; and all of the old officers who had
served at Camp Sandy and at Fort Reynolds knew him in babyhood, or
boyhood, or both. So did most of the veteran troopers.
And it is a matter of record that, on the eastward way again, both
McCrea and Geordie dined with Mr. Bonner at the Chicago Club, and the
new major-general commanding the military division graciously accepted
Bonner's bid to be one of the dinner-party, and took Geordie aside
after coffee had been served, noting that the silent young fellow
neither smoked nor touched his wine, and asked him a few questions
about the Point and many about the mines, and at parting the general
was so good as to express the wish that when Geordie came out to join
in September he would stop and see him, all of which was very
flattering to a young fellow just out of cadet gray, and Geordie, as in
duty bound, said that he certainly would, little dreaming how soon--how
very soon--he and the old regiment would be riding hard under the lead
of that hard-riding leader, and facing a foe led by warriors true and
tried--a foe any ten of whom could have made mince-meat of ten times
their number of such foemen as Graham had met at the mines.
How could they, the brave young class, have dreamed, that exquisite
June day of their graduation, that within six months some of their
number were destined to do desperate battle with a desperate band of
the braves of the allied Sioux in the Bad Lands of South Dakota?
For it is also a matter of record that Lieutenant and Quartermaster
McCrea made application, as he had promised, for six months' leave of
absence, with permission to go beyond sea, and with every intention of
spending most of the winter in sunny Italy. But he spent it in saddle
and snowdrift, in scout and skirmish, and in at least one sharp,
stinging, never-to-be-forgotten battle with the combined bands of the
Sioux, and came within an ace of losing his life as well as his leave,
for many a brave soldier and savage warrior fell in that bitter
fight--Geordie Graham's maiden battle. Little wonder he hopes he may
never see another like it.
And it all came about as such affairs have so often occurred in the
past. Unheeded warnings, unnoted threats, unpunished outbreaks, that
experienced soldiers about the reservation could readily understand,
and foretell what was coming, and make their own individual
preparations for the inevitable. But nothing they could report to
superiors would shake the serene confidence of the Department of the
Interior in the pacific purposes of its red children, the wards of the
nation. All along in the summer and the early autumn the "ghost-dance"
had been spreading from tribe to tribe, the war drum had been thumping
in the villages, the Indian messiah, a transparent fraud, as all might
see, wandered unrebuked from band to band--half a dozen messiahs, in
fact--and along in September, instead of Geordie Graham's best-loved
chum and classmate, Connell, of the Engineers, there came to the Point
a letter from that young officer, that Graham received with rejoicing,
read with troubled eyes, and for the first time in his life kept from
his mother. There came a time, later still, when there were many
letters to be kept from her, but those sorrowful days were not as yet.
This letter, however, he could not bring himself to show her, for it
told of things she had been dreading to hear ever since the papers
began telling of the ghost-dancing on the plains. It read:
"PECATONICA, WISCONSIN, _September 5th._
"DEAR POPS,--I fully intended to be with you to spend a week as
promised, before joining at Willett's Point, but you are more
likely to be spending that week with me. I am just back from a
run to the Black Hills with father. He has some property about
Deadwood. Returning, I stopped two days at Fort Niobrara, as
the guest of 'Sampson' Stone, whose troop is stationed there,
and I tell you it was interesting. He took me up to the
reservation, and I had my first look at the Sioux on their
native heath, and saw for myself how peaceful they are.
Everybody at the agency is scared stiff. Every officer at the
fort, from the colonel down, is convinced that war is coming.
The governor of Nebraska has been up looking after the settlers
and ranch folk and warning them away. General Miles has an
officer there watching the situation. From him I heard that
your regiment is to be sent to the field at once to march
northward; that other troops are warned, and I suppose you'll
be joining somewhere on the way. But the row, when it comes,
will break out north of the Niobrara, and the --th may not get
there in time.
"Stone says if you want a taste of the real thing, to apply for
orders to report for duty to the commanding officer at Fort
Niobrara until the arrival of your regiment. I have begged the
Chief of Engineers to let me have a few weeks in the field with
General Miles, and am assured that the general will apply for
me. Not that I can be of any value as Engineer Officer, but
just to get the experience, and perhaps see what we've been
reading of a dozen years--a real Indian campaign. Now, old man,
you know that country. You were there as a boy. _You_ could be
of use. Why not ask for orders at once? Then we can push out
via Sioux City together. I know how the mother will protest,
especially since she was robbed of three precious weeks in
July; but, isn't it the chance of a lifetime? Isn't this what
we are for, after all? Wire decision. Yours as ever,
"CONNELL."
"Good old Badger," murmured Geordie. "He always was right." Then that
letter went to an inner pocket, and for the first time in his life,
with something to conceal from her, George Graham turned to his mother.
It was a beautiful September evening. The gray-and-white battalion had
just formed for parade. The throng of spectators lined the roadway in
front of the superintendent's quarters, and with that proud mother
clinging as usual to his arm, with that ominous letter in the breast of
his sack-coat, so close that her hand by a mere turn of the wrist could
touch it, George Graham stood silently beside her as she chatted
happily with Mrs. Hazzard. Not ten feet distant, leaning on a cane, was
an officer lamed for life and permanently retired from service because
of a desperate wound received in savage warfare. With him, eagerly
talking, was a regimental comrade who had survived the bloody day on
the Little Big Horn, and he was telling of things he had seen and men
whom he had met, men whose names were famous among the Sioux and were
now on the lips of the nation at large. Foremost of these was the
old-time enemy of every white man, long the leader of the most powerful
band that ever disputed the dominion of the West, Tatanka
Iyotanka--Sitting Bull.
Not fifty miles from Standing Rock Agency, surrounded by devoted
followers, dwelling in Indian ease and comfort, but rejoicing in new
opportunities for evil, Sitting Bull, said the spokesman, was holding
frequent powwows with the ghost-dancers, urging, exciting, encouraging
all, and still the Indian Bureau would not--and the army, therefore,
could not--interfere. Everywhere from the Yellowstone to the confines
of Nebraska the young braves of the allied bands were swarming forth
and holding their fierce and ominous rites, and the autumn air of the
Dakotas rang with the death song and war-whoop. The blood craze was
upon them and would not down. The messiah had appeared to chief after
chief, warning him the time had come to rise and sweep the white
invaders from the face of the earth, promising as reward long years of
plenty and prosperity, the return of the vanished buffalo, the
resurrection of their famous dead, a savage millennium the thought of
which was more than enough to array the warriors for battle. "It's
coming; it's _bound_ to come!" said the captain, in his decisive way,
"and if old Bull isn't choked off speedily we'll have work for a dozen
regiments as well as ours."
Graham listened, fascinated, yet praying his mother might not hear.
Secure in the possession of her stalwart son, full of joy in their
present and pride in his past, she chatted merrily on. Mrs. Frazier,
too, had joined them, another woman who had reason to rejoice in
Geordie's prowess at Silver Shield. They were so blithely, busily,
engaged that he presently managed to slip unobserved away and join the
little group about the speaker. Colonel Hazzard, too, was there and
held forth a cordial hand to the new-comer. Geordie's father never
betrayed half the pride in him that the colonel frankly owned to.
"This must interest you not a little," said he.
"More than I can tell you, sir," was the quick answer. "More than I
dare let mother know! But I have come for advice. I've a letter from
Mr. Connell. Read it, sir, and tell me how to go about it. Before
mother can get wind of it, I want orders to report at Niobrara."
CHAPTER XIV
A SCOUT FOR THE SIOUX
The dawn of an autumn day was breaking over a barren and desolate
landscape. The mist was rising from the silent pools of the narrow
stream that alternately lay in lazy reaches and sped leaping and
laughing in swift rapid over pebbly bed--the Mini Chaduza of the Sioux.
The sun was still far below the eastward horizon, but the clouds were
gorgeous with his livery of red and gold, and the stars had shrunk from
sight before the ardor of his beams. The level "bench" through which
the stream meandered, the billowing slopes to the north and south, were
bare of foliage and uninviting to the eye, yet keen and wary eyes were
scanning their bald expanse, studying every crest and curve and ridge
in search of moving objects. Only at the very brink of the flowing
waters, and only in far-scattered places along the stream, little
clumps of cottonwood-trees gave proof that nature had not left the
valley utterly without shade and refuge when the summer's sun beamed
hotly down upon the lower lands of the Dakotas. And now only among
these scattered oases could even practised eyes catch any sign of life.
Here and there under the banks and shielded from outer view, near-by
watchers might discover little, dull-red patches glowing dimly in the
semi-darkness. Here and there among the timber and along the brink
little groups of dark objects, shifting slowly about, betrayed the
presence of animal life, and afar out upon the prairie slopes tiny
black spots on every side, perhaps a dozen in all, told the
plains-practised eye that here was a cavalry bivouac--a little detached
force of Uncle Sam's blue-shirted troopers, thrown out from the shelter
of fort or garrison, and lurking for some purpose in the heart of the
Indian country.
For Indians there were by scores right here at the old antelope
crossing only the night before. The sands of the ford were still
trampled by myriad hoofs of ponies and streaked by the dragging poles
of the travois. The torn earth on the northward rise out of the stream
was still wet and muddy from the drip of shaggy breast and barrel of
their nimble mounts. No need to call up Iron Shield or Baptiste or
young Touch-the-Skies, Sioux scouts from the agency, to interpret the
signs and point the way. The major commanding and all his officers and
most of his men could read the indications as well as the half-breeds,
natives to the soil. A big band of young warriors, with a few elders,
had yielded to the eloquence of the messengers of Sitting Bull and were
out for mischief. They had been missing from the agencies several
weeks; had been ghost-dancing with their fellows from Pine Ridge to the
west, and were by this time probably on their way to swell the ranks
and stiffen the back of that big chief of the Minniconjou Sioux--"Big
Foot," as known to the whites, Si Tanka, as known to the Indian
Bureau, and "Spotted Elk," so said Iron Shield, the scout, as known to
the Sioux themselves.
