Charles King

“ It was the fact that Field had gone and that young Ross was acting in his place that set them all to speculating on the cause. One of their number, promenading with Lieutenant Hartley, glanced up at Major Webb as they passed him by, with such a world of mingled question and reproach in her soft blue eyes that his heart for the moment smote him. He had never seen Esther Dade looking so languid or so wan, yet more of her and for her had he been thinking during the week gone by than of any other girl in or out of the army. ”

“ Here every trooper sprang from saddle, and with the rein looped on the left arm, and from the shelter of the straight, stiff banks, opened sharp fire on their pursuers, just as Clayton's platoon, dismounting at the grove, sprang to the nearest cover and joined in the fierce clamor of carbines. Racing down the slope at top speed as were the Sioux, they could not all at once check the way of their nimble mounts, and the ardor of the chase had carried them far down to the flats before the fierce crackle began. ”

“ There is no fiercer, more intense, devotion than that the Sioux girl gives the warrior who wins her love. She becomes his abject slave. She will labor, lie, steal, sin, suffer, die, gladly die for him, if only she believes herself loved in turn, and this did Nanette more than believe, and believing, slaved and studied between his irregular appearances that she might wheedle more money from her aunt to lavish on her brave. ”

“ Isn't that Red Fox?"
And now Ray was gazing straight at Field's half hidden face. Field, the soul of frankness hitherto, the lad who was never known to flinch from the eyes of any man, but to answer such challenge with his own,—brave, fearless, sometimes even defiant. Now he kept the big binocular fixed on the distant hostile array, but his face was white, his hand unsteady and his answer, when it came, was in a voice that Ray heard in mingled pain and wonderment. Could it be that the lad was unnerved by the sight? ”

“ Nearly half an hour later, gray-haired Captain Dade stood at the point of bluff near the flagstaff, Esther, pale and tearful, by his side, waving adieu and Godspeed to Webb, who had halted in saddle on reaching the opposite bank and was watching his little column through the ford,—three stanch troops, each about sixty strong, reinforced by half a dozen of Ray's men left behind in the forward rush at dawn, but scorning disqualification of any kind now that danger menaced their beloved captain and their comrades of the sorrel troop. ”

“ An Indian pony, saddled Sioux fashion, was caught running, riderless, toward the trader's back gate, his horsehair bridle torn half way from his shaggy head. Sergeant Crabb, waiting for no orders from the major, no sooner heard that Moreau was gone, than he rushed his stable guard to the saddleroom, and in fifteen minutes had, not only his own squad, but half a dozen "casual" troopers circling the post in search of the trail, and in less than half an hour was hot in chase of two fleeing horsemen, dimly seen ahead through the starlight, across the snowy wastes. ”

“ Some two or three piled saddles and blanket rolls into a low barricade, and all, while crouching about their work, watched the feathered warriors as they steadily completed their big circle far out on the prairie. Bullets came whistling now fast and frequently, nipping off leaves and twigs and causing many a fellow to duck instinctively and to look about him, ashamed of his dodge, yet sure of the fact that time had been in the days of the most hardened veteran of the troop when he, too, knew what it was to shrink from the whistle of hostile lead. ”

“ If he could succeed in winning Field's confidence it might well be that he could bring him to see that there were good and sufficient grounds for the post commander's action—that for Field's own good, in fact, it was a most desirable move. The soul of loyalty and square dealing himself, Ray had never for a moment dreamed that anything other than a foolish escapade had occurred—a ride by moonlight, perhaps, demanded of her devotee by a thoughtless, thoroughbred coquette, whose influence over the young fellow was beginning to mar his usefulness, if not indeed his future prospects. ”

“ Then quickly he ran on to the huddle of travois. Something assured him she could not be far away. The first drag litter held another young warrior, sullen and speechless like the foremost. The next bore a desperately wounded brave whose bloodless lips were compressed in agony and dumb as those of the dead. About these cowered, shivering and whimpering, two or three terror-stricken squaws, one of them with a round-eyed pappoose staring at her back. A pony lay struggling in the snow close by. Half a dozen rough soldier hands were dragging a stricken rider from underneath. ”

“ It was 8:30 when Blake retook the trail, with Sergeants Schreiber and Winsor, the latter borrowed from Ray, far in the van. Even had the ground been hard and stony these keen-eyed soldier scouts could have followed the signs almost as unerringly as the Indians, for each had had long years of experience all over the West; but, despite the steadily falling snow, the traces of hoofs and, for a time, of travois poles could be readily seen and followed in the dim gray light of the blanketed skies. ”

“ In the full of the September moon the war-bands of the Sioux had defied agents and peace chiefs, commissioners and soldiers, and started their wild campaign in northern Wyoming. In the full of the October moon the big chief of the whites had swept the last vestige of their warriors from the plains, and followed their bloody trails into the heart of the mountains, all his cavalry and much of his foot force being needed for the work in hand. ”

“ No tramp of sentry broke the hush about the little rift between the heights—the major holding that none was necessary where there were so many dogs. Most of the soldiers' families had gone to the dance; all of the younger children were asleep; even the dogs were still, and so, when at ten o'clock Esther tiptoed from the children's bedside and stood under the starlight, the murmur of the Platte was the only sound that reached her ears until, away over at the southwest gate the night guards began the long-drawn heralding of the hour. ”

