CHAPTER XXVII.

BARNEY SHEA IN HIS ELEMENT.

Slap-dash into the midst of the excited and half-crazed dancers rushed the Steam Man and his four-footed friend, the Steam Horse.

Frank and Charley, perched on their seats, guided the iron monsters, and took care to circumnavigate the dancing Irishman and the playing darkey.

In an instant the scene was changed; the dancing ceased; people scattered right and left; shouts shrieks and yells were heard from red and white, and the high old wedding festivities came to a sudden end.

The iron hoofs of the Steam Horse struck down a number of half-drunken fools who were too slow in getting out of the way, and the man fairly climbed over some stick-in-the-mud parties who stopped too long in his way.

It was the design of the parties supposed to be in command of the occupants of the wagons, namely Charley and Frank, to merely rescue the prisoners from their captors, and then dig away from the spot as lively as possible, it not being sensible to get up a rumpus when outnumbered ten to one.

This plan would have been adhered to but for the savage vindictiveness of Jared Dwight.

The avenger could not look upon his red foes without feeling all the vengeful blood in his body coursing hotly through his every vein, and then the one idea was sure to take possession of him, and that was to stab, shoot and kill.

He stood up with a brace of revolvers in his hands, and began to pop over the redskins like rabbits.

This brought an immediate change in the attitude of the somewhat startled reds.

When they heard the pistols popping, and saw many of their number dropping down lifeless, then they began to realize that this thing meant fight, and as they were drunk enough to run, so were they also drunk enough to fight.

Accordingly they turned, faced the foe, and popped back in return, and Frank’s hat flew off his head, carried away by a bullet.

“Whoa!” cried Frank, and pulled up very short. “What’s all this about?”

And at the same instant Dwight made a flying leap from the wagon, and fell on top of half a dozen much-amazed redskins.

He had discarded one pistol for a knife, and now went to work at them with lead and cold steel.

This resulted as might have been foretold, very easily.

In less than a minute every one of the whites were up to their eyes in business, for they couldn’t sit idly by and see Jared get “chawed” up.

Accordingly they sailed in, and struck with a will.

One thing was in their favor; the reds were a little too drunk to see straight, and therefore failed to strike very accurate blows, or to make plumb-center bulls-eye shots.

Barney Shea was astonished, but he was also delighted.

So was Pomp.

They both hailed a fight of any kind with delight, not because they had any particular grudges to pay off, but merely because fighting was a very delightful pastime in their estimation.

Barney grabbed his fiddle and half threw it into the wagon of the Steam Horse, and grasped his favorite old blackthorn stick, which Frank had found at the pass after the battle and had faithfully preserved.

Armed with a weapon in the use of which he was skilled, the Irishman uttered his wild native yell and went boldly into the rumpus.

“Me feyther was an O’Doolahan by me great-gran’mother’s side, do yez moind, and the O’Doolahans was allus in the most haythenish rackets that ye iver saw, and that’s where I got me fighting qualities from, ye moind. Thin all the Sheas was allus noted for love o’ good whisky an’ purty girruls, and that’s in my blood too, do ya moind, and so how I can sthop wid me mussin’ is more than I know, so it is.”

And while he kept rattling away in his slap-dash reckless style he was distributing headaches and fractures, and small editions of nervousness with lavish hand, for that blackthorn shillaleh never ceased playing upon the heads of his foes all the while he was jabbering.

Pomp jumped from the wagon of the Steam Man.

In went his banjo, and out came an iron bar that lay upon the floor of the body.

Twirling this as lightly as any dandy in the land would twirl his gold-headed cane, the darkey leaped in among the half-intoxicated reds.

The white men and the outlaws had been more profuse in their use of liquor than their more temperate red friends, and were lying around in the most helpless position, dead drunk and perfectly useless.

Frank knew that his followers must strike quick and sharp, and then get away, or, despite the condition of the Indians, they must be crushed down and murdered by the mere brute force of numbers.

“Strike quick, heavy, and sharp,” he shouted, as he drove his blade into the tufted skull of an Indian who made an unsteady clip at him with a murderous-looking tomahawk, “and then jump for the wagons; we must not stop.”

“Arrah now, be aisy,” said Barney Shea, who was in his glory; “sure ye’d not be afther lavin’ such an illigant bit of a ruction as this same widout gittin’ yer bellyful. Ooh, would yez moind that, Masther Frank?”

And with a triple-twisted blow he smashed an Indian’s nose all over his face, thumped him in the pit of the stomach with the end of the stick, and as the poor red doubled up he gave him a rousing one over the top-knot that stretched him out quivering.

And Pomp was knocking them down right and left, for the iron bar proved a terrible weapon in his hands.

But they had accomplished all that they had come for, and Frank gave the order in a peremptory tone:

“To the wagons.”

They all obeyed, springing to the wagons at the word of command, and the last one being Jared Dwight, who delayed a moment to finish up accounts with a tall redskin.

“Ready,” shouted Frank.

“Ready,” shouted back his cousin Charley.

“Go.”

And then the reins were pulled.

Away they shot over an irregular and somewhat dangerous course.

Swiftly sped the iron feet, and in the course of five minutes the level land of the prairie was reached.

Then swiftly away over the level plain, until a shrill call from Pomp caused both drivers to pull up, and in two minutes’ time they were bending over the bruised and half-senseless form of Pedro, the mustang rider.

“Haste,” he said. “Haste to my village for life or death.”

They took him into the wagon of the Steam Horse, and when they had given him some whisky he told them what was the matter.

“Hurrah!” cried Frank.

“Glory!” yelled Charley.

“You will go?” cried Pedro.

“Go!” shrieked Frank, as he seized the reins. “We’ll be there in time just to chaw ’em up.

“Hooroo!” shouted Barney Shea as the man shot on after the Steam Horse. “What an illigant land for weddin’s an’ wakes.”