CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FLIGHT OF THE FUGITIVES.

That he might hasten along faster, and at the same time conceal his trail in the tracks made by horses that had passed, the crafty young chief soon left the rough and rocky hillsides, and entered the regular mountain highway that connected the town below with some of the mines above.

This was the trail which Lena Forest used in making her infrequent visits to the town. And when she saw it, and knew that her captor was intending to enter it, her hopes rose again, and gave her renewed strength.

Lightfoot was shrewd enough to know that since the Indian scare there was not much likelihood that any wayfarers would be encountered on that trail. What he feared were the men whom he believed to be following him--Buffalo Bill and his comrades, of whom Crazy Snake had told him, and against whom he had been warned.

Lightfoot was light of foot, as his name indicated; in truth, he was a copper-colored Mercury, so fleet of foot and untiring was he. Fast as he could drive the horses on, he had no trouble in keeping at their heels.

He drove them down the trail, which here curved and wound round and over the hills, dipping and rising and losing itself in many a charming spot.

Lena Forest looked hungrily ahead, whenever a rise of the trail gave her an extended view, always hoping to see there white horsemen.

At first this crafty maneuver of Lightfoot’s puzzled her, for he seemed to be going toward the town, when she naturally anticipated that he would wish to keep as far from it as possible. But soon she began to understand, when she saw, by glancing back, that the hoofprints of the horses and his own moccasin tracks were lost in the other tracks, which, in such numbers, had beaten the ground hard as flint.

She saw, too, that it was probably his purpose to leave this main trail at some point, after utilizing it all he could, and that he would then strike again into the rocky hills, and hold his course toward the Blackfoot village.

The white girl and the Indian maid talked little as the horses were thus driven on. Lena Forest had about lost hope of being able to persuade this Indian girl to help her; and she thought it not wise, anyway, to express her desires when Lightfoot could hear, for he had shown a pretty clear understanding of English.

Though the Blackfeet were now threatening a bloody war on the whites, there had been in the recent past so much intercourse and trading between the two races that most of the Blackfeet, men and women, had picked up a fair smattering of the language of the white men, so that they could understand it at least in its simpler forms.

By and by the fear of the pursuers he believed to be following became so strong in the mind of the young Indian chief that once more he left his prisoner in charge of the Indian girl, and stole away for the purpose of climbing a hill, that he might look backward over the way he had come.

The place selected for leaving the horses and the prisoner was a dark hollow, where the trail made a quick bend round rocks, and where bushes, growing in each side of the trail, made good cover.

Those bushes shut him from sight of the prisoner and the Indian girl almost as soon as he started on his way.

Lena Forest was about to begin her petitions again, and was trying to summon enough courage to try to make an escape if there was another refusal, when the bushes near by rustled, and a young man stood forth, leveling a revolver at Wind Flower.

“Don’t move!” he commanded.

The face of the girl prisoner became white as chalk when she saw him, and she seemed about to slide in a faint from her horse; but she maintained her balance, and whispered:

“Bruce! Oh, save me, dear!”

The Indian girl became rigid as stone from fear; her black eyes opening in fright when she looked into the muzzle of that revolver. Her lips trembled and opened, as if she meant to call for help.

“Don’t move!” came the command again.

The young white man, dressed in miner’s clothing, stepped out quickly.

“Down from the horse!” he said, his voice low but commanding.

The words were addressed to the Indian girl; and, backed by the revolver, it seemed that she would not dare to disobey them. Yet as she slid to the ground, she screamed aloud for help, and threw her arms round the neck of the young white man, surprising and handicapping him.

That scream, and the fact that her lover, Bruce Clayton, was there to help her, and needed help now himself, aroused the dormant energy of Lena Forest.

She caught the rein of her horse and jerked the animal toward the combatants--for at the moment the white man and the Indian girl were struggling in lively conflict--and then she tried to get down and go to the youth’s assistance.

The horse gave a jump, being frightened, and she fell to the ground. This scared the other horse. He, too, gave a rearing plunge, and went clattering down the trail, and out of sight beyond the fringing bushes.

“Let him go!” Lena Forest panted, as she dashed at the Indian girl.

But Clayton had caught hold of the Indian girl, and now he threw her from him. She staggered, and then fell to the ground.

Clayton caught the half-fainting white girl in his arms, and in another moment he was running with her along the trail, following the course taken by the scared horses.

On the hillside sounded a whoop, showing that Lightfoot had heard the outcry, suspected something of the character of what was happening, and was bounding down the hill.

Clayton had a horse below, at the side of the trail, concealed in a small grove; and for that grove he now made lively tracks. He reached the horse, and threw his sweetheart into the saddle; then he sprang up himself, mounting with surprising speed and agility. Catching her close in his arms again, he drove the horse into the trail, and sped on.