A famous character was Si Tanka. Next to Sitting Bull, now that Gall
was out of the way, dying of illness and old age, Si Tanka had more
influence than any chief afield, and he longed to be acknowledged head
of the allied Sioux. He had been to Washington, had been photographed
side by side with Mr. Blaine on the steps of the Capitol; had sold to
the whites the right of way for a railway through his Cheyenne River
lands. He belonged to the Cheyenne River Agency far to the east, and
declined to live there. He had his own village up in the Cherry Creek
country, midway between the troops at Fort Meade in the Black Hills and
Fort Bennett on the Missouri. He had white man's log-cabins, wagons,
furniture, horses, hens, and chickens. He had, moreover, hundreds of
cartridges, and the means and appliances wherewith to reload his
shells, and he had, what was worse, a lively son, Black Fox, who had
more Winchesters than he knew what to do with, and an insatiable
longing to use them against the whites.
Ever since the ghost-dancing had begun, Si Tanka stayed in the open.
Agents went forth and begged him to come in where he belonged--to the
Cheyenne Agency at the east, or to the Pine Ridge to the southwest, or
the Rosebud to the southeast, or, if his lordship preferred, he might
even go camp near Fort Meade, or surrender at Standing Rock Agency to
the northeast, but to be out in the wilds and barely one hundred miles
from Sitting Bull, also posing as a private and sovereign citizen,
accepting government support but declining government supervision--that
was something the Indian Bureau viewed with alarm, and well it might,
for if Tatanka Iyotanka (Bull Sitting Big) and Siha Tanka, Si for short
(Foot Big), should take it into their dusky heads to be allies and not
rivals, if the great Uncapapa and the big Minniconjou were to join
forces, there would be the mischief to pay all over the West. So the
Bureau sent and civilly requested. Si Tanka most uncivilly replied,
and Tatanka Iyotanka scorned to reply at all.
What made matters bad was this, that young braves were eternally
getting crazy over the ghost-dancing and going off to join these big
chiefs. "_Akichita hemacha_" ("I am a warrior"), being all they had to
say to friends and teachers who sought to dissuade them.
Away up at Fort Meade, in the Black Hills, were some high-mettled
fellows, cavalry and infantry, who were eagerly watching the
indications, one burly major of Horse fairly losing his temper over the
situation, and begging the powers to let him take his capital squadron,
with one or two companies of infantry, and, between his horsemen, his
"walkaheaps," and himself, sturdy "Napa Yahmni," as the Sioux had named
him, swore he'd bring Big Foot to his senses and back to the agency.
Napa yahmni meant "three fingers," that being all that were left on one
of his hands after a scrimmage with Southern sabres during the great
Civil War. Really, there was reason why something should be done, or
surely the settlers and ranch folk would be made to suffer. And with
troops there at Fort Meade, in the Hills, and over at Fort Yates, on
the Missouri, and at Fort Robinson off to the southwest, or Niobrara
here to the east, it was high time Mr. Big Foot was made to behave, and
still the government stayed its orders and held its hand.
One cool-headed, nervy, mild-mannered young officer had taken his life
in his hands, and a half-breed interpreter in civilized clothing,
visited Si Tanka's big village and had a talk with his turbulent
braves, to the end that as many as forty decided to quit, go home and
be good, give up evil spirits, intentions, and ghost-dancing, to the
rage of Black Fox and the amaze of Napa Yahmni, but it wasn't a week
before another Messiah broke loose among the sand-hills of western
Nebraska, and braves by the dozen sped thither to hear him; and
presently both agencies had another influx of outsiders, urging revolt
and uprising, and the old men counselled vainly, and preachers and
teachers pleaded without avail. The young wards of the nation were
ripe for mischief. The day of their deliverance had come. The Messiah
was calling his chosen to the wild wastes of the Bad Lands, where they
could sing and shout and dance till they dropped, and then if they went
mad with religion, and away to the warpath, it meant woe for western
Nebraska and for the Dakotas far and near. This was the situation that
called for a scout from Fort Niobrara, and thus it happened that for
over a fortnight a little column of cavalry had been patrolling the
breaks and the valleys away to the northwest, peering into the old
haunts of the Sioux along the headwaters of the pretty streams rising
among the hills beyond the weather-beaten landmark of Eagle's Nest.
They found lodge poles a-plenty on Black Pipe Creek, and the ashes of
many a little fire along Pass Creek and Bear-in-the-Lodge, and away to
the Yellow Medicine. They circled clear round the wild worshippers, it
seems, far west as the Wounded Knee, without ever encountering one; and
yet keeping them on the move had broken up their incantations, and, as
the major believed, had worn out their obstinate determination to
stick to their medicine-men and Messiahs whether the Great White Father
would have it or not.
For two days the column had followed, eastward now, the trail of a big
band, and just when Baptiste and Touch-the-Sky, interpreters, would
have it that the crazy chiefs and their followers had been fairly
headed off and balked of their purpose of joining Big Foot beyond the
Cheyenne, just when it seemed likely that another day would enable the
troops to overhaul them and herd them peaceably, if possible, forcibly,
if not, back to the sheltering wing of the agency and the Indian
police, lo, just at sunset, after a long day's march, a corporal had
come galloping, full cry, from the rear-guard, while the scouts were
still far out to the front: "The Indians are back of us at least six
miles, going like mad for the north!"
Then the major commanding said things that made his pilots' ears
tingle. It was all gospel truth. Finding themselves followed and being
steadily pressed onward toward the fort and the settlements, the
astute warriors had left a goodly sized party ambling along in front,
to lead the cavalry on; had dropped away all afternoon by twos and
threes as though looking for antelope or black tail, not northward
where the valley of the upper Chaduza was open and shallow and they
could be seen for miles, but southward among the breaks and ravines
where they were hidden entirely; had reassembled on a little branch to
the southwest and then, when the column was well out of sight, had
rushed for the north and the wild country so recently left; had forded
the Chaduza and by moonrise were doubtless safely camped for the night
on the south fork of White River. All the major could do was order his
men to the right-about, march to the crossing (another weary six miles
after the thirty-six of the day), and, with drooping horses and riders,
unsaddle, cook supper, and settle for the night, then send couriers to
the post in the morning.
And now morning had come and couriers had not yet gone, for an hour
before the first break of day--the _anpaniya_ of the Sioux--there had
come galloping from the northeast a riderless horse, at sight of whose
blood-stained saddle and stirrup hood the herd-guard woke the officer
of the pickets. The captain unrolled from his blanket, took one look by
the light of the moon, and bade the corporal find Baptiste, who needed
not to see the saddle; he knew the horse at a glance.
"Pete Gamble's," said he. "They've begun killing!" And Pete Gamble was
a ranchman well known to them all, both Indian and white. "If they
would kill _him_," said he, "they would kill anybody."
And as if this were not enough, barely half an hour later two men, mad
with terror, came spurring in over the northward ridge, almost
delirious with joy to find themselves in the presence of friends. Their
little hunting camp, they said, had been suddenly "jumped" early in the
night. They had managed to get out with stampeded horses, but every one
else was butchered, and the Indians were after _them_. The major
doubled his guards to the north and awaited the Indian coming. He
would not rouse his wearied men until actually assailed.
But now it was fairly broad daylight, and not an Indian feather had
shown nor an Indian shot been heard. Slowly, sleepily, at the gruff
summons of their sergeants, the troopers were crawling out of their
blankets and stretching and yawning by the fires. No stirring
trumpet-call had roused them from their dreams. A stickler for style
and ceremony was the major in garrison, but out on Indian campaign he
was "horse sense from the ground up," as his veterans put it. He
observed all formalities when on ordinary march, and none whatever when
in chase of the Indians.
He had let them sleep to the very last minute, well knowing he might
have stern demands to make that day. He and his adjutant had reduced
the statements of the hunters to writing, and a brief, soldierly report
was now ready to go to the general commanding the department, who had
come out to Fort Niobrara to be nearer the scene of action. The fort
lay nearly fifty miles away, south of east, the agency even farther to
the north and east, and the recalcitrant braves were heading away
through the wilds of their old reservation, and might stop only for
occasional bite, sup, or sleep until they joined forces with Big Foot
or Black Fox, full a hundred miles as the crow flies, for now were they
branded renegades in the light of the law.
In the crisp, chill air of the late autumn morning tiny smokes from the
cook-fires sailed straight aloft, melting speedily into the blue. For
nearly half a mile along the stream horses and pack-mules were
scattered upon the "bench," browsing eagerly on the dew-laden bunch
grass. Farther out beyond them on every side, with their campaign hats
pulled down over their grim eyebrows and their heads deep in the
collars of their cavalry overcoats, the men of the guard still kept
vigilant watch. Long years of experience on the Indian frontier had
taught their leaders the need of precaution, and the sentries took
their cue from the "old hands." By a little camp-fire, booted,
spurred, slouch-hatted, like his troopers, and muffled in a light-blue
overcoat that could not be told from theirs, the major commanding was
giving brief directions to three troopers who stood silently before
him, their carbines dangling from their broad shoulder-belts, with the
reins of their chargers in hand. Wiry and gaunt were these chargers,
wiry and gaunt were the men, for those were days when neither horse nor
rider went over-weight on campaign, or came back with a superfluous
ounce. But horses and men had stripped for the day's work. Blanket,
poncho, and overcoat, saddle-bags, side lines, lariat, and
picket-pin--everything, in fact, but themselves, their arms,
cartridges, canteens, saddles, saddle-blankets, and bridles--had been
left to the pack-train. A good breakfast to start with, a few hardtack
and slices of bacon in the breast-pocket of the hunting-shirt, settled
the question of subsistence. They were to start at once, deliver those
despatches at Niobrara, unless headed off by Indians, long before set
of sun, and be back with reply before its rise on the morrow.
