CHAPTER XXVII.

MATT SHEPARD AND THE MASSACRE.

Instead of driving the stage through to Calumet Wells, Hank Elmore had turned his horses about in the trail, and, with viciously cracking whip and jumping horses, he took it at a bouncing gait back toward Blossom Range.

Elmore was undeniably scared. Aside from that, he wanted to be the first with the news into Blossom Range, and talk the thing over with his cronies there, as he had talked over every hold-up in which he had ever been engaged. Elmore disliked hold-ups, because of the danger; but when they were past he got great glory and satisfaction out of the fact that he had been in them. Sometimes he told marvelous stories of his courage and prowess, but that was only when no one could contradict him.

With his horses jumping along the trail and the old “hearse” rocking like a catboat in a gale, Elmore was suddenly taken aback by the supposed discovery that he was in for another hold-up, even though he had in the stage only the scared woman who answered to the name of Vera Bright. He stabbed his boot against the brake, and surged back on the lines with a pull that threatened them, weakened, as they were, with splicings and tyings.

But, instead of road agents, the men who came into view were Matt Shepard, sheriff and jailer of the county, with a body of men behind him, some mounted and others on foot. Heavily armed, they had looked peculiarly brigandish.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” yelled Elmore, much relieved.

“Who did you think it was?” demanded Shepard, while his men swarmed up behind him.

“Agents!” answered Elmore laconically. “See anything o’ these hyer knotted lines, gents? See that trace over thar thet’s been cut and then tied together; and that back band that has been served the same way? Y’ don’t notice, I reckon, that this hyer harniss is hangin’ tergether with strings. Ef you did, you wouldn’t ask has I been in a hold-up.”

Shepard and his backers were immensely interested.

“Who was the hold-up gents?” he demanded.

Then Elmore was able to turn one of the few jokes of his life.

“Buffalo Bill and his crowd!” he yelled. “Wow! Would ye ’a’ thought it?”

But after that he explained what he meant, while the men from Blossom Range crowded round the stage and looked at the cut and patched harness and the scratched horses.

“So the lady is inside?” said the sheriff.

She came to the door, very pale and large-eyed. She corroborated the story of the stage driver, and was able to add details of her own from personal observation.

“Cody is follerin’ him, then,” said Shepard. “It’s a game we want to git into. Which way did Benson go?”

“Buffler said he’d be mighty certain to rack out fer the Ute village,” Elmore explained. “They’re goin’ thar to git him. Buffler tole me to tell yer.”

Shepard consulted a few moments with his followers.

“I reckon we’ll save a whole heap of time,” he said, “if we cut right acrost the hills hyer and head straight fer the Ute village. No use in us goin’ on to where Benson got out of the stage, as we couldn’t do nothin’ there; it would be a foolish waste of time.”

The men agreed with him.

“So we’ll hit it up for the Ute village. If Benson has taken refuge there ag’in we’ll snake him out, and I’ll handcuff old Iron Bow and land him in jail for harboring him.”

Hank Elmore drove on toward Blossom Range, having added interesting details and additions to the story he meant to tell there, while the sheriff and his posse set off across the hills by the shortest route, the Ute village their objective point.

In spite of the fact that some of them were unmounted they made good progress, not being hampered by the necessity of picking up and following an obscure trail.

The time was past noon when the Ute village was approached. Afar off they had heard Indian howling.

A quarter of a mile from the village, when they were most unsuspecting, they were struck by a blind charge of warriors, of a kind they had never experienced or heard of, and for which they were totally unprepared. Shepard had expected to walk up to the village, summon Iron Bow, demand Benson, then search the tepees, as he had done before.

Instead came this wild charge, the Ute warriors rising out of a nest of rocks and pouring down on the posse without warning. They were led by a small painted and feathered figure and a very giant of a man who seemed more like a wild animal than a man, though he also wore Indian paint and feathers. Iron Bow was there, too, transformed into an Indian maniac.

