CHAPTER XXVIII.

BARLOW AND THE GIRL.

While Buffalo Bill was thus riding toward the rendezvous to meet Ben Stevens, and the Cheyennes were riding hard toward the Southwest with Wild Bill in their midst as a prisoner, the dastardly young lieutenant, Joel Barlow, and the girl he had abducted so boldly from Fort Cimarron, were pursuing their separate ways.

May Arlington recovered from her swooning condition after Barlow had gone some distance, and she began to ask questions, which were rather hazy at first, but became sharp and pointed when she more clearly understood just where she was and recalled what had happened.

Barlow was lying like Ananias, in order to deceive her and make her think his motives honorable.

“It’s on account of the Cheyennes,” he said.

At the same time, so far as he was concerned, this was a bare falsehood, for he did not then know that the young bucks had left the reservation and gone on the warpath.

A horrible fear gripped the heart of the girl, at that mention of Cheyennes; yet she was of the courageous border kind, and soon she was again asking questions and demanding answers.

“If the Cheyennes are out, then the fort would be the safest place for me,” she urged.

“That’s because you don’t understand the situation,” he told her. “I understand it thoroughly. The fort can’t be held against them. It’s nothing but an old hulk, and has been so for a long time. The palisades are rotten and are ready to fall down. The Indians can beat them down without trouble.”

“If that is so, why haven’t you and the other troopers done something to repair the palisades?”

“Just the dry rot of carelessness,” he said. “The Indians have been peaceable so long that no one could believe there would ever again be trouble; and so the walls have been neglected, and everything is in as bad a shape as it can be.

“I saw the danger you would be in,” he went on. “You are young, and you are a handsome girl; some buck would take you for his squaw as soon as he saw you. That’s why I’m getting you away from there.”

She stiffened in his arms. She did not believe him.

“Let me down, please!” she requested.

“What for?”

“Because I know that you are lying, and I refuse to go farther with you.”

“Why, my dear girl----”

“What black scheme have you in mind now?” she demanded.

“May Arlington, you wrong me! I have no plan. I’m doing this because I want to help you, and because I love you.”

“You have left Mrs. McGee; and Ben Stevens is in that jail there, a prisoner and helpless.”

“I meant to save you, at any rate.”

“I will not go with you. Unhand me.” She struggled in his arms.

“Don’t be foolish, May!” he said. “What would you do?”

“Let me have one of the horses, and I’ll return to the fort.”

“Alone? In the darkness?”

“Yes. Give me one of the horses.”

“No.”

“Then, I’ll walk.”

He held her tight, and her struggles were useless. But she was making trouble, for the horse was growing restive.

“Stop it!” he commanded.

“I will not stop it! Release me!”

“See here,” he said, “I know what I’m doing.”

“And I know what you are intending. You’re carrying me away into the darkness, and where you’re going with me I don’t know. But I won’t go with you.”

“I’m taking you to safety!” he protested.

“Let me down!” she begged.

“No.”

“Whoa!” she cried to the horses.

He struck the spurs into the one he rode, and it started on with such a jump that he was almost thrown out of the saddle.

She began to scream then, though they were so far from the fort by this time that her screams could not reach it.

“I’ll have to force you to stop that, if you don’t stop it yourself,” he threatened. His anger was growing.

In spite of the threat she screamed the louder, and threshed about so violently that he began to fear he could not hold her on the horse.

In the midst of this there was a clatter of pony hoofs, and a mass of dark riders loomed before them as if they had leaped out of the ground. The next minute Barlow and the girl were in the midst of a body of Cheyennes.

The young Indians clutched the horses by the bridles and threw them back on their haunches. They pressed close up to the riders, and grunted when they saw that one of them was a girl and the other an officer of the army.

“What do?” the leader asked in broken English.

The cries of the girl had drawn them, though it seemed probable they would have heard Barlow in his flight any way.

Barlow was himself very much startled and frightened. However, he took courage, for the Indian who spoke to him, he discovered, was one he knew; a young buck he had once aided, and with whom since he had been more or less on terms of friendship.

“See here!” he shouted. “Is that you, Red Wing?”

Red Wing and the other young Cheyennes grunted.

“Is that you, Red Wing? I’m Barlow, you know--Lieutenant Barlow, at the fort.”