Then came the question as to the fate of the poor fellows of Gamble's
and the hunters' camp.
"Mr. Willard," said the major to his adjutant, as the couriers mounted
and rode away, "send one platoon over to Gamble's camp--it'll take 'em
all day--and another back on the trail of the teamsters, and see what
they can find of the outfit. They'll have to hunt for it themselves.
The hunters say they wouldn't go back for a million apiece."
The adjutant was figuring in his note-book. He closed it, arose at
once, and looked about him. Officers and men, the six troops, or
companies, of the detachment seemed busy at breakfast. The aroma of
soldier coffee floated on the keen morning air, and under the gentle,
genial influence of the welcome stimulant men began to thaw out, and
presently the firesides were merry with chaff and fun. A curious and
sympathetic group, to be sure, hovered about the survivors of the
hunters' camp, listening rather doubtfully to their tales, for the
tales had taken devious turns under cross-examination. But for the
bloody trappings of Pete Gamble's horse, telling mutely of tragedy, the
hunters might have met only contempt and scoffing. Indian scares were
old as the trails.
"Whose turn is it?" presently questioned the major, as Mr. Willard
started away. The adjutant halted and faced about:
"'D' and 'F' troops, sir."
"All right. One officer and twenty men from each will be enough."
And then came striding forward, with quick, elastic steps, a young
soldier in dark-blue campaign shirt and riding-breeches, a three weeks'
stubble on his clear-cut, sun-burned face, a field-glass slung over one
shoulder, a leather-covered note-book tucked away inside his
cartridge-belt. No sign of rank was visible about his dress, yet there
could be little doubt of it. The major looked up, smiling.
"Fast going for topographical notes yesterday, wasn't it, Mr. Connell?"
"I'm afraid so, sir. Indeed, I'm ashamed to submit them, but I wouldn't
have missed this scout for a month's pay, all the same."
"Well, we don't often see the engineers on this sort of duty. I'm glad
the general sent you along. What is it, captain?" he broke off, turning
to a gray-mustached, choleric-looking veteran who came suddenly upon
them, breathing rather hard.
"Major," began the stout man, impetuously, "this makes the third time
in ten days 'F' Troop's been ordered on side scout, or some part of it.
Now we're ordered back to hunt up what's left of that wagon camp,
and--"
"One moment, captain," interposed the commander, placidly. "You say
'we.' My orders are only one officer and twenty men."
"Well, I have only one officer with me, and _he_ don't belong," was the
querulous rejoinder. "He's simply a volunteer with the command, and so
utterly inexperienced that I consider it necessary to go myself. I
can't trust my men to a mere boy just out of school."
"That will do, Captain Garrett," said the major, promptly, yet with
absolutely unruffled tone and temper. "If _I_ can, _you_ may. Mr.
Graham has had more experience than you are aware of."
"Does Mr. Graham go--in command?" asked Connell, eagerly, as Captain
Garrett, silenced, but swelling with amaze, stood helplessly by. "May
_I_ go with him, sir?"
"By all means, Mr. Connell, if you wish."
CHAPTER XV
FIRST SIGHT OF THE FOE
In half an hour the sun was up and two little detachments of cavalry
were up and away--one of them, under Lieutenant O'Fallon, filing out of
the cotton-woods, at the eastward verge, and heading straight on the
trail of the couriers, who were already out of sight down the valley;
the other, leaving a few minutes later, was just disappearing from view
of the watchers in the bivouac, over the low ridge or divide that
spanned the northward sky-line. Once before, five years back, Geordie
Graham had led a little cavalry command on a swift and successful chase
after a gang of frontier desperadoes who had robbed the bank at
Argenta. Now, for the first time in his life, he was both guide and
commander. Now, as they had done time and again in cadet days, Connell
and Graham, "Badger" and "Coyote," went side by side, almost hand in
hand, on the path of stirring and at last perilous duty.
To Connell the scout had thus far been one of almost unalloyed
enjoyment and profit. Attached to the staff of the commander as
engineer and topographical officer, he had ridden at will on the flanks
of the column, a single orderly his sole attendant, a prismatic compass
his only instrument. Then with the declining hours of the day came the
making up of his notes, and after supper the hours of confab with
Geordie, who, whenever possible, would come over to headquarters
camp-fire. There was no sociability at his own.
"It is too bad," Major Berry had confided to Connell the third day out.
"It just so happened that 'Old Grumbly' was the one captain without a
subaltern when Mr. Graham reported for duty with us, and your fine
young classmate had to take the place of one of the absentees. The
colonel couldn't help himself. Grumbly is a good soldier in his way,
Mr. Connell, and knows his trade, too. I suppose Graham has--sized him
up?" This with a cock of his head and a keen glance.
"Shouldn't wonder, sir; but if he has, he's kept it to himself."
"Well, if Garrett gets to bothering Graham too much, you let me know."
"I will, sir, if Graham lets _me_ know, but--I'm mistaken in Graham if
he opens his head on the subject."
And though the scout was now in its third week, and things had been
said and done by "Grumbly" Garrett that set other men to talking, not a
word had come from "Coyote."
But it soon transpired that if Graham wouldn't speak of his troop
commander _pro tem._, neither did he speak to him, save when occasion
required. Day after day on the march it was noted that while the senior
lieutenant of each troop rode side by side with his captain, the young
West Pointer serving with "F" was almost always at the rear of its
column of twos, where, as it transpired, Garrett had given him orders
to march and see that the men kept closed. But no complaint came from
Graham.
Now, however, as the two old chums rode away on a side scout of their
own, it might well be expected that "Coyote" would be less reticent.
The eyes of half the command had followed them appreciatively as the
detachment started, Graham and Connell in the lead, Sergeant Drum, and
his nineteen following in compact column of twos. No sooner did they
reach the outlying sentries, however, than it was noted that the young
leader looked back over his shoulder, and the next moment two troopers
detached themselves from the rest and spurred out ahead until full six
hundred yards in the lead. Then two others obliqued out to the right
and left until nearly as a great a distance on the flanks.
"Knows his biz," said the adjutant, sententiously.
"Knows nothing but what I've taught him day by day," snarled Captain
Garrett. "And I wash my hands of all responsibility for that detachment
once it's out of sight of us."
"Shut up," growled a junior. "The 'Old Man's' got ears, and he'll hear
you."
"Well, I _want_ him to hear--it's time he _did_ hear--and heed," was
the surly answer. But "Grumbly's" eyes were wisely watching the major
as he spoke, noting that the "Old Man" was busy with his binocular,
following Graham's movements up the long, gradual, northward slope. The
moment the major dropped it and turned toward the group, Captain
Garrett changed his tone. "What I'm most afraid of is his getting
lost," said he.
"You needn't be, captain," said the bearded commander, placidly. "Mr.
Graham knows this country better than we do. He spent long months here
before ever we set eyes on it."
Garrett's jaw dropped. "Then why didn't he tell me? How was I to know?"
"Principally, I fancy," drawled the adjutant, who loved to rub "Old
Grumbly's" fur the wrong way, "because you told him two weeks ago that
when you wanted advice or information on any subject from him you'd ask
it."
But while Graham had as yet won no friend in Captain Garrett, he had
found many among the troopers. His fine horsemanship, his kind,
courteous manner to them, his soldierly bearing toward their irascible
captain, had appealed to them at the start and held them more and more
toward the finish. They saw the second day out that he was no novice at
plainscraft. The captain had asked his estimate of the distance from a
ford of the Chaduza to a distant butte, and promptly scoffed at his
answer; indeed, it surprised most of them. Yet "Plum" Gunnison,
pack-master, who had served seven years at the post, said the
lieutenant was right. They saw within the fourth day that the new-comer
was an old stager in more ways than one. "Touch-the-Sky," scout and
interpreter, said the lieutenant knew sign talk, which was more than
their captain did. They were to see still more within the compass of a
day's march, but they had seen enough in their two weeks' comradeship
to give them confidence in the young officer they never felt for their
own and only "Grumbly," who, with all his experience, would often
blunder, and Grumbly's blunders told on his troop, otherwise they might
not have cared.
In low tone the troopers were chatting as they crossed the divide and
once more came in view of the two far out in advance, riding now
northeastward. They were following back, without much difficulty, the
hoof-prints of the two fugitives who, riding in terror and darkness,
had so fortunately found their bivouac at break of day. And it was of
these two both the men and their young officers were talking as the
little party jogged steadily on.
Peaceful hunters and law-abiding men the pair had represented
themselves. They were originally five in all--three "pardners," a
wagoner, and a cook. Their "outfit" consisted of a covered wagon with
four draught and three saddle horses. They indignantly spurned the
suggestion that they had whiskey to swap with the Indians for fur and
peltries. They had a ranch down on Snake River, were well known in
Valentine, had never made trouble, nor had trouble, with the Indians;
but the game was all gone from their home neighborhood, and so long as
they kept off the reservation they knew there was no reason for the
Indians troubling them. And here came another suggestion. The "Old
Man," Major Berry, had somewhat bluntly asked if they did not know they
had been trespassing, had been well within the reservation lines and
north of Nebraska, and the two swore stoutly that Lem Pearson, partner
and projector of the enterprise, had said he knew the country
perfectly, had been there half a dozen times, and they left it all to
him. They never dreamed they were doing wrong until their camp was
"jumped" in the dead of night, and the Sioux chased them every inch of
the way till they got in sight of the cavalry.