The screeching braves did not stop even when revolvers were emptied at them. Rushing on the horsemen, they caught them by the legs and pulled them bodily to the ground. They seemed in a fanatical rage. The falling men were shot and hatcheted. Those who at first, in fright, pulled their horses round, got away. The others fell, dead or wounded, or captured. Not even the horses were spared; for when there seemed no white men to kill the Utes began to slay the animals. It was not a rout, it was annihilation.

Matt Shepard had been shot from his horse, a bullet passing through his body; but he still lived when he struck the ground, and did not lose consciousness.

With such horror as he had never felt, he witnessed the terrible massacre of his followers. A groan which the sight drew from him told the warriors that he was not dead. One of the braves, thereupon, jumped at him with a lance, to run him through.

But the small painted chief, whom Shepard had noticed at the beginning of the charge, leaped in, caught the lance, and turned its point aside, so that it drove into the ground; then he shouted angrily to the other Indians, who were crowding round to finish the white prisoner.

When it seemed that the Utes would kill Shepard, the small man, yelling something, pulled a whisky bottle from beneath his blanket and flung it out from him.

The drug-and-whisky-crazed warriors made a combined rush for it, and in a minute were fighting among themselves for its possession.

The small man whom Shepard thought a chief stood now before him. Close behind the small man came that other painted figure, that had such a marked resemblance to a wild animal.

The little man spoke in English, and Shepard recognized the voice of Tim Benson.

“You know me?” said Benson.

“Yes, I know you now,” Shepard admitted. “It explains things.”

“Glad you see a great light. But you ain’t going to last long.”

“I know it,” said Shepard; “I don’t reckon I can live half an hour. I’m bleeding inside.”

“You were coming to the Ute village to get me?”

“Yes; there’s no use denyin’ it. I’d have done it, but for this treachery.”

“Is it treachery for a man to protect himself?”

“We won’t argue it--I ain’t got time! But the white man who will furnish whisky to Indians had ought to be tortured as well as hung.”

“Where is Cody?”

“I don’t know.”

“He ain’t right out there?”

“Perhaps so; I can’t say as to that.”

“Well, I’d like to send you to him with a message, saying that the thing that has happened to your crowd is going to happen to his. I’ll admit that when we jumped down the hill here we thought--I did--that it was his crowd; and if I hadn’t been mistaken in it he would be where you are now. I’d like to send that word to him.”

Shepard did not answer. He still looked courageously at the man who was disguised as an Indian, but a grayish pallor was stealing over his face.

The Indians had squabbled for the whisky, had swallowed it, and now came rushing back. They were howling for the blood of the white man.

“Take him!” said the outlaw.

He stepped aside, drawing the apelike man with him.

It was the end of Matt Shepard, one of the bravest of the sheriffs of the Western border.

* * * * *

The panicky survivors encountered Buffalo Bill’s party. The shooting and yelling had been heard, and the scout had hastened.

“Better go back!” said Shepard’s deputy, whose name was Dugan. “Shepard’s dead or wounded, and the hull bilin’ that ain’t killed was captured, ceptin’ them that’s with me. They’ll wipe you clean off the slate, if you go there.”

The other men with Dugan said much the same thing.

Then they went on, riding and running in the direction of Blossom Range.

The hubbub of the Indians had died out.

Buffalo Bill took stock of the situation before moving on. The thing had a bad look.

“It’s Benson’s work, of course,” he declared.

“Benson’s and Gorilla Jake’s,” said Jim Betts. “They j’ined forces, ye know; fer they war shore together in that hole what Brother Bill thought he had blocked.”

“They have given the Indians whisky.”

“Hangin’s too good fer sech varmints,” Nomad declared.

“I reckon, Cody,” suggested the man from Laramie, “that we’d better find out just how the land lies ahead of us, before we try to do much.”