Behind him he heard another whoop--an Indian war whoop now, telling him that the enraged redskin was pursuing, or, at least, that he would pursue instantly.

Clayton lashed the horse; and, in spite of its double burden, it fairly flew along the winding trail.

“We’re all right!” he said to the girl he clasped in his arms. “I don’t understand it, but you’re safe now, Lena; and I think God must have sent me along the trail at just that time, that I might save you from that wretch.”

She shuddered, put her arms round his shoulders, and nestled closer to him.

It seemed a delightful dream--this sudden transition from her position as the prisoner of a painted Indian into the arms of the youth she loved, and whom she had promised to marry.

“You’re all right now?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she whispered; “only--only terribly frightened!”

“Still frightened? You’re safe now as can be.”

“I mean that I--I was frightened and I’m so weak that I don’t think I could walk; but this is heaven, after that--after I thought I was to be taken to the Blackfoot village, and there forced to become the squaw of an Indian.”

“That young Indian chief?”

“No; Crazy Snake!”

“The infernal villain! He was with that young chief? I didn’t see him.”

“But he captured me--slipped on me in the house, after father was killed, and----”

“Your father dead?” He was shocked at the sad news.

“Yes--dead--dead!” She sobbed again. “He was killed by the Blackfeet, and----”

She choked and could not go on.

“Tell me about it,” he urged.

She told him, brokenly, and in as few words as she could.

He was silent a while, his eyes fixed on the trail, and his hearing strained backward in anticipation of pursuit.

“I knew the Blackfeet were rising, and I heard you had been in town,” he said. “So I thought I’d ride out, and have a talk with you and your father; for I thought it wasn’t any longer safe for you to stay out in that lonely place.

“That’s how I happened to meet you on the trail. I saw the Indian coming, driving the two horses; but, truly, I didn’t know then one of the persons riding was you.

“I didn’t know what to expect of the Indian; so I hid my horse in the grove, and went into concealment myself at the bend in the trail; for I didn’t know but I might be needed, seeing that the riders of the horses seemed to be women.

“When I saw that you were one of them, I was too astonished for anything. And then the Indian went up the hill; and----Well, you know the rest.”

“Oh, you are so brave!” she said.

“Not I. You see, anybody would have done that; and when I saw that it was you, I’d have died there fighting that rascal to get you away from him.”

“If he gets those horses, he’ll follow us,” she said, glancing back along the trail.

“He’ll follow, anyway, I think, horses or no horses; and some of those Indians can run like antelopes. The trouble is, he’s likely to get help.”

“He is a good runner.”

“He didn’t insult nor abuse you?”

“No; but I was dreadfully afraid of him. The girl was jealous of me.”

“Jealous?”

“The young chief is her lover, I think; and she fancied he was taking me to his wigwam.”

He laughed then.

“It was no laughing matter,” she said.

“No, of course not; very far from it. But it’s amusing to think she could be jealous of you.” He drew rein suddenly. “Hello! There are Indians down below. Blackfeet, too, and they’re coming this way; but I don’t think they’ve seen us. We’ve got to leave the trail and get into the hills here.”

He looked for rocky ground, and drew the horse out upon it.

The knowledge that another peril confronted her served to make Lena Forest more courageous. She released herself from her lover’s arms, and sat upright, shifting to a position behind him, where she would less hamper his movements. He chose rocky ground for the horse, and went on as fast as he could.

“We’ll be all right until these Blackfeet meet that young chief. And then they’ll learn about us, and, of course, will follow us at once.”

“They’re mounted, too!”

“Yes, on Indian ponies; and those ponies are better able to climb about these rocky hills than this big horse is. We must get as big a start of them as we can.”

He drove the horse on without mercy, forcing it at a swift pace over the rough country, trying all the time to pick ground that would leave a poor trail.

As they thus rode on they heard the wild war whoops that announced either their discovery, or that the Indians had encountered the young chief, Lightfoot, and learned from him what had occurred.

“Now, we must ride--ride!” said Clayton, and he bent forward in the saddle, lashing the horse on, and using the spurs mercilessly.

Again the wild yells of the Blackfeet broke forth.

“They may be yelling for some other reason,” she said, trying to encourage her lover.

“Yes; they may have sighted Cody and Pawnee Bill,” he assented. “There’s no telling; but they’ve struck something, some trail or some enemy, and, like a pack of hounds when the game is scented, they can’t help yelping.”

The path grew rougher, if that can be called a path which was more than half the time but a broken game trail, that played out and began again in the most eccentric manner. They had gained a high shoulder of the hills, and below them lay open country, that stretched on into illimitable distances, where there was much coarse grass.