Yet here was the detachment, at six o'clock of this sparkling morning,
clear out of sight of the rest of the cavalry, and half-way across the
long swale of the next divide, and, though the print of the shod horses
was easily followed, not once yet, anywhere--although the little troop
was spread out in long extended line and searched diligently--not once
had they found the print of a pony hoof. Now they were full an hour,
and nearly four miles, out from camp, and Geordie signalled, slowly
swinging his campaign hat about his head, for his men to assemble, then
dismount and take their ten minutes' rest.
"Con," said he, presently, "it's my belief those scamps were lying. The
only Indians near the Chaduza were those that skipped for White River
last night and are probably heading for Eagle's Nest now. Their trail
must be three miles or more west of us here, and South Fork isn't three
miles ahead. We'll see it from yonder ridge."
Connell was squatting, tailor fashion, on the turf, and thoughtfully
playing "mumble-t'-peg" with his hunting-knife, while his troop horse
cropped thriftily at the bunch grass. Graham had been giving a glance
over his little command, watching the resetting of a saddle or a
careful folding of a blanket. It would presently be time to mount and
start, but there was something on his mind, and, as of old, he wanted
to have it out with his chum.
Connell drew his knife from the sod, then, with the point on the tip of
the left forefinger and the haft deftly held between the thumb and
finger of his right, shifted it over by his right ear and sent it
whirling down, saw it sink two inches in the sand, bolt upright, then
queried: "They said their camp was on the Fork ten miles away
northward. Could that be?"
"It might. The Fork turns almost square to the north and runs back of
Rosebud. But what I mean is, they weren't chased by the Sioux. I doubt
if they fought them at all."
"How about Gamble's horse?--and the blood? There's been some kind of a
fight. Look, Con! There's a signal!"
Surely enough. As Connell sprang to his feet and the men quickly turned
to their grazing horses, one of the troopers, far in advance, could be
seen close to the crest of the divide. He had dismounted to creep
forward and peer over, and now, half-way back to where he had left his
horse, was waving his hat, with right arm extended from directly over
his head down to the horizontal and to the east.
"Mount!" said Geordie, quietly, springing lightly to saddle with a
thrill of excitement in his young heart. "Follow at a walk, sergeant,
off to the northeast. That's where we're needed, Con."
For the advance-guard, mounting quickly, was now loping along parallel
with the divide, yet keeping well down below its backbone, and, putting
spurs to their horses, "Badger" and "Coyote," the chums of old, darted
swiftly away to join them.
Five minutes more, while a trooper held the horses of the young
officers and their guides, while in silence and with eager eyes the
little detachment came jogging over the swale to the support of the
leaders, three forms were crouching forward to the top of the wavelike
ridge, and presently three heads, uncovered, were peering over into the
valley beyond. Then the arm of one of them was outstretched, pointing.
Then the field-glasses of two others were unslung, fixed and focused
on some distant object; and then back, still crouching, came one of the
number, signalling to Sergeant Drum to come on. Whereupon, without a
word of command, simply following the example of their foremost man,
the riders gave the bridle-hand, and with the other whipped the ready
carbines from their sockets, and with the butts resting on the right
thigh, the brown muzzles advanced, came on at a swift trot, those in
rear unconsciously pressing forward on those in front.
Then another signal--this time from their young commander, who had come
running down afoot, leaving "Badger" at the crest. In the eagerness of
the forward rush the riders were opening out, coming right and left
front into line, as the soldiers say, and Graham's gauntleted
hands--the same gauntlets Big Ben had coveted three months
earlier--were extended full to right and left, the length of each arm,
and then brought "palms together" in front. "Close in," it said, as
plain as day, and almost instantly Drum's gruff voice could be heard in
rebuke; almost as quickly the practised riders could be seen closing
the outer leg and rein. Another moment and the little line was trotting
almost boot to boot. Then as they neared the point where the slope
became abrupt, Graham's right hand, palm forward, went straight aloft,
a gesture instantly repeated by the sergeant, and in two seconds more
the horses, panting a little with excitement, were pawing the turf, and
Drum's voice, low and compelling, ordered, "Count fours!" The next
moment the odd numbers darted forward four yards, and halted. The next,
with carbines swung over their shoulders, numbers one, two, and three
were swinging from saddle, the next all horses were again in one line,
with every fourth trooper still seated in saddle; and the dismounted
men deftly lashing their reins to the headstalls of numbers two and
three, while three himself passed his reins up to number four. Then,
nimbly, with carbines at trail, up came a dozen wiry young fellows in
dusty campaign rig, running swiftly up the slope, and in another moment
were sprawling on their stomachs close to the crest, their slouch hats
flung aside.
And this was what they saw: Before them, to the right front, stretching
away to the north, lay a broad valley, through which meandered a wider,
bigger stream than the familiar Chaduza. It came winding down from the
west before making its sweeping bend to the northward. It was fringed
in spots by cotton-woods, and bare to the very banks in others. It was
desolate and lifeless far as the eye could see, west and north. But
away to the northeast, perhaps seven miles or so, a faint column of
smoke was rising against the skies. Away to the northwest, perhaps a
dozen miles, in alternate puffs, another and narrower smoke column was
rising--Sioux signals, as they knew at once--and right down here before
their eyes, midway between the shining river and the foot of the
northward slope, perhaps two thousand yards out--a little more than a
mile--was coming toward them a four-horse wagon, its white top a wreck,
its struggling team lashed by the whip of the driver and the quirts of
half a dozen dusky outriders, while others still circled and shouted
and urged them on, while afar back on the east bank of the stream other
riders could be seen darting about in keen excitement. All on a sudden,
but by no means all unprepared, "Corporal Pops" and his little command
found themselves facing a new proposition and a band of turbulent
Sioux.
CHAPTER XVI
PROOF POSITIVE OF GUILT
And the first words spoken came from the lips of Sergeant Drum--like
many another old campaigner among the old-time regulars, a privileged
character.
"Didn't I tell ye those fellers were lyin'? Here's their wagon now,
that was burnt over their heads!"
At intervals of several paces, as they could best find points from
which to see without being seen from the northern side, the little
detachment lay sprawled along the crest, the brown barrels of the
carbines well forward. Graham and Connell, peering through their
field-glasses, their elbows resting on the turf, were side by side
about the centre. Behind them, nearly a hundred paces down the
southward slope, stood the horses in an irregular line, a corporal
remaining in charge, keenly watching the movements of his superiors,
yet keeping constant control of the four horse-holders, who, like
himself, remained in saddle. There could be no telling what moment they
might be needed.
For an odd and perplexing situation was this in which the young
commander was placed. Ordered to follow back the trail of the fugitive
hunters to the point where they claimed to have been "jumped" by
hostile Indians; ordered to find, if possible, the remains of the
victims, men and horses, and of the burned wagon and "outfit"; ordered
also to search for signs by which the assailants might be discovered,
the command had come suddenly in sight of a wagon and horses that
answered the description of those said to have been destroyed, and if
that wasn't a white man driving them, both binoculars were at fault.
But what did it mean that the captors should be coming southwestward
with their booty? Why had they not burned the wagon? They could never
use it at the reservation. Many young men, of course, were out and
afield with the ghost-dancers, but the elders, the native police, and
the agent would quickly hear of it, and trouble would follow for
somebody. George Sword, Sioux chief of police and stanch adherent of
General Crook--"Wichahnpi Yahmni" (Three Stars), as they called him
whom so long the Sioux had honored, and whom now they were so deeply
mourning--George Sword was a man who did his duty well; Geordie, as a
boy, had known him, and known how the general trusted him. A wagon like
this would be of no more use to the captors than a locomotive; yet here
they were, a dozen of them, urging it on, while others of their kind,
afar back down-stream, were darting about, little black dots of
horsemen scampering over the distant slopes, evidently watching some
parties still farther away and invisible to the lurking cavalry.
Could it be that they were trying to repeat an old-time deed of
chivalry told to this day of their fathers--restoring lost property to
the legitimate owners? Could it be that, knowing the presence of the
squadron on the Mini Chaduza, and the probability of the frightened
owners having found refuge there, these Indians were now actually
driving thither? They were still on their reservation. There was
nothing but the fugitives' statement to warrant the belief that the
camp had been attacked and burned. There was nothing, in fact, to
justify an attack upon the present possessors. They would probably
scatter, rush to the reservation, tell their tale to the agent, and the
press and the peace societies would presently be flooding the country
with columns concerning the murderous onslaught on a friendly people
made by a reckless soldiery.
Yet something had to be done, and that right speedily; for now, instead
of breasting the long slope, and coming, as at first, straight toward
the ridge, the Indians were lashing the leaders in gradual turn to the
westward. Now they were skirting the foot of the incline and moving
parallel to the ridge, and then it was that Geordie saw the reason.
They had made the wide sweep outward in order to circle the head of a
ravine which, starting only a few hundred yards out to the left front,
went winding deeper and steeper through the "bench" until it finally
opened out into the creek bottom a long mile away.