Red Wing pushed nearer. All the girl could see in the darkness was the outline of his feathered head and the glitter of his eyes.

“What got?” said Red Wing, peering at the girl, who shrank from him.

“This is my sister, Red Wing. We were on our way to the home of a friend who lives out here. You’ll let us go on?”

The other Cheyennes began to murmur.

Their restive, prancing ponies, the guttural talk, and exclamations, the fluttering of their feathers, combined in the darkness to give to the girl such feelings of terror that she could hardly keep from again screaming outright.

“The Wolf Soldier speaks with a straight tongue?” questioned Red Wing.

The other Cheyennes set up a clamor, fearing the prisoners were to be released. These were the first white people they had encountered in their efforts at raiding, and they did not want them to slip through their fingers now.

“I speak with a straight tongue, Red Wing,” Barlow protested. “She is my sister, and we are going to visit a friend.”

But they were not to be permitted to go on.

“Wolf Soldier stay with me, and she stay with me,” was the announcement, whereupon the Cheyennes closed in about their prisoners.

But because the Wolf Soldier was known to Red Wing, the prisoners were not tied, nor were they treated to any savage brutality, as would otherwise have been the case.

“Steady now!” Barlow whispered in the ear of the girl. “I told you that the Cheyennes were on the warpath, which you doubted. We have blundered into a body of them. But luckily I know their leader. He is a young buck I once saved from a wolf, after he had been badly scratched up by the brute, and he hasn’t forgot it. It’s the thing that will help us, and finally save us. But you’ll have to do as I say, or we’ll never come out of this alive.”

He wanted to impress the girl with a sense of her danger, and also with a sense of his truthfulness and kindly intentions.

The Cheyennes moved forward, clustering round the prisoners.

Having secured temporarily his own safety, and also having no longer to contend with the frantic struggles of May Arlington, whom fright had subjugated for the time, Barlow transferred her to one of his led horses, and so was rid of her weight, which had begun to grow irksome.

Now that she was actually in the hands of the savages whom she had so long dreaded, May Arlington began to show something of the spirit of a heroine. She did not know how much of Barlow’s statements were true or false, but she did know that she was a prisoner of the Cheyennes.

Apparently Barlow’s statement that they had gone on the warpath were true. Judging by that, it might be that his statement that he was taking her from the fort in order to protect her was also true, though she could not yet believe it. But whatever was true or false, she realized that she must try now to escape; and to do that she would need all her strength, energy, and coolness.

She must, therefore, learn self-control! No longer could she throw herself about, as she had been doing, for that was exhausting. It would also be quite useless with these Indians. Their bloody practice was to bury a tomahawk in the head of a prisoner if that prisoner became troublesome.

She bent toward Barlow as the cavalcade galloped on. “Can we escape?” she whispered.

He leaned toward her, to hear what she said; and she repeated the question.

“I think so, later,” he whispered in answer. “We shall have to be careful. They’re treating us well now because of what I did for Red Wing; but if they find us tricky they’ll be severe with us. I’m trying to think out a plan. I’ll save you; and some day you will know that I’m not the black devil you’ve been thinking me.”

That was a long and wearing ride for May Arlington; it taxed her strength to the utmost.

To be hurried forward through the gloom of night surrounded by feathered Indians who are on the warpath, having for a companion a white man whose actions had been brutal and seemed to be treacherous, was a situation about as bad as can be conceived.

Yet May Arlington tried to endure it without a murmur, and even tried to cherish hope, and to think of some plan herself whereby a release might be brought about.

When daylight came the Indians were still in motion, and the girl was almost ready to drop from her saddle.

Some time afterward the Cheyennes sighted a horseman, and contrived to get out of sight in a big “draw” without being seen by him.

The horseman was Wild Bill.

When he came near enough they charged him, and a sharp fight ensued. Two of the Indians were killed and another wounded; and then Wild Bill was at their mercy.

It was the fight and the capture which Buffalo Bill saw in the sky mirror.

The Indians in their rage and revenge would have slain Wild Bill, but they recognized him as a scout and one of the pards of the dreaded Long Hair, as Buffalo Bill was known to them. Therefore, instead of killing him outright, they simply brandished their weapons about his head in efforts to frighten him, and reserved him for a more horrible fate later.