“How’re ye goin’ to git Benson, if he’s with the Utes, and the Utes air out fer that kind of fightin’?” asked Bill Betts.

But they did not spend time discussing the situation uselessly. Under Buffalo Bill’s guidance they moved forward toward the point where the Indian attack had fallen.

When close upon it, the scout and the man from Laramie went on, leaving the others to await the result of their inspection.

The evidence of the bloody work of the crazy Ute warriors was plentiful and appalling. But they did not find Matt Shepard, alive or dead.

“He was wounded, the boys reported,” said Hickok, “and I reckon they hauled him into the village. They’ll be torturing him next. The thing I’m wishing is that I could get Benson by the heels.”

They were so close upon the Indian village that they had used the utmost caution in reaching the battle ground, and they could see right into the village, when they cared to take the chances of discovery to accomplish it. The Utes were making a lot of noise, and seemed engrossed in dancing and yelling.

“Well, what shall we do?” asked Wild Bill.

“I was just thinking of sending to the town for help. While our messenger is gone you and I might do something. If Shepard is in the hands of the Utes we want to know it.”

“And if Benson is there we want to _get_ him.”

“Right. I think he will be either in our hands or dead before this thing ends.”

“Who can we send to the town; no one will want to go? We’ve left our horses, and it will have to be some one afoot. Besides, will anybody come out against the Utes now, when they hear the story those fellows will tell?”

As there was no possibility of penetrating into the village while daylight held, the two scouts and friends back-tracked carefully, and delivered their report.

While scouting around that afternoon, Buffalo Bill came upon “sign,” which led directly to the discovery of Tim Benson’s whisky cache. Wild Bill, Nomad, and Bill Betts were with him at the time.

Though Benson and the apelike man had blinded the trail there, and had taken every means to conceal the cache from the Indians, the trained eyes of the scout and his friends enabled them to find it in a comparatively brief period.

“Waugh!” Nomad grunted, when the cache had been located. “I reckon Benson’s been hidin’ some of ther gold from his hold-ups right hyar.”

That was the first and most natural conclusion.

“When we’ve gophered down to it,” said Wild Bill, “we’ll know whether he’s been hiding anything. Whatever it was he may have taken it away.”

“I’m bettin’ thar’s gold down hyer!” Nomad reiterated.

When they had gophered down and came upon the concealed whisky bottles they were amazed. Yet they did not fail to understand why they were there. Buffalo Bill had known for some time that Benson bought the good will of the Utes by providing them with whisky.

“Waal, this hyer is a disapp’intment ter me,” Nomad admitted. “Fer right now I warn’t seekin’ no red likker.”

“Might sell the truck in town, though, for a good deal,” said Bill Betts. “It’d be a cute thing to do, to keep the reds frum gittin’ it.”

Wild Bill laughed over this naive view of the proper method to remove temptation from the Utes.

“Nighabout half enough fer a burro load,” remarked Betts, as the bottles were lifted out, one by one, and placed on the ground. “Benson expected ter continner in the whisky bisness with the Utes fer some time, by ther looks.”

“This sand hyer has been disturbed quite recent,” averred Nomad, whose old eyes were still of the keenest.

“Right-o!” Wild Bill agreed. “Here is where the Utes got the courage which enabled them to charge and wipe out the sheriff’s party.”

“A man what will give whisky to pizen reds ought to be hung,” Bill Betts added. “But what air we goin’ ter do with the stuff, if we don’t take it to town?”

Buffalo Bill had been considering the possibilities of the discovery. Now he spoke:

“Everything indicates that Benson cached a lot of whisky here, which he has used from time to time in influencing the Utes; and that this last Ute outbreak was caused by it. If so, it occurs to me that he will come back here soon for more of it. Now that he has started in, he will have to keep the Utes drunk in order to control them; otherwise, they might sober up, get scared over what they have done, and be ready to make peace and surrender him. He has got to block that; and to do it he must get more whisky. He will come for it here.”

