Part 17

"That's just a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I are good friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to the reserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you know what the Sergeant is, Fitz--he'll stack up against that tribe alone; if they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with the lumberjacks--their squaws will be along, and you know what that means--Jerry stands a mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that it will be sort of my fault."

"It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, and we'll play rugby with those devilish _nichies_ if they don't act like gentlemen."

Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know all about that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz--not a chance. It would be a fight--your hot heads would start it--and after the first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the red spit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets. These Stonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains; first thing he knows of their approach is when he's bowled over."

EVIL SPIRITS

"How are you going to do it then, mister man? Go in and get shot up just because you feel that it's your fault?"

"No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Platt we'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kind they'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they know the 'Redcoat' is an agent of the Queen, the White Mother who feeds them; but, being drunk, the young bucks will be hostile--some of them will feel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has got sense and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his whole tribe was pledged to me. I'm going down to collect--do you see, Fitz?"

They were riding in to town now, and FitzHerbert made another plea: "Let me go with you, Bulldog. I'm petrified with fanning the air with my eyes, and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching the west wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow them back again, till they're worn to the size of golf balls. I'm atrophied; my insides are like an enamelled pot from the damned alkaline dust."

"Sorry, my dear boy, but I know what would happen if you went with me. While I'd be holding a pow-wow with Standing Bear one of those boozed Stonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hell would break loose."

"You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have got the cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I've seen you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and not lose caste over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, old boy! I rather fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or this will be good-bye."

It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears, threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a long graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping over Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned prairie above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity the turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy haze over the plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphere so peaceful that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of a phantasmagoria. There was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in the sleepy air, and off to the south glinted against the horizon the peeping red eyes of a prairie fire. They were like the rimmed lights of a shore-held city.

The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairie uplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if his instinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easy suffling pace of a cayuse.

Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentle night had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mind slipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of ocean to the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.

Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste for his life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of his wits against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was better than remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion by action, by strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds; but the thing ahead--drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrust back into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste of the ashes of regret.

Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deaden this suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized the danger, the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a game with Fate that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pit himself against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot of the Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; and inflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would all depend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken; he must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remain there with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking the Ferryman at the crossing of the Styx.

He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mental traverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turf fell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a sound that was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.

The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from the saddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein over his head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into a little gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped five paces to one side and waited. All this precaution was that he might hold converse with the galloping horseman without the startling semblance of a hold-up; sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.

As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separated into staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," and Carney muttered: "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's riding hell-bent-for-leather."

Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as he topped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayuse saw the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it for a crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and his rider, in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered to his feet a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle of steel was touching his cheek.

"By gar!" the frightened traveller cried aghast, "don't s'oot me."

Carney laughed, and lowering his gun, said: "Certainly not, boy--just a precaution, that's all. Where are you going?"

"I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoney nichies an' de lumberjacks is raise hell; by gar! dere's fine row; dey s'oot de Sergeant, Jerry Platt."

"Where?"

"Jus' by Yellowstone Creek, De Stonies pitch dere tepees dere."

"Where's the Sergeant?"

"I don't know me. He get de bullet in de shoulder, but he swear by _le bon Dieu_ dat he'll get hes man, an' mak' de Injun go back to hees reserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."

"All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell the Superintendent that Bulldog Carney----"

"Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if the Devil had clapped him on a shoulder.

"Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put the fear of God into those drunken bums. Now pull out."

The breed, who had clung to the bridle rein, mounted his cayuse, crying, as he clattered away: "May de Holy Mudder give you de help, Bulldog, dat's me, Ba'tiste, wish dat."

Then Carney swung to the back of the little buckskin, and pushed on to the help of jerry Platt.

Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile after mile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-blooded brothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approaching the foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavy ground swell; then the ridges commenced to take shape against the sky line, looking like the escarpments of a fort.

The trail Carney followed wound, as he knew, into the Vermillion Valley, at the upper end of which, near the gap, the Indians were encamped on Yellowstone Creek.

The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the North Star off to Carney's right, and he had tabulated the hours by its sweep. It was near morning he knew, for the handle was climbing up in the east.

Then, faintly at first, there carried to his ears the droning "tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump!" of a tom-tom, punctuated at intervals by a shrill, high-pitched sing-song of "Hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-yi!"

Carney pulled his buckskin to a halt, his trained ear interpreted the well-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom--it was the gambling note. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the ground in a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and one of their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop, ceasing his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by the heat of a fire.

Carney slipped from the buckskin's back, stripped the saddle off, picketed the horse, and stretched himself on the turf, muttering, as he drifted into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birth time of the yellow streak--I'll tackle them then."

The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range when Carney opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap down the mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid gold climbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin canted to his feet. Bulldog laid his cheek against the soft mouse-colored nose, and said: "Patsy, old boy, it's business first this morning--we'll eat afterwards; though you've had a fair snack of this jolly buffalo grass, I see from your tummy."

The tom-tom was still troubling the morning air, and the crackle of two or three gunshots came down the valley.

As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There was nothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt--that part of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go on and play his hand alone against the Stonies.

As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake that was like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond it skirted the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades of pearl tints and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubborn rocks. From beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-clad slopes the haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like riding into a valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droning tom-toms. As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see the smoke-stained tepees of the Stonies.

At that instant the valley was filled with the vocal turmoil of yelping, snarling dogs--the pack-dogs of the Indians.