Long before this time Lieutenant Barlow had apparently set up amicable relations with the Cheyennes. Even the exhausted and alarmed girl noticed it. He was not treated as a prisoner, but more as if he were one of them. Red Wing rode much of the time at his side, and conversed with him, sometimes in Cheyenne, a language with which he was familiar, strangely familiar it seemed to May Arlington.

The bodies of the slain Indians were tied to the backs of ponies. The wounded Indian was borne in a blanket slung hammock-wise between two ponies; a position that must have brought him pain, although he gave no sign of it.

Wild Bill had been tied hand and foot, and a rope wound round the body of the horse to which he was tied held his legs under the horse’s belly. He observed that Barlow and the girl were not bound.

Barlow put his horse finally by his side.

“Sorry to see you here, Hickok,” he said, with professed sympathy. “I’m a prisoner, too, and I was afraid to try to get nearer to you sooner. Some of the Cheyennes suspect me; but I have the good will of the chief, because I saved him once from a wolf. On account of that he calls me the Wolf Soldier.”

Wild Bill looked hard at him.

“It’s a good name, I think; that young Indian must be a fine character reader. The Wolf Soldier just about fits you.”

Barlow’s face turned red. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

“That you _are_ a wolf soldier, or a wolfish one, as you please. I understand how you happen to be here. You’re on good terms with these red villains, because you’re a renegade.”

“This is insulting, Hickok,” said Barlow; “but considering your excitement, and your position, I’ll not hold it against you. I don’t know what you’ve heard, I’m sure; but I know that what you say wrongs me, cruelly wrongs me.”

Wild Bill lifted his voice recklessly, and shouted to the girl:

“My dear young lady, don’t trust this rascally lieutenant a minute, nor believe anything he says; he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and these Cheyennes hit his character right when they call him the Wolf Soldier.”

A cry of rage broke from Barlow.

“Hickok,” he shouted, “you lie; you lie like a dog!”

The hot blood reddened the face of the bound man.

“You’ll have a chance to take that back, if these red gentlemen don’t make short work of me,” he said. “Never does any man tell me to my teeth that I’m a liar, and afterward live to brag about it. He’ll meet me with pistols in hand, and one or the other of us will turn up his toes to the daisies. You’ve heard of Wild Bill.”

Barlow’s face paled. Wild Bill, the dead shot of the West, did have rather an unenviable reputation as a dead shot and a duelist; and it was said that he was quick to resent an insult, and would fight to the death at the drop of a hat. His black, sparkling eyes glittered now in a way to make Barlow quail. Yet Barlow reflected that this Western dead shot was a prisoner of the Cheyennes now, and that the chances of his getting away and avenging the insult were very slim.

Barlow could afford to smile at the impotent rage of Wild Bill at that time.

“You’ve heard what I said, Miss Arlington,” Wild Bill shouted again. “This wolf soldier is a traitor. He has turned renegade and joined the Indians. Believe nothing he says. But look out for yourself. I may go under, as he has it in for me, and these red fiends hate me worse than the devil hates holy water. So my chances are not good. But I want you to know the truth, if I’m to go under, that you may look out for yourself as well as you can.”

With a snarling curse Barlow rode closer and seemed about to strike him, when Red Wing broke through, and with the flat of his tomahawk smashed the redoubtable and courageous scout in the face. The blow was not delivered with force enough to be bone-breaking, but it made a red outline of the tomahawk blade on the bruised flesh.

“White man keep tongue still or me cut it out!” Red Wing shouted.

Wild Bill subsided, having given his warning.

He was sure that Barlow had become a renegade, and he was sure also that it was in part Barlow’s influence that was heading these young Cheyennes toward the Southwest and away from Fort Cimarron. Barlow was no more anxious to have the troopers from the fort overtake these Cheyennes than were the Cheyennes themselves.

“I never yet knew a renegade that didn’t end badly,” was Wild Bill’s thought. “Deviltry generally gets paid in its own kind. But I’ll help that girl, and protect her with my life, if I can. Anyway, I couldn’t do less than shout to her that warning.”

Barlow was returning to the girl’s side; he wanted to say something to counteract Wild Bill’s accusation.