“ And then Kennedy was both amazed and enraptured at the prompt reply in the fervent English of the far frontier.
"Go to hell, you pock-marked son-of-a-scut! Where'd you steal your whiskey?"
For five seconds Kennedy thought he was dreaming. Then, convinced that he was awake, an Irishman scorned and insulted, he dashed in to the attack. Both fists shot out from the brawny shoulders; both missed the agile dodger; then off went the blanket, and with two lean, red, sinewy arms the Sioux had "locked his foeman round," and the two were straining and swaying in a magnificent grapple. ”

“ For a moment she sat there rigid, her black eyes staring straight into the imperturbable face of the old soldier. No one had ever accused Dade of cruelty or unkindness to man or woman, especially to woman; yet here he stood before this suffering girl and, with obvious intent, pictured to her mind's eye a warrior stricken and left unburied or uncared for on the field. ”

“ Not a man hurt. Two of the sorrels had been hit by flying bullets and much amazed and stung thereat, but neither was crippled. Bidding their guards to dig for water that might soon be needed, Ray once more made his way to the northward side and rejoined Field and Winsor.
In an almost cloudless sky of steely blue the sun had just passed the meridian and was streaming hotly down on the stirring picture. Northward the ridge line and the long, gradual slope seemed alive with swarms of Indian warriors, many of them darting about in wild commotion. ”

“ He wished Field to realize that now he had opportunity for honorable distinction, and a chance to show what was in him and, having sent him forward, Ray meant to rely on his reports and be ready to back, if possible, his dispositions. Nothing so quickly demolishes prejudice in garrison as prowess in the field. Not infrequently has an officer gone forth under a cloud and returned under a crown. It is so much easier to be a hero in a single fight than a model soldier through an entire season—at least it was so in the old days. ”

“ The smoke drifted away from the prairie, and, as the landscape cleared to the south and west, a cheer of delight went up from the cottonwoods, for the slopes three miles away were dotted here and there and everywhere with circling, scurrying war ponies—they and their wild riders steadily falling back before a long rank of disciplined horsemen, the extended skirmish line of Webb's squadron, backed by supports at regular intervals, and all heading straight on for the broad lowlands of the Elk. ”

“ All over this broad expanse of upland prairie and wooded river bed and boldly undulating bluff line not so much as a spark of fire peeped through the wing of night to tell the presence of human wayfarer, white, halfbreed or Indian, even where the Sioux had swarmed, perhaps two hundred strong, at sunset of the day gone by. ”

“ The fierce charge from the northward side, made under cover of the blinding smoke sent drifting by the gale across the level flats, had been pushed so close to the grove that two red braves and half a dozen ponies had met their death within sixty paces of the rifle pits. There lay the bodies now, and the Indians dare not attempt to reach them. The dread, wind-driven flame of the prairie fire, planned by the Sioux to burn out the defence, to serve as their ally, had been turned to their grave detriment. ”

“ Returning that eventful morning from his office at first call for reveillé, after seeing the last of Ray's gallant troop as it moved away across the dim vista of the northward prairie, Webb had been concerned to find his decanter of Monongahela half empty on the pantry table and the débris of a hurried feast on every side. Kennedy, who had begun in moderation, must have felt the need of further creature comfort after his bout with the stalwart Sioux, and had availed himself to the limit of his capacity of the major's invitation. ”

“ And one night, while decision in Nanette's case was still pending, and, still self-secluded, she hid within the trader's home, refusing speech with anyone but little Fawn Eyes, a sleighing party set out from Frayne for a spin by moonlight along the frozen Platte. Wagon bodies had been set on runners, and piled with hay. The young people from officers' row, with the proper allowance of matrons and elders, were stowed therein, and tucked in robes and furs, Esther Dade among them, gentle and responsive as ever, yet still very silent. Field, in his deep mourning, went nowhere. ”

“ Sore in soul and body was Kennedy, and sore and stiff was his gallant bay, Kilmaine, when these comrades of over three years' service shook the spray of the Platte from their legs and started doggedly northward on the trail. Northward they went for full three miles, Kilmaine sulky and protesting. The dust cloud was only partially visible now, hidden by the ridge a few miles ahead, when, over that very ridge, probably four miles away to the right front, Kennedy saw coming at speed a single rider, and reined to the northeast to meet him. Blake and his men had gone far in that direction. ”

“ The little knot of Indians, jabbering, yelping, prodding and circling about some unseen object on the turf, feigning ignorance of the soldiers' coming, was at the old-time trick to get the foremost troopers to charge and chase, to draw them on in all the dash and excitement of the moment, far ahead—three miles, perhaps—of the main body, and so enable all the lurking band behind that second curtain, the farther ridge, to come swooping down to surround, overwhelm and butcher the luckless few, then be off to safe distance long before the mass of the troop could possibly reach the scene. ”

“ Ray had encircled with her arm the slender waist of Nannie Blake, whose eyes never for an instant quit their gaze after the swift-speeding dots across the distant prairie. All her world was there in one tall, vehement horseman. Other troopers, mounting at the stables, had spurred away under Captain Gregg, and were splashing through the ford. Other denizens of Fort Frayne, hearing of the excitement, came hurrying to the bluff, hangers-on from the trader's store and corral, the shopman himself, even the bar-keeper in his white jacket and apron ”

“ His deep-set gray eyes, under their tangled thatch of brown, gazed straight into the face of every man on the Platte, soldier, cowboy, Indian or halfbreed, but fell abashed if a laundress looked at him. Billy Ray, captain of the sorrel troop and the best light rider in Wyoming, was the only man he ever allowed to straddle a beautiful thoroughbred mare he had bought in Kentucky, but, bad hands or good, there wasn't a riding woman at Frayne who hadn't backed Lorna time and again, because to a woman the major simply couldn't say no. ”