At first Carney thought that he was the incentive to this demonstration; but a quick searching look discovered a khaki-clad figure on a bay police horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant Jerry Platt, all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.

Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucks swarmed in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some of them, still groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many of them raced for their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Two or three had rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when they saw the policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.

Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeant just as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards short of the camp.

Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his left arm was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant's face, that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawn and haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that many had said would never leave him. His blue eyes warmed out of their cold, tired fixity, and his voice essayed some of the old-time recklessness, as he called: "Hello, Bulldog. What in the name of lost mavericks are you doing here--collecting?"

"Came to give you a hand, Jerry."

"A hand, Bulldog?"

"That's the palaver, Jerry. Somebody ran me in the news of this"--he swept an arm toward the tepees--"and I've ridden all night to help bust this hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."

"Not much--just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjacks potted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'm pretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them if they're here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to the reserve."

"They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."

"I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or Corporal McBane will get a promotion--he's next in line to Jerry Platt."

"Good stuff, Jerry, I'll----"

"Pss-s-ing!"

Bulldog's statement of what he would do was cut short by the whining moan of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud of white smoke was spiraling up from the door of a teepee.

"That's bluff," Jerry grunted.

"We've got to move in, Jerry--if we hesitate, after that, they'll buzz like flies. If you start kicking an Indian off the lot keep him moving. I'm under your command; I've sworn myself in, a special; but I know Standing Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But I'm in it to the finish, boy."

"Thanks, Bulldog"--they were moving along at a steady walk of the horses toward the tepees--"but you know our way--you've got to stand a lot of dirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll make me wish you hadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known as having lost our heads. D'you get it?"

"I'm on, Jerry."

Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; on its moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant to represent a hugetoothed grizzly.

But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies--it was a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled, vociferous creatures.

A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some circus, Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen don't slip from a tepee."

Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship, and the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.

Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted much with the tribe.

"Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.

"Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant with a sweep of the eagle wing.

"We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.

"Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."

"Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat that Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."

At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a clamor of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi, yi-hi!" rose from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their ponies, driving them with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance. Half-a-dozen times the lean racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the two white men.

Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horrible by the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against the buckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.

Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gun back into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'll cover that stain with your blood."

The Sergeant sat as stolid as a bronze statue. The squaws stood in groups, either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at the two white men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, and gravel, and bits of turf.

The dogs howled and snapped as they sulked amongst their red masters.

"We will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief said with solemn dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the time of our hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt when the payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I know not."

"They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are the homes of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trail is open, Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if you remain."

"Chief, we are blood brothers--was it not so spoken?"

"Standing Bear has said that it is so, Bulldog."

"And Standing Bear said that when his white brother asked a gift Standing Bear would hear the words of his brother."

"Standing Bear said that, Bulldog."

"Then, Chief, Bulldog asks the favor, not for himself, but for the good of Standing Bear and his Braves."

"What asks the Bulldog of Standing Bear?"

"That he give into the hand of the White Mother's Redcoat the two _moneas_, the Frenchmen; and that he strike the tepees and command the squaws to load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to the reserve."

Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and in rapid, fierce language denounced this request to Standing Bear.

A ringing whoop of approval from the bucks greeted Antelope's harrangue.

"My braves will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief declared.

"Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an old outcast buffalo bull--and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"

The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and Running Antelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.

"If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoat asks him to deliver the two evil _moneas _" Carney added.

Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyes swept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of the braves.

In a few rapid words Carney explained to Sergeant Platt the situation, saying: "Now is the test, Jerry. We've got to act. I've a hunch the two men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry out something I mean to do?"

"Don't strike an Indian, Bulldog; don't wound one: anything else goes. If they start shooting, go to it--then we'll fight to the finish."

The Sergeant pulled out his watch, saying: "Give them five minutes to strike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."

Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoat make?"

Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike his tepee as a sign to the others.

"And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief of the Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will the Redcoat do?" the Chief asked haughtily.

But Carney simply answered: "Bulldog is the friend of Standing Bear, his blood brother, but at the end of five minutes Bulldog and the White Mother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quiet followed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of the tumult, for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.

"Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," he said to Carney.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sat their horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration was tingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. And Jerry, as brave as Bulldog, sat throned on his duty, waiting, patient-- but it _must_ be.

"The five minutes are up," he said, quietly. Carney seemed toying with his lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket, Jerry, and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike his tepee. The authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn't obey I'm going to pull his shack down. Does that go?"

"It does, and the Lord be with us."

Jerry dropped the watch dramatically into his pocket, raised his voice in solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.

The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolf that hesitates between a charge and a skulk-away.

"Speak," Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."

"Go back on the trail, Bulldog."

Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from Carney's right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of a snake; the noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of the rein the little buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to earth like a pricked balloon.

This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vivid shaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indians stood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed the knowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or take the awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war with the great nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to kill a Redcoat on duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck a tribesman, meant the dreaded punishment of hanging.

The god of chance took the matter out of his hands.

From the entangling folds of the skin tepee two swarthy, flannel-shirted white men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood up gazing about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in the hand of the other was a vicious knife.

Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed his bay forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "You are under arrest--hands up!"

As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The report was echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand dropped to his side, his pistol clattering to earth.

Sergeant Jerry threw the handcuffs to the man with the knife, saying, sharply: "Shackle yourself by the right wrist to the left wrist of your companion."

The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowed Indians.

One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damn Injuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped them on his mate's wrists and his own.

Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity of events.

"Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, they are evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."

The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could see that the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.