Yes, the whole scheme was evident now. They had captured the camp and
the wagon with its contents, and, knowing the difficult country and
crossings along the lower Fork, were scurrying with their booty around
the great southward bend, hoping to get away to the west, reach the
trail of the war-party that had evaded the cavalry, and follow on with
their prize. Or else, still keeping within the reservation line, to
drive on westward for the valley of the Wounded Knee and their red
brethren of the Pine Ridge Agency, the Brulés of old Spotted Tail's
(Sinte gleshka's) long famous band.
Yet there, too, this wagon would be a white elephant. Why had they not
divided among themselves the simple contents of a hunter's camp outfit,
cut loose with the horses, and burned the big vehicle, which they could
not use?
Then all in a moment the truth flashed upon Geordie. Years before he
had heard of such traffic, heard the fierce denunciation lavished by
officers and men upon the miscreants who, for love of gold, would sell
to Indians, at fabulous price, the means of murdering their fellow-men.
All on a sudden his voice was heard:
"Back to your horses, men! Mount, sergeant, and follow. Come on,
Connell! That's why it takes four horses to lug it--that wagon is
loaded with lead!"
One minute more and from the lips of one wary Indian, well out on the
"bench," went up a shrill whoop of warning. Away up the the grassy
incline, from over the ridge and spurring straight for the wagon, now
at the head of the ravine, came two lithe young horsemen, riding like
the wind, the right hand of the foremost far uplifted in the signal
known the plains over--to halt. Behind these two came an orderly
trooper full gallop. Behind these three, presently, there popped into
view a score of slouch-hatted, blue-bloused, sturdy dragoons, and with
many a screech of wrath and disgust, away went the last of the Sioux,
scooting for the shelter of the creek bank beyond. Shoot they longed
to, yet dare not. The word had not yet gone forth. The medicine-men
still said nay. The time was not yet ripe. A few days more must they
suffer until Si Tanka and his braves were met, until, in overwhelming
force, they could turn on the scattered and helpless settlers. That was
easier warfare than fighting soldiers, and counted for just as much in
scalps and glory. Away they went to the cotton-wood bottom, and one
wellnigh exhausted, thoroughly demoralized white man collapsed on the
driver's seat, and four sweating, staggering horses pulled up, panting
and blowing, and the score of blue-coated riders came thundering on, to
rein up in triumph around a silent but obviously excited brace of
lieutenants, one of whom simply pointed into the depths of the wagon
body. From under a lot of dingy camp equipage peeped out three or four
little boxes the soldiery knew at sight. Sergeant Drum spurred
alongside and whisked off what was left of the cover, and a dirty
blanket or two, and there was a larger box, half filled with magazine
rifles. There were ten boxes of Winchester cartridges, one thousand to
the box. There was the secret of the "hunter's camp." They had been
selling arms to the Sioux.
"Good find, that, Geordie," grinned Connell, as his comrade sat
pencilling a brief despatch to the major, while three of the men, with
liberal sprinklings from their canteens and brisk fanning with their
hats, were striving to revive the collapsed wagoner.
"I need his story," said our plains-wise Pops. "Pull him to, if
possible," and then went on with his writing.
"SOUTH FORK, WHITE RIVER,
"_October_ -- '90, 9 A.M.
"_Lieutenant H.H. Willard, Adjutant Detachment
--th Cavalry._
"SIR,--I have to report that we have just intercepted a small
party of Sioux driving off a four-horse wagon, which contains
eleven Henry and Winchester rifles and at least ten thousand
rounds of ball cartridges. This is probably the 'outfit' of the
fugitives who reached bivouac this morning, reporting it burned
and their comrades killed.
"One of the latter, at least, is alive, but we found him
unconscious, although unharmed. He was driving the wagon. The
Indians scattered, but are now assembling in the cotton-woods a
mile distant. More seem coming to join them. If attacked, we
will hold out; but I wish to push on and ascertain what befell
the others. We cannot, however, leave the wagon, nor have I
force enough to leave a guard.
"Very respectfully,
"G.M. GRAHAM,
"_Second Lieutenant --th Cavalry_,
"_Commanding detachment_."
Then came a significant P.S., at sight of which, little over an hour
later, Major Berry's eyes snapped, and so did his speech.
"Bring those two scoundrels here!" said he, and a hangdog-looking pair
they were when presently lined up before the bearded commander, while
no less a personage than Captain Garrett, at the head of forty
troopers, was setting forth on the trail of his much-envied subaltern,
to relieve him, if surrounded and attacked by the Sioux; to relieve
him, in any event, of the care of the wagon, but under no circumstances
to relieve him of his command or duties. Unless menaced by strong
parties of the Sioux, Mr. Graham was to go ahead with a dozen
additional men, carry out his orders, and Captain Garrett with the rest
should bring that wagon to camp.
Then with Geordie's report and postscript in hand, the major stood
glowering at the fugitives of the morning, now most ruefully yet
furtively studying his face. They suspected something amiss when warned
awhile before that they were not to try to ride off. They knew there
was mischief to pay now.
"You two sku--specimens," began the major, ominously, "told me you were
only accidentally on the Sioux reservation. You swore you were simply
out hunting antelope."
"That's God's truth, major," whined the taller of the two, though the
other seemed ready to parley and plead.
"That's an infernal lie!" was the answer. "You told me the Sioux
'jumped' your camp, killed your partner, and burned your wagon." And
with menace in his burning eyes the veteran officer paused for a reply.
"'Fore God, major, that's how it looked to us. 'Course it was
pitch-dark--"
"Pitch-dark--in bright moonlight! This is worse, and more of it.
You're a pair of black-hearted villains! You went there deliberately.
You went with a wagon-load of arms and ammunition to sell to Sioux
Indians just bound for the war-path. You'd swing for that if there was
any law in the land, but swing you shall--anyhow!"
"You dassn't touch us!" burst in the leader, sudden spirit and defiance
in his tone, well knowing how powerless were the military in face of
civil law. "We're no poor devils of dog-robbers. We demand protection
and a fair trial--a jury of our peers; that means no hide-bound gang of
soldiers. You can't prove we sold so much as a shot, an' you know it,
an' you're only trying to bluff."
"That's enough, _you_!" was the startling answer. "Sergeant of the
guard, shoot these men like dogs if they attempt to escape. We sha'n't
waste time trying to prove you sold arms. What we can prove, and will
prove, and by your own man, too, and hang you high as Haman for it, is
that Pete Gamble, deputy sheriff, caught you at your devilish work, and
you shot him dead from ambush!"
CHAPTER XVII
THE WAR-DANCE AND THE CHARGE
With two days' cooked rations in their saddle-bags now, with a line of
hearty appreciation from Major Berry and renewed instructions to go
ahead, with a dozen more men than he had at the start, and the best
wishes of his temporary commander, Geordie Graham had pushed on again
northeastward down the right bank of the Fork. Waiting until the party
was fairly out of sight over the far-distant "divide," and watching
meantime the movements of the still remaining Indians in the timber,
Captain Garrett finally put his puny command in march for the Mini
Chaduza, bringing the wagon and the now semi-restored charioteer along.
Five of Gunnison's pack-mules, sent on with the troop, had so lightened
the wagon of its load that the lately abused horses, given a good feed
of oats and a swallow of water, were able to trundle it lightly along.
With another day it was started under escort for Niobrara, its late
owners, cursing their fate, unwilling passengers inside.
It was late afternoon when the two halves of "F" Troop lost sight of
each other, the captain going, grumbling, back to the main body with a
much disappointed command; the subaltern riding swiftly away down the
widening valley, with an exultant platoon at his back, all hands
rejoicing that theirs was the first capture of the campaign. Parallel
with them, afar across the stream, darting from cover to cover and
keeping vigilant watch, rode half a dozen redskins. Most of their
brethren, by this time, were far away toward Eagle's Nest, in quest of
the main body. These few were charged with the duty of keeping track of
the little troop, in order to be able to report exactly the direction
in which it was going and that no pursuit was intended. This definitely
settled, they, too, galloped away, and the valley, so far as Geordie
could judge, was now free of red riders.
The sun was low in the west. The wagon-tracks still led on. The night
was near at hand, and the troopers in advance had seen no sign of a
camp. Ten miles, at least, had they marched, and, avoiding a deep
westward bend of the stream, the trail now led them over a low ridge,
from whose crest the scouts signalled, "Nothing in sight."
Yet, a few minutes later, Graham and Connell, dismounting there the
better to scour the country with their glasses, were seen by the main
body to spring to their feet and then to saddle, Graham facing toward
them and with his hat signalling, "Change direction half left," whereat
Sergeant Drum, riding steadily along perhaps four hundred yards behind
his young commander, simply turned his horse's head in the direction
indicated, left the wagon-track, and silently his comrades followed.
"They've found it," said Drum, and found it they had.
Though the wheel-marks still held to the northward, and the three
troopers far in the lead had seen nothing as yet worthy of special
report, the strong lenses of the signal-glass had told their own story.
"Look yonder, Connell, in that clump of cotton-woods beyond the low
point," were Graham's words as he sprang to his feet. "See those black
things in the timber? They're buzzards!"
Five minutes later the corporal, too, was signalling, he and his men at
a halt. They, too, had made discoveries: the track, as it later
developed, of two shod horses pursued by shoeless Indian ponies.
Southeastward this trail went up a long, shallow ravine, then veered
round to the south. It told of fugitives and, for a time, of pursuers.
Ten minutes after the first discovery, down in the sandy bottom and
close to the stream, the officers caught sight of a brace of prairie
wolves, skulking away from the timber, among the branches of which some
grewsome birds were flapping and fluttering, while two or three sailed
slowly overhead. Presently the riders came in view of a little
scooped-out shelter where the sand was all torn by hoofs, and herein
lay the poor remains that served as confirmation of the driver's
story--all that was left, as was soon determined, of poor Gamble, one
of the most feared and fearless men of the Western frontier.
