CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SCOUTS’ PURSUIT.

Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, or Kulux-Kittibux, as he was known among the Indians, after the departure of Nick Nomad, began a search along the cañon stream. They left their horses behind them, for the ground was too rough for a horse to get over it.

The thing for which the eagle eyes of the scout were searching was seen by him at last, when he began to despair of finding anything of the kind.

“There it is, Gordon,” he said, pointing.

What seemed a foot section of twisted vine rose from the water, and was wound in the most natural manner round the root of a tree.

Buffalo Bill scrambled toward it, and soon had his hand on it.

“Yes, just as I thought,” he said, and he began to pull on the thing.

Soon it lengthened, and a sunken canoe rose into view. It had been sunk cleverly there by its Indian owner; and the painter of time-stained rawhide, twisted round the root in imitation of a vine, the Indian had felt sure could not be distinguished from an actual vine.

The canoe was drawn from the water, and the water poured out of it. Then the two friends entered it. Buffalo Bill took up the paddle that had been lashed to the canoe, and turned the bow down the stream.

They ran the rapids successfully.

Because of the speed with which the current hurried them on, and also because of the cleverness of Crazy Snake, they did not see where he had concealed and sunk the canoe in which he had gone down the stream; but swept on past it, and soon again were in rapids that bore them farther and farther from that spot.

Finally they abandoned the canoe, after sinking it and marking the place, and went along the banks of the cañon stream, trying to find the trail of Crazy Snake.

“He’s been too much for us,” the scout admitted, when, after long searching on either shore, and for a long distance up and down the river, they were still in the dark. “The rascal was Crazy Snake, I don’t doubt; and he’s one of the cleverest and least crazy of all the Blackfeet.”

As they continued this search, they saw black smoke roll up from the wide stretch of low grassland that fell away from the foot of the hills.

Trees and hills intervened to keep them from at once seeing the fire which gave birth to the smoke.

When they climbed a hill, and the scout leveled on the grassland his field glasses, the smoke and fire had attained such volume that the fugitives riding away before the flames were not visible to him.

Nor could he and Pawnee Bill detect any Indians out there, or in the hills adjacent.

“What’s the meaning of it, Cody?” Pawnee Bill asked.

The scout could not tell him. There were many ways in which such a fire might have started.

The thing was so suggestive, however, that the scouts hung about the edge of the grassland, close down by the river, a long time, looking for Blackfeet along the slopes of the hills.

At length they were astonished by seeing a young man come staggering out of the cañon and running toward them.

He had seen them, and was trying to reach them. As he drew nearer, they saw that his face and hands were blackened, as if by fire or smoke; and he not only staggered, but fell, as he came on.

“Blackfoot deviltry, I reckon!” said Pawnee Bill.

They ran to meet the young man.

Pawnee Bill now recognized him as the thoroughly reformed youth he had met in the town the day before, and with whom he had talked on the subject of a probable Blackfoot uprising.

“Why, it’s Clayton,” he said. “Pool Clayton. He’s hurt, I think.”

Clayton was gasping from the effects of his violent run. As soon as he reached them he began to tell his story, and it amazed them:

“The girl whose father you were burying,” he said; “the girl who was carried away by Crazy Snake from the cabin, she----”

He stopped, choking for breath.

“Yes; go on!” the scout begged.

“I found her in charge of a young Indian called Lightfoot, who had an Indian girl with him; and I took her away from them. They followed us, and other Blackfeet chased us. We took to the grass country, which I fired, thinking thus to hide the trail of my horse. We were both riding one horse. But the horse was weakened by the long run from the fire, and finally fell into a deep gully, in trying to leap it.

“I struck on my head, and didn’t know anything for a while. When I came to myself the girl was gone. I couldn’t find any trail, or anything; and I don’t know what became of her, or what to make of it. The girl was Lena Forest, and she said you----”

He stopped again, coughing and out of breath, but he had told enough to stir them into the most intense interest.

“Guide us to that gully,” said Buffalo Bill.

They started at once, Clayton, telling more of his story as they hurried on.

His smoky, grimy appearance was caused by the fact that in reaching them he had passed through a portion of the burned area.

He conducted them as quickly as possible down the cañon, and then out into the burned grassland, to the spot where his horse had tried to leap the deep gully, and had fallen into it.

The horse was found there, dead, for in its fall it had received injuries which killed it.

Clayton and the scouts, in gaining this spot, followed the gully from the cañon, thus remaining below the level of the grassland; a fact they counted on to keep them out of sight of any Blackfeet in the hills.

The young man showed them where he had fallen, and where he had searched, after his return to consciousness.

They took up the work where he had dropped it, giving to it their great skill.

There were no tracks visible at first in the burned grass; but when they had gone up the gully some distance they found an Indian trail. Two pairs of moccasins had come down from the hills to that point, where they had entered the gully.