“There is one way of defeating those scoundrels--of keeping them from seeing our trail,” said Clayton, at last; “and that is to burn it.”

“Burn it?”

“Yes; ride down into that, and fire the grass, and then make our flight behind the fire and the smoke.”

“And have the fire overtake us and burn us to death! But try it; I’d rather be burned to death than to fall into the hands of those awful and merciless Blackfeet.”

He guided the horse down the slope and on toward the grassy levels that lay beyond. Ten minutes later he was well out in the grass.

Here he stooped from the saddle, pulled a handful of dry grass, to which he applied a lighted match, and then threw it down.

While he did this the horse stood panting, sweat dripping from it.

Young Clayton had seen that he must do something desperate, if he escaped the Blackfeet; and this was the thing he was now to try.

The burning grass communicated fire to that surrounding the horse. Clayton sent the animal on, and with a few leaps it left the conflagration behind it.

The remarkable manner in which the fire spread through the dry grass was worthy of comment. It flamed up with a roar. Seeming to create a wind from the rising currents of heated air, the fire began to run before the breeze, leaping along in an amazing way.

It spread round from the spot where it had been started, burning backward toward the hills and outward in the direction taken by the horse.

“Now, for a race!” thought Clayton, struck by a sudden fear, as he saw how fast the fire was spreading. “Maybe that will be worse to get away from than the Blackfeet; and if anything should happen to the horse we’ll have to run for our lives!”

He voiced none of this to the girl.

“The Blackfeet haven’t been sighted yet,” he said to her. “They’ll know, of course, or guess, that we’ve taken to the grass, and set it on fire; but after that black smoke gets to rolling and the fire to running good, it will be hard for them to tell where we have gone, and I defy them to follow our trail after the fire has burned the grass.”

Before he had ridden a mile the fire was flaming in high billows behind him, and the smoke, black and thick, filled the sky.

Clayton began to be somewhat alarmed.

In desperation he had entered this grassy land and had fired the grass, but he seemed not to have bettered his position, in spite of the blaze. Indeed, if the fire ringed him in, or overtook him, his situation would be worse than before.

Though his face paled, he spoke hopefully to the girl who clung to him.

The Blackfeet were still unseen; and, indeed could hardly have been seen now through the pall of smoke and the billowing flame, even if they had come riding straight down from the hills in chase.

The horse was a gallant animal, and was standing up splendidly to the work, yet the strain was beginning to tell. Its sides were heaving, its head was sunk low, and its whole body was covered with a white lather of sweat. Its nostrils gaped wide and red as it plunged onward.

If the horse had been fresh, the hopes of Bruce Clayton would have mounted high, for its gait was faster than the running advance of the fire; but the horse was becoming exhausted. It had been tired even before he encountered the young Indian chief, and since then he had driven it hard.

Three miles away, and lying along the rocky rim of the cañon which held the river, was a long strip of woodland.

On the other side were the hills.

The open, grassy country lay straight ahead between these two.

The speed of the fire, as it now pursued him, admonished Clayton that safety demanded he should not hold to the straight-ahead line. The fire would run on indefinitely, but the horse could not do so. The Indians were in the hills when last he heard them; and for that reason chiefly he turned the horse toward the distant fringe of timber.

“We can make those trees without trouble, I think,” he said, encouraging the girl, whose terrified backward glances he had observed.

“But the fire is coming very fast!” she said.

“And we are riding fast!”

“But it is gaining on us. The horse has lost speed in the last mile. The poor thing is exhausted.”

“Still, I think we can reach those trees. We’ve got to do that.”

The horse stumbled, bringing a cry from the girl; but righted, and galloped heavily on. Soon it stumbled again.

Then before them they beheld a yawning rent in the earth, like a large and deep ditch. It was in fact a dry waterway, cut by rains that came in some torrential storm down from the hills. It was impossible to go round this gap in the earth.

Driven by spur, whip, and voice, the tired horse tried to leap it. It rose in the air, making a gallant effort, but lacked strength to carry it across, and went falling down, down, into the great gully.

Lena Forest screamed as the horse took that plunge.

Clayton gripped tightly the rein, caught hold of the horn of the saddle, yelled for the girl to cling to him, and steadied himself for the shock of the fall.

The horse struck with stunning force, and rolled over, throwing the girl to one side.

Clayton was hurled from the saddle over the horse’s head, where he lay, unconscious and white-faced.

Lena Forest scrambled up unhurt, but dazed and frightened. Then she screamed again, as she saw Bruce lying there as if he were dead.

And on came the fire, roaring and writhing, shooting up crackling flames that seemed to laugh in glee, as if they realized the terrible predicament of the girl and her brave lover.