“Right ye air, Buffler!” said Nomad. “Which means ’et we kin lay fer him right hyer, and rake him in when he does come.”

“Jest so,” said Bill Betts. “And if Gorilla Jake comes with him, why, I kin rake him in. Me and Brother Jim is after that reward.”

The bottles lay on the ground, an imposing array.

“Enough to stock up a barroom,” said Betts, eying them covetously. “Thar ain’t any reason, gents, why we can’t jest shift this cache; and, then, when we go to the town, take the stuff with us and sell it thar. Whisky will sell in a town like Blossom Range, when nothin’ else would, and it allus brings good prices. We c’d divvy on the stakes.”

Buffalo Bill was mentally shaping up another plan.

“As I said,” he remarked, “Benson will have to keep the Utes intoxicated in order to manipulate them. But suppose he fails to do so?”

“Then he’ll bust,” said Betts, who was busily engaged in reckoning up the value of the whisky, marking in the sand and using a sliver of rock for a pencil.

“K’rect!” commented Nomad, bending over him; but whether Nomad meant to approve the idea or agreed with the result of Bill Betts’ figures was not apparent.

“Suppose,” said the scout, “that some of the Indians should be with Benson when he comes to get the remainder of his whisky here?”

“Wow! We c’d rake ’em all in!” Nomad cried, looking up.

“But if we happened not to be right here, what would happen?”

“Why, we wouldn’t rake ’em in,” Nomad admitted.

“I see you don’t get my idea. It is just this: The Indians would be angered, perhaps would think Benson had fooled them; then things would look bad for Benson.”

“He might trail to the other cache, and show the Utes jest what had been done, and so save himself; for the Utes couldn’t blame him, when they saw how it had happened,” said Betts.

“I wanted to bring you round to that,” the scout confessed, “so that perhaps you would agree with my ideas on the subject. My suggestion is that we empty out this whisky and fill the bottles with water from the stream over there; then restore them to the cache!”

“Waugh!” Nomad blurted, but not in approval.

“Throw away all this good and vallyble whisky?” cried Betts.

“It isn’t ours to sell in the first place,” argued the scout; “but if we can accomplish something we will take it anyway, and drain it out into the sand. Considering the use it is being put to, we have ample justification.”

“But----” began Betts.

“You have already admitted that if we cache the stuff somewhere else the Utes may get it. If we turn it into the sand they can’t. That’s a point to be considered. But the chief thing--the chief object to be gained--is that it will anger the Utes against Benson, if he brings them here, or sends them here, and they find that the whisky bottles hold nothing but water. If he angers them, his influence over them is lost; particularly we can count on that, when the influence of the whisky they have had has died out.”

Wild Bill put out his hand impulsively.

“Buffalo Bill forever!” he said. “I was willing to agree with Bill Betts and Nomad, that it would be a wicked waste to turn all this whisky out; but you’re right about it. We might not be here when Benson comes for the stuff, which he will do sooner or later; and if he comes with a lot of Utes we sure couldn’t grip him, even if we were here. But if he brought ’em, and then they got their mad up because the whisky was gone and the bottles filled with water, Mr. Benson would sure be, right off, in the hottest kind of trouble.”

Buffalo Bill further elaborated his idea, but the gist of what was said has already been given.

Only one change was made in the plan when they came to carry it out. The whisky was emptied into the little stream, instead of into the sand, for the reason that the odor of the liquor in the sand might betray too much. Then the bottles, filled at the stream, were restored to their hiding place. When all had been done, careful pains were taken to obliterate every trace.

The time lacked yet two hours of sunset when the work was completed, and Buffalo Bill’s little party drew back into the brush, in the midst of the rocky ground surrounding the cache, where they “bogged” down, waiting to see what would happen.

Buffalo Bill’s wish still was that Benson would come out there alone, or accompanied only by Gorilla Jake, and the rascals could be captured.