As they had not climbed out of the gully on the other side, it was certain they had either gone back, or up or down it.

They had not gone back, and the scouts began to search the gully closely.

Then they found faint traces of the moccasin tracks on the hard soil, with the toes pointing down the gully.

Following this faint trail, they discovered that the Indians had reached the point where now lay the dead horse.

The rest was plain. They had captured the girl and taken her on with them; and, being in a hurry, through fear, perhaps, they had not stopped to scalp the young white man who lay there unconscious, and whom no doubt they thought dead.

“They went with her to the cañon,” was the declaration of Buffalo Bill, when he had spelled this out from the dim writing in the soil of the gully.

They hastened on to the cañon, and soon reached it.

The stream roared and raced before them.

On the opposite side was a high, unscalable wall, showing conclusively that the Indians and their prisoner had not gone that way.

“Gone downstream,” said Buffalo Bill; “and, of course, they went in a canoe, for they couldn’t have done otherwise.”

There was nothing to do now but to retrace their way to where the scouts had sunk the Indian canoe, raise it, and set out down the river, following the blind water trail taken by the Indians and their captive.

The mental state of young Clayton may be imagined while this search was being made, and now when this canoe pursuit was begun. Yet he tried to be hopeful, and he was resolutely courageous.

He crouched in the stern of the canoe, wishing that he had in his own hands the stout ash blade which the scout was wielding so skillfully in the bow. He felt that the speed of the canoe was slow, very slow, though it was going as fast as the nature of the channel warranted.

Rocks jutted up in the stream here and there, and at sharp bends the rocks at the sides threatened the canoe as it swung round them.

Buffalo Bill gave his sole attention to the stream and to the paddle.

The other scout kept his keen eyes busy in searching the walls and the shores and the stream ahead, lest the canoe should be run into an ambush.

Soon the speed of the canoe ought to have satisfied even the wild anxiety of the young lover. The current had quickened again into cataracts that tossed and hurled the little craft about as if it were but an eggshell. The rate at which it flew on was enough to take the breath of the canoemen.

Buffalo Bill poised and dipped his paddle with rare skill. It needed a good eye, a strong arm, and a steady brain, and he had all three.

A rock reared itself in the center of the stream, and the current threw the canoe at it, as if to split it in two; but the unerring paddle swept the canoe to one side, and the dangerous rock shot past, with the water boiling white round and over it. A swift turn of the channel threw the canoe over against the wall of dark granite, as if to smash it there; but again the paddle urged it back into the middle of the boiling water, and held it there, as it sped on with arrowy swiftness.

The cañon walls came closer together, pinching in, confining the water, and increasing the strength of the current. The waterway grew dark, as if enveloped in twilight; yet the white water swirling and boiling over and round sharp, up-thrust rocks could still be seen, wherever the rocks lifted themselves like hungry teeth. Around these, dipping and paddling lustily, the scout guided the dancing canoe.

Clayton was hanging on as if for dear life, for now and then the canoe rose into the air and gave a leap as it took some cataract and shot on, the waters roaring about the canoe in a fearful din.

At last the cañon opened, brightening ahead; and soon the worst of the perilous way was past, with smoother water opening before them.

Pawnee Bill watched keenly for some indications on the shore that would show that the captors of the girl had left the river with her here.

The boat moved on more slowly, to enable him to do this; but no signs of such a disembarkation were to be seen.

Soon before the canoe loomed the darkness of another narrow reach of the cañon.

“Shall we go into it?” the scout shouted.

“Yes,” said Pawnee Bill. “They haven’t landed here; so they must have gone on.”

The canoe shot, with dizzying swiftness, toward the dark opening, the current again running beneath the keel with race-horse speed, requiring, for the safe management of the canoe, all of Buffalo Bill’s marvelous skill with the paddle.

It was seen, when they were fairly in the dark opening, that here the cañon roofed itself overhead; so that the river ran through a black tunnel, making thus practically an underground river.

Neither of the three men had ever been on this part of the river before; but Clayton recalled what some of his former associates, the outlaws, had told him of an “underground river,” called the Bitter Water, that cut through a cañon in these mountains. He knew now that he was afloat on that underground stream.

What the result would be he could not foretell. But he recked not of the danger. If Lena Forest had been taken through it, he would not hesitate to follow; no, not even if it led him to death.

“Hold hard!” Buffalo Bill shouted, for the canoe was jumping and bucking like a wild horse. “Hold hard!”

Pawnee Bill could not use his eyes to much advantage in a search of the black walls; and as for the young man, he had all he wanted to do to cling to his place as the canoe flew on.

The darkness became like ink, showing that the river was here completely walled in; and it seemed to him that the water grew rougher, while certainly its roar was much louder, due to its closed-in condition. The roar was thunderous now.

But on the canoe went, through the darkness and the howling noise, whether to destruction, or to be guided through to safety, Bruce Clayton could not tell.