Shot twice, and from behind, he had managed to gallop a few hundred
yards up-stream, and then, weak from loss of blood, had toppled out of
saddle, crawled to this hollow, and presently died. Half a mile farther
down-stream the camp site was found, hoof and moccasin tracks in
myriads about it, camp-kettles and débris still scattered around, empty
cans, sacks, and boxes flung at the edge of the stream. Here,
evidently, the traders had spent two or three days, and here, there,
and everywhere were fragments of pasteboard cartridge-cases. A thriving
industry, this, until suddenly swooped upon by Gamble, who paid for his
discovery with his life. Here, then, was closed one chapter of the
hunters' tale. But what had become of their partner? What had broken up
their camp and driven them, terror-stricken, from the reservation?
Not until the dawning of another day was this fully determined.
Meanwhile there came new complications--a strange and stirring
adventure of their own.
Finding fair grass on the "bench" a few rods farther down the stream,
Geordie had chosen a site for the bivouac, and disposed his little
force for the night. While there had been as yet no overt act of
hostility on the part of the Sioux, and while all the Indians taking
part in the affair of the morning had now, apparently, ridden off to
join the renegade band, and were presumably far to the northwest, no
chances could be taken. The horses, after two hours' grazing, were led
into the timber and hoppled. The sentries were posted well out. The
little camp-fires had been screened under the bank, and full half the
command had rolled in their blankets and settled to sleep. When the
moon came peering up over the distant eastward heights, Geordie and
Connell, chatting in low tones under a sheltering cotton-wood, were
suddenly summoned by a trooper coming in on the run from the outpost
below, a mile at least from where they had buried poor Gamble.
"Indians, sir," said he, "and lots of 'em, coming up the valley on the
other bank."
"Douse your fires, there!" was the first order. "Look well to your
horses, sergeant. Stay here in charge. I'll send word what to do."
Then, with eager stride, Geordie hurried away after the messenger,
Connell close at his heels. Two hundred yards they followed, winding
along under the bank, and presently came to a sharp bend, beyond which
and across the stream the prairie lay open and undulating for many a
league, the only obstruction to the view being a little grove of
cotton-woods on the opposite shore and possibly half a mile away, and
that little grove and the level bench about it were alive with Indians
and Indian ponies, the former at least in high state of excitement.
Kneeling behind the trunk of a fallen cotton-wood, two troopers were
intently studying the situation. "They came riding down from over
yonder to the northeast, sir," said one of them, a corporal, making
room for his lieutenant. "There must have been as many as a hundred all
told, with others trailing behind. There's going to be a pow-wow of
some kind. They've unsaddled and turned the ponies out, and some
feller's shoutin' and singin'--you can hear him now, sir."
Hear him! As he warmed up to his speech, incantation, or whatever it
was, the speaker could have been heard distinctly a long mile away, and
all the bivouac up-stream, not already sound asleep, sat up to listen.
War-chief or medicine-man, he had a voice that dinned upon the ear of
night and dominated all other sounds, from guttural grunt of assent to
frantic yell of applause, as the roar of Niagara in the Cave of the
Winds drowns the futile babble of the guides. Once in early boyhood
Geordie had heard an Indian orator of whom his father and
fellow-officers spoke ever in honor and esteem--a chief whose people
wellnigh worshipped him--"Rolling-Thunder-in-the-Mountains," they
called him ("Hin-Mato-Iya-Latkit," in their weird dialect). And as
George and Connell knelt here now, listening to this deep, reverberant
voice, thundering from bluff to bluff across the mile-wide valley, the
name and fame of old Chief Joseph, whom the whites had so misunderstood
and wronged, came back to the young commander with redoubled force.
But no such chief as Joseph was this who, standing in the leaping
firelight, high among the red warriors about him, was lashing them to
frenzy with his resounding words. No interpreter crouched with the
little party at the point; none was needed to tell them that he was
preaching of battle, blood, and vengeance. From time to time the wail
of women could be heard, wild as the scream of the panther, and, as one
sign led to another, it dawned upon Geordie and the veteran trooper by
his side that some brave of the band had recently been done to death by
foul means or treachery, that now the tribe was being roused to a pitch
of fury, to a mad thirst for vengeance; and even before the red orator
had finished his harangue the war-drum began its fevered throb, the
warriors, brandishing knife, club, hatchet, or gun, sprang half
stripped into the swift-moving circle, and with shrill yells and weird
contortions started the shuffling, squirming, snake-like evolutions of
the war-dance. Faster, wilder went the drumbeats; fiercer, madder went
the dance; and, unable to resist the impulse, Graham and Connell,
secure in the belief that the Indians were utterly engrossed, crept
cautiously onward and outward, with the corporal at their back,
determined to see what they could of this savage and appalling
ceremony.
Half-way to the scene had they crept when the shrill wailing of the
squaws gave way to shriller screams, to almost maniac laughter. The
orator had ceased his incantations. The wild drummers stopped their
pounding. The warriors, as though with one accord, clustered about the
fire in fascination, and for the moment all save the squaws were
stilled, and the crouching watchers, quarter of a mile away, looked
blankly into each other's faces for explanation. "What on earth are
they up to now?" whispered Connell.
The answer came within the minute: a sound sweeter to savage ears than
love-lay of the maidens, than war-song of the braves, than even the
wild, triumphant chorus of the scalp-dance; a sound that suddenly rose
for a moment above the clamor of the squaws, and then was answered and
overwhelmed and drowned in mad, exultant, even fiendish, yells of
delight--it was the scream of a strong man in awful agony.
"My God!" cried the corporal. "They've got some poor devil there,
torturing, burning him to death!"
"To the horses! Come on, Con!" was the instant answer. And the three
went bounding back along the bank, pursued and spurred by the savage
shouting from below, but, as God so willed it, without so much as a
glance. Over the lair of the picket they flew, with only the orders
"Come on!" Away over the elastic "bench" they dashed, hot-foot for the
bivouac, and Drum, the veteran, saw them coming like the wind, and read
their tale and the instant need. "Saddle up!" he shouted, while the
group was still afar. "Jump for it, men! There's not a second to lose!"
Up from their blankets sprang the few sleepers. In from their stations
scurried the outlying sentries. Rattle went the bits between the teeth
of the excited chargers. Slap went the saddles on the broad, glossy
backs. There was hurry and rush and swift leaping for arms, the snap of
cinchas, the snorting of steeds, yet not a word was spoken until the
low order to lead into line; and straightway old Drum marshalled his
men, silent, yet with hearts beating like hammers, and then down their
front rode their youthful lieutenant, a stranger to all but a month
agone, yet now they lived on his slightest word. Oh, what
thoughts--what thoughts of mother and home, and the brave old days of
boyhood and the Point, had been winging through his brain during the
long hours of the day! But now--now there was no time for thought!
There was time only for action; for a fellow-man lay in deadly peril,
in dreadful torment, only a short mile away.
"Not a sound--not a shot, men," he ordered, as the quivering line
reined up before him. "Follow our lead, stampede the ponies, and charge
through the crowd; then rally quick as you can."
Splash! drove the leaders into the shallows. Breast deep, foaming, they
spurred through the stream, the troop plunging after, with carbines
slung over their shoulders. Out on the opposite bank and up to the
"bench" they swarmed, then veered away northward over the resounding
level, Geordie and Connell, classmates and chums, bounding away in
advance. No danger of Indian eyes or ears, no dread of hindering shot
or ambush. When the pale-face writhes at the torture stake, even Indian
vedette forgets his trade for the lust of such luxury as witnessing
that. Up into line with the leading four galloped the chargers in rear.
On toward the leaping flames in the grove led those lithe young riders
ahead. Mad with excitement, some nervous new horses snatched at their
bits and burst from the line, and Geordie, glancing back, saw them
gaining in spite of restraining hand. What mattered it, anyhow?
Every second was precious. The ground was open, the herded ponies less
than half a mile forward, and already alarmed. "Let 'em go!" he
shouted, with a wave of the revolver over his head. "Straight through
the herd, men. _Ch-a-a-a-rge!_"
[Illustration: "'STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HERD, MEN.
_CH-A-A-A-RGE!_'"]
Then up went a cheer that rang over the valley, shrill above the
thunder of hoofs, the shriek and scream of terrified squaws, the shouts
of astonished braves. Away like the wind went the streaming swarm of
ponies, in mad flight for the north! Away like scatter-brained rabbits,
darting hither and thither in the firelight, rushing madly to shelter,
leaping from the "bench" to the sandy bottom below, scurrying in wild
panic anywhere, everywhere, went warriors, women, and children; for,
close on the heels of the vanishing herd came unknown numbers of
blue-coated, brave--hearted, tumultuous riders, tearing through camp
like a human tornado, turning the scene of the late revel into a
turmoil of woe. Vain the few shots aimed in haste and excitement. Vain
the rallying cry of a fighting chief. A blow from the butt of Ned
Connell's revolver sprawled him headlong over a prostrate form--a white
man "staked out" in front of the fire, swooning from mingled misery,
weakness, and joy.
It was Pearson, the missing "partner," captured alive by the Sioux,
doomed to die by slow torture, in revenge for a young warrior shot down
by the gun-traders in a senseless squabble two nights before.
And the troop had saved him and his fellow-captive, the cook, without
so much as firing a shot.
