CHAPTER XXVI.

IN THE UTE VILLAGES.

Having made their successful getaway, Tim Benson and Gorilla Jake covered the distance to the whisky cache in record time.

The whisky was in flat, pint bottles, and it was vile stuff. Still, Gorilla Jake celebrated the opening of the cache by swallowing the contents of one of the bottles.

Only about half the bottles were removed, the others being carefully concealed again. The men divided those taken, distributing them to the best advantage on their persons, after “doctoring” them with Gorilla Jake’s tablets.

Before they started on for the Ute village they did their best to obliterate all traces of the cache and of their visit to it. Also, in approaching and leaving it, they blinded their trail with great care.

“If Cody finds this trail he’ll be doing good work,” said Benson. “I don’t think he can do it.”

Gorilla Jake’s brutish face had flushed under the influence of the liquor swallowed, and his gray eyes were glittering. He still shuffled his steps with half-dragging feet, and swung his long arms clumsily; yet his courage was improved, and he walked more erect.

“I reckon it’s a good thing fer you,” he said, growing boastful, “that I met you jest as I did.”

“I judge it was a good thing for both of us,” Benson parried.

Though Benson had not touched the whisky, his face had a peculiar look, and one that was not pleasant. All the facial masks he assumed at various times were now laid aside, so that his real self was more than usually well revealed. It denoted cunning; but also a fear that had begun to approach terror. It showed, too, a lack of mental balance. Some of Benson’s “feats” had often made his friends say he was “crazy,” though in its literal sense they did not mean it. If they had beheld him now, though, they might not have thought him crazy, they would have seen that he was desperate. And desperation carried to an extreme is but a form of insanity, in that it leads men to do things which in ordinary moments they would not dream of attempting.

No greater proof of Benson’s decided list toward insanity was needed than the step he had decided on, and was now bent upon carrying out. A man normally balanced would have seen that its end was more than threatening. For, even granting that he induced the Utes to destroy Buffalo Bill’s party, that could not be the end of it. Other men would be sent, backed by the power of the American Government. A perfectly sane mind would have known that he could no more combat and destroy them all than the old woman could sweep back the sea.

Benson justified his plan to himself by the thought that if he had to “go under” he could send Buffalo Bill ahead of him to the land of shades.

A question was voiced now by the man who looked so much like a great ape that Benson had a real scorn of his mental ability:

“Don’t ye reckon it’d be best if we jest dropped this hull blamed thing and purceeded to put distance between us and these hyer people?”

Benson stopped, his face white and nervously troubled, his brows lowering.

“Weakening, are you?” he snarled.

“Not edzackly, but----”

“Then, swing along. In an hour or less Cody’s crowd will pick up our trail in spite of all we’ve done, and will be follering it. I ain’t any notion to be caught by ’em, out here.”

A cluck of anger sounded in the throat of the apelike man. He did not like the tone in which this was said to him. But he “swung along,” following hard at Benson’s heels.

On gaining the edge of the village, they were met and opposed by warriors. But Benson stood his ground.

“Tell Iron Bow that Little Eagle comes, with his servant, bearing gifts for the chief and warriors, and wishes to see him,” he said, making his communication in Ute.

Iron Bow, the chief, was already approaching, drawn by the hubbub. He arrived in no pleasant humor; and he stared in a forbidding manner at the apelike man with Benson.

“Little Eagle knows,” said the chief, “that it is not well for him to come again to the Ute village. Iron Bow is his friend; yet the chief must think of his people.”

“I don’t know what ye’re sayin’,” objected Gorilla Jake, “but I don’t like the looks o’ things hyer.”

Benson gave this no heed--he did not even look at Gorilla Jake, but merely smiled upon the frowning chief and truculent warriors; then he fished from a pocket one of the bottles of “doctored” whisky.

“I and my servant have come with gifts for the chief and warriors,” he said smoothly, as if he had not heard the objections of Iron Bow. “Here are bottles of the white man’s fire-water, which my brothers like so well.”

He tried to pass them around; but the eager Indians, forgetting their angry growls, clutched and crowded so that it was soon a case of “first come, first served.”

Iron Bow, deeming a scramble beneath his dignity, raised the bottle given him to his lips, after which sounded a hollow “gurgle-gurgle,” as the tempting liquor slipped down his throat. He was almost the only Indian there permitted by others to drink his bottle empty in peace.

“My servant has more,” said Benson airily, having passed out all that he had. “But you must not fight for it, and you must not make such a squabble over it that you may break the bottles. It is very good fire-water, as the chief knows.”

He turned to his “servant,” and Gorilla Jake’s pockets and shirt began to yield up “doctored” bottles.

As many as thirty warriors, and the chief, got enough of the powerful and poisonous stuff to fit them for murder within half an hour.