CHAPTER XVIII
BATTLE AND VICTORY
And this was the story that went on the heels of the escort convoying
the gun-traders in to the fort, and much did Major Berry relish the
composition of that report. It had long been the claim of himself and
his comrades that white men were encouraged to enter the reservation
with arms and cartridges, and that it was easy for the Sioux to lure
their police, or to mislead the sheriff, away from the point where
these unprincipled smugglers crossed the line.
Now, infuriated at the cowardice and treachery of two of their number,
Pearson, the leader, and Bent, the wagoner, had made a clean breast of
the business. They had driven hard bargains, had laid in good stores of
beaver, wolf, and deer skins, and no little cash. Then Little Crow
came, quarrelled over an obvious cheat, called one partner a liar, was
struck, abused, and thrown out. He galloped away and came back with
Gamble, a man they dare not let live, once having learned their secret.
Both Little Crow and he were treacherously shot by the partners as they
were riding to warn George Sword and his police. Then came the swift
vengeance of the Sioux, the flight of Hurley and Gross, leaving their
unwary comrades to an awful fate. While one party of Indians made way
with the wagon, in hopes of running it--horses, contents, and all--to
the camp of Si Tanka, another party, the immediate relatives and
friends of Little Crow, rode off with the two captives to the village
where Little Crow lay dying, and finally, fearing interruption there,
came back to the valley by night for the wildest, most delirious orgy
known to Indian tradition--the slow doing to death of captured enemy by
ingenious and horrible torture.
And this was the indescribable ceremony nipped in the bud by our young
lieutenant and his twoscore men, to whose energy, courage, and skill
Major Berry gave all credit, though Garrett claimed it "in the name of
my troop."
All night had they faced a furious and clamorous band--chiefs,
warriors, and women--shouting denunciation, demanding their prey, and
threatening attack in tremendous force. But Geordie had posted his men
for battle, hidden the recaptured under the bank, and dared the whole
band to come on and get them, if they thought it advisable, which, it
seems, they did not. With his patients on Indian _travois_ ("borrowed,"
ponies and all, perhaps without ceremony, from the supply on the spot),
Graham slowly retraced his steps the following morning, and was met
half-way in by the squadron in force, the heartiest kind of a welcome,
and news that thrilled through his veins like the sound of the charge.
"The --th and your own troop are camped south of the line, Mr. Graham.
I have orders for you to go in to-morrow."
Just so soon, therefore, as he could turn over his patients to the care
of the surgeon, write his brief report of the scout, and say good-bye
and a few words of thanks to Sergeant Drum and his fellows, who longed
to tell him how they hated to let him go, and after hearty handshakes
from Berry and his brother officers ("Samson" Stone taking special
credit to himself for having, as he expressed it, "put Graham and
Connell onto the time of their lives"), our Geordie blushingly bade
farewell to these comrades of a strenuous month, and, with faithful
Connell at his side, and a little escort attending, rode away down to
the Chaduza, to report to the general commanding, and then go on to his
own, for ominous tales had come from the Bad Lands. There was trouble
in store for all.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES CAVALRY IN WINTER RIG]
First, however, there was wonderful welcome for him at Niobrara. The
skies had grown wintry. The snow patches were beginning to dot the
prairie, but the camp-fires burned the brighter, and men clustered
about them and talked of the "luck" of the new lieutenant, whom the
general himself alighted from his escort wagon to greet and to
question. For several days the chums were needed at the fort, where
both prisoners and witnesses were held, but the case against the
self-styled hunters was so overwhelming that the demand for their stay
was soon at an end, and, in the train of the general, they went on
westward to the winter camp of the assembled cavalry, whither "the old
regiment" had preceded them, and there, one dark and wintry evening,
with the snow-flakes sifting down, and the depths of a distant valley
all dotted with tiny blazes--the cook fires of a whole brigade--they
were met by a troop of cavalry in fur caps and gauntlets, and huge,
blanket-lined overcoats--swarthy, bearded fellows, with service-stained
boots and trappings, but looking fit for the hardest kind of
campaigning and any kind of a fight. It swung from column into line,
saluted the general with advanced carbines, and then, wheeling by fours
to right, trotted briskly away with the little cortège, and presently
its commander, after a few words with the general, fell back, peering
from under his bushy headpiece, and sung out in cheery tones Geordie
had not heard for many a day, yet knew on the instant:
"Ah, there you are, Mr. Graham! We have a horse with us ready for you
now!" And lo! it was Captain Lane, with his own troop ("E" of the
--th), sent out to lead the general's escort into camp. Leaving the
companions of the long, jolting ambulance ride, Geordie sprang to the
back of a mettlesome bay, led forward by a muffled-up trooper who
steadied the young officer's stirrup before turning aside to remount,
while a tall, spare, wiry-looking sergeant sat stiffly in saddle, his
fur-covered hand at salute, his long gray mustache and stubbly beard
and thin hooked nose being almost all that could be seen of the face;
yet the twinkle in his waiting captain's eyes and a twitch in the
muscles of the veteran's lips set Geordie to staring, and presently out
went his hand and up went his glad young voice:
"Nolan! Nolan! _You_ back with us again!"
"Couldn't keep out of it, sir, when we got word that the old troop was
to have another Indian campaign. No more could Toomey."
And lo! it was his friend of the Big Mogul now again bestriding a troop
horse, detailed specially to meet him! And Lane, with a wave of his
hand and a laugh that was good to hear, left the three cronies of
Silver Run to ride in together while he galloped on to his duties.
"But the mines, Nolan, and your position?" questioned Geordie, as soon
as the greetings were over and he could recover from his amaze.
"The mine is as sound as a government bond, sir, and Shiner's holding
down my job till I want it again; and Mr. Anthony told me to say that
whenever the lieutenant got tired of soldiering to come back with
Toomey and take his old trick with the shovel."
And so, joyous and laughing, the three friends of old rode down to the
thronging camps in the valley, and to the stern duties that so soon
awaited them.
For there came a day when men's faces went white with the news that
Sitting Bull, the great chief (Tatanka-iyo-Tanka), had died in
desperate fight with the police sent to arrest him; that Si Tanka and
his band, nabbed by "Napa Yahmni," had most unaccountably managed later
to elude him, and were now at large, raising the standard of revolt,
summoning all the wild warriors far and near to join forces with him.
And then, indeed, the frontier blazed with signal-fires by night and
burning ranches by day, and there came a week of hard riding for the
old regiment, and of sharp campaigning for all--a week in which at last
the wily red chief Si Tanka was finally surrounded and, with all his
people and ponies, herded on down through the Bad Lands to the breaks
of Wounded Knee--fierce, truculent, defiant. For long months he had
braved the "Great Father" himself, refusing to submit to any authority;
but the sight of those long columns of silent, disciplined "horse
soldiers," squadrons white and black, some of them riding along with
wonderful little field-guns clinking beside them on wheels, overawed
Si Tanka's followers and disheartened his friends.
There came a day when he had to submit, and agree to surrender, and go
whither orders might send him, and with his fierce spirit crushed, he
bowed his head and took to his lodge, and laid him down in his robes,
sick, body and soul. And then the old regiment marched over to the
mission to guard prisoners and property, and another was sent scouting
after scattering little war parties, and Connell, who had again been
serving with the general, got word to Geordie that orders had come
putting an end to his "holiday," and calling him East to his legitimate
duty. Could Geordie get over to see him, and the disarming of Big
Foot's band, on the morrow?
Graham showed the missive to his captain, and Lane took it to the
colonel. "Let Graham go," said the latter. "There's nothing to be done
here."
And so it happened that once again the two chums were together, and
this time on a momentous and perilous day.
They saw from the hill-side the scowling braves of Big Foot, led forth
from camp and seated on the ground, shrouded in their blankets, in
long, curving lines. They saw the designated troops of a rival regiment
drawn up in silent array, facing the sullen warriors. They saw the
women and children of the latter huddled at the edge of the Indian
camp, while officers, sergeants, and soldiers were sent searching
through the frowzy lodges for secreted arms. Through their glasses they
saw the old medicine-man, in the centre of the Indian ranks, glancing
furtively, savagely, right and left, his lips moving in muttered
incantation, while the searchers among the lodges came forth from one
after another, baffled, empty-handed, suspicious. Why had not some one
suggested it would be wise to search, individually, each brave before
conducting him to the line?
"There's going to be trouble, Con!" cried Graham, suddenly dropping his
field-glass. "Look! There goes McCrea!" And surely enough, at that very
instant, as though he, too, had noted the ominous signs, their elder
comrade came galloping diagonally across the front, heading straight
for the spot where stood the commander of the silent little battalion.
"He's going to warn them," answered Connell. "Let's join him."
[Illustration: "UP WENT TWO LITTLE PUFFS OF EARTH"]
And just as he spoke, and before either could turn to the waiting
horses, up into air went the hands of the chanter, up went two little
puffs of earth, sand, and gravel as he tossed them on high; and before
even they could come sifting and showering downward, up in a flash
sprang the muttering line, off went every blanket, and out leaped a
warrior, armed and painted for battle. Suddenly they whirled on the
searchers advancing upon them. Crash went their wild volley, downing
both friend and foe, for the first shots tore straight through the
huddle of women, and their shrieks followed swift on the deadly clamor
of the guns.
And then for a moment there was dire confusion. In the space of a
second, it seemed, the red line had leaped to its feet, then dashed
through the smoke of its volley, straight for the cowering forms of old
men, women, and children. Another second and, sheltered by the skirts
of their squaws, the warriors were blazing away at the astonished
soldiery. "Good God, boys, we can't fire on women and children!"
shouted one brave young sergeant. "Down on your faces! Down!" And
"down" was his last word, as down on his bullet-riven face he plunged,
shot dead through the brain.
Almost at the same moment McCrea's galloping steed stumbled heavily
forward and rolled stiffening on the frozen earth, his gallant rider
flung headlong beyond him. Another moment and Geordie and Connell,
leaping from saddle, had run to his aid, even as the crash of a volley,
at the word of command, told that the troopers had answered the furious
challenge. Another moment still, and a young surgeon sprang to the
relief of the signalling officers; and then, leaving their senseless
friend to his care, all athrill with the fury of battle, Graham and
Connell, "Badger" and "Coyote," whipping out their revolvers, rushed on
down the slope to join the blue line just springing afoot to the
charge.
Of the moment that followed, the wild cheer and onward dash, the race
over blood-stained snow-patches, the stumble over falling forms (some
friend, some foe), the ripping and slashing at fire-spitting lodges, in
which some of the band had sought refuge, the agonized screaming of
children, the appalling shrieks of the squaws--of all this it was
difficult later to give clear account. Geordie only knew that he, and
those nearest him in the rush through the smoke, lost many a shot
rather than risk killing fleeing women and babes, spared warriors who
would never spare them, for down went first one comrade, down went
another, and all on a sudden something bit, stung, and tore through his
thigh, and down on his outflung arms, with Con sobbing over him, went
Geordie Montrose Graham, first captain the year agone, fireman in July,
and now junior lieutenant of Company "E."
Many a Christmas holiday was spoiled that winter by the news from
Wounded Knee. "Bud" Graham, Columbia freshman, spending a fortnight
with father and mother at the Point, had gone with them and Colonel
Hazzard to Grant Hall one starlit evening. Orders were to be published
to the corps of cadets at supper, and the commandant wished them to
hear. They ascended the broad stone steps, Mrs. Graham on the arm of
the colonel, Mrs. Hazzard escorted by grim "Dr. Sawney," who was
wondering not a little what might be coming. Two or three officers from
the mess joined the little family party, and they all clustered at the
big folding-doors--Bud breathless with anticipation and excitement. The
cadet corporal of the guard saluted at sight of the distinguished
arrivals, and, at a sign from the colonel, held open the portal on one
side so that, without being seen, the visitors could distinctly hear
what might be read within.
And presently it came. In ringing tones the adjutant ordered attention.
The chatter and clamor instantly ceased. Briefly the young officer
rattled off the details for the morrow, and then announced:
"The following communication is published for the information of the
battalion of cadets:
"FIELD HEADQUARTERS,
"FORT NIOBRARA, NEB., _December_ --, 1890.
"COMMANDING OFFICER, --TH CAVALRY,
"_In the Field, near Wounded Knee._
"SIR,--The general commanding the military division directs me
to notify you of the return of the detachment under Major
Berry, --d Cavalry, after a thorough scout of some three weeks'
duration, resulting in the breaking up and scattering of
several of the bands of 'ghost-dancers,' and the capture of at
least one large party now being sent under escort to Pine Ridge
Agency.
"One most important result of the scout was the discovery and
arrest of certain white men engaged in selling arms and
ammunition to the Indians, the capture of much of their
'outfit,' and the rescue, under circumstances of imminent
peril, of two of the party whom the Indians were in the very
act of putting to death by torture.
"The entire credit for this exploit, which was conducted with
excellent judgment and most commendable dash and daring, is
given by Major Berry to Lieutenant George Montrose Graham, of
your regiment, and the division commander--
But he could be heard no further. The iron discipline of West Point was
powerless to stem the torrent of cadet enthusiasm at this public
mention of their beloved leader of the year gone by. Up sprang the
entire corps, and the rafters rang with the thunder of their cheers--a
thunder that seemed to redouble rather than dwindle at sight of the
silver-haired commandant, smiling in through the opening door.
And from such a scene as that, with streaming eyes and trembling lips
and a heart overflowing with pride, joy, gratitude, and the longing to
throw herself upon her knees and pour out her very soul in praise and
thanksgiving, this devoted mother was summoned to another.
The doctor had fled away from the bevy of friends who had hastened to
congratulate and shake him by the hand. He had finally escaped to his
little den, trying to compose himself, and write calmly and
judiciously, as became a father, to his soldier son. Bud, nearly wild
with delight, had finally been "fired," as he expressed it, from Cadet
Frazier's room by the officer-in-charge, and started for home toward
half-past ten o'clock, when in front of the officers' mess he was
suddenly hailed by a grave-faced professor:
"You're needed at home, Bud," and, running, he found Colonel Hazzard
and his father at the library door, a telegram open in the latter's
trembling hand.
"Not a word now, son. Just read this and then--call mither."
With paling face and suddenly swimming eyes, Bud read the dancing
words:
"Severe action. Graham wounded; left thigh. Serious, but doing
well. Our loss heavy.
"(Signed) MCCREA."
And so they got the first news of the bitter midwinter battle that
ended the days of Big Foot and so many of his band, that cost us the
lives of so many gallant officers and men, among the icy flats and
snow-patched ravines along the Wounded Knee.
* * * * *
But there came a meeting in March that brought surcease for all that
fond mother's sorrow. There came an evening when the battalion, in its
muffling winter garb of gray, went bounding up the broad stone steps
into the old mess-hall, and, stripping off caps and overcoats, quickly
settled down to their hearty supper, for the days were longer, the
first spring drills had begun, and tremendous appetites had these alert
young fellows. The clamor and chatter began on the instant--a merry
riot of chaff and fun. No outlying picket gave warning of the approach
of disturbers, but once again that great-hearted commandant had planned
a demonstration that should delight a mother's soul. Once again he was
leading her up to the massive portal, with a tall youth swinging on
crutches beside her, and a joyous little party in her train. Only that
day had he arrived--her Geordie--a little pallid from long housing and
wearied from the long ride, but wonderfully well and happy otherwise,
and assured that a few weeks more would see him strong as ever. Connell
had met him at Buffalo. Bud was up from New York. McCrea had escorted
him all the way from Chicago, where John Bonner would have held him
for a week of lionizing, but he could not be stopped for an hour. Nolan
and Toomey had ridden every mile to the railway to see their young
leader aboard, but over the meeting with that yearning mother there was
none on earth to spy. Long hours she kept him to herself, but, now that
evening had come, she yielded him to the colonel's pleading.
"It is for their sake," said he, and for their sake even Geordie
consented.
And so, very much as he had planned on the previous occasion, Colonel
Hazzard led them to the door as supper was nearly over, having
previously notified his officer-in-charge, but no man in the corps was
in the secret. "Whatever happens," said he, "shall be entirely
spontaneous."
For a moment they waited until, as before, the voice of the adjutant
was heard, clear and commanding, above the clamor. Then came the
publications, a perfunctory order or two, and then the colonel put
forth a hand, pushed open the door, and while Mrs. Graham and Bud,
trembling with excitement, clung to each other's arms, and the rest of
the group instinctively closed about them, Hazzard turned to the two
young graduates--his captains of the year gone by, now looking not a
little white and by no means happy--and signalled "step within," he
himself close following, and throwing wider the door so that Mrs.
Graham might see.
As the big half swung slowly inward, and the two crutches were planted
across the threshold, Connell hung back, but the colonel would not so
have it. The corporal of the guard, surprised at the intrusion, stepped
forward to check the strangers within their gates, then as suddenly
halted, his eyes alight with instant recognition and rejoicing, his
hand springing up in salute, even as the cadet officers at the head of
the nearest tables found their feet in instant and irresistible
impulse. Up, too, sprang the first captain, at the opposite side, his
first thought to rebuke, his second, at sight of the halted trio, to
shout with delight. Before he could gather his wits the matter was
settled for him, for all. The adjutant, amazed, dropped his paper and
uplifted his eyes, for his voice was stilled by a stentorian shout from
an inner table and the simultaneous rush of a light-footed fellow who
almost swept Pops off his crutches as his arms flung about him.
"Cyclone" Holt, a big-lunged Kentuckian, had bounded to his chair with
a yell of "Hurray! 'Badger' and '_Ki_ote!'" and all order was gone in
an instant. Up as one man sprang the startled battalion. Had Holt gone
mad? Had Frazier a fit? For answer came cheers from those nearest the
door, cheers that spread like wildfire from table to table, and all in
a second every young soldier was swinging a napkin and shouting like
mad--some leaping on chairs, some even mounting the tables, a scene
such as the mess-hall never witnessed before. Vain the effort of some
one to guide the cheering (they had not then learned an academy yell),
and for once in its day the corps went wild, every man for himself.
They yelled at Geordie, blushing and dishevelled from Benny's embrace.
They yelled at Connell, standing modestly by, with his set lips
twitching, his eyes filling fast. They yelled at their colonel, now
smilingly backing away. They yelled for three minutes without ever a
stop, until some fellow, versed in town-meeting methods, began yelling
for "Speech!" and that started others, and "Speech!" was the word
ringing all over the hall, and that was more than enough to start
Geordie. Speak he could not and would not. He could only stand smiling
and shaking his head, until he saw they would not be denied; and then,
at last, the lad who had faced and downed popular prejudice all through
his cadet life, who had faced foes at the Point and foes on the
plains--faced them with dauntless front and determined will--who had
stood like a rock at the front of the enemy, trembled now like a leaf
in the sight of his friends, and so, for the first time, shrank back
and fled. Just as on the day of his graduation, our Geordie turned from
the tumult of comrade acclaim and sought his mother's side. Con darted
after him, and the big door closed on the chums of cadet days, on the
"Badger" and "Coyote"--on Connell and "Corporal Pops."
THE END
* * * * *
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