Chapter 10

WHAT GEORGE KNEW ABOUT TRAILING.

"It is a hard case," said George to himself as he walked slowly toward the gate, "and I believe, as Mr. Wentworth does, that he has seen his children for the last time. In the first place, the chances are that the Indians, having so long a start, will not be overtaken; but if they go out of their way to attack other isolated ranches, and the troops should come up with them, their very first act, if they saw that they were likely to be whipped, would be to kill their captives, so that they could not be rescued. It _is_ a hard case, that's a fact, and I don't see that anything can be done about it. I wish Zeke were here to give his opinion on the subject."

The troopers, having answered to the names, were going out to bring in their horses preparatory to grooming them, and George went with them to bring in his own. Nearly an hour was devoted to this important duty, which was performed under the watchful eye of an officer, and although George often saw his friend Bob, the latter did not speak to him. There were a good many shoulder-straps around, and work, and not talk, was the order of the day. Even those of the officers who, having no servants, were obliged to act as their own grooms, had very little to say to one another; but when these same officers were gathered around the breakfast-table half an hour later, they were lively and talkative enough. There they met on a footing of perfect equality, like the members of a private family, although the juniors did not forget to say "sir" when addressing their superiors. There were no orders issued during the progress of the meal, and in fact very little was said about military matters; but still, George heard enough to satisfy him that active operations against the thieving Kiowas were to be commenced immediately, and that he was to make one of an expedition upon whose success a good deal depended.

The appearance of the officers as they passed into the hall after rising from the breakfast-table must have been a signal to the bugler who stood in front of the door of head-quarters, for as soon as he saw them he raised his instrument to his lips and blew a shrill call. The clear, ringing notes had scarcely ceased when there was a commotion in the barracks, and a crowd of men came pouring out and hurried toward the stables. There were a hundred and twenty of them, and they belonged to the troops A, E and L--the latter commonly called the "Brindles"--of which Captain Clinton's scouting-party was to be composed.

"That's 'Boots and saddles,' George," said the colonel, who stood in the doorway appearing to notice nothing, but in reality keeping a close watch over the movements of the men to see that everything was done in accordance with the "regulations." "You are to go with Clinton, you know. Are you ready?"

"I will be in half a minute," replied the boy.

The stirring notes of the bugle, or the prospect of soon meeting face to face some of the bloodthirsty savages who had devastated Mr. Wentworth's home, must have excited George, so that he did not readily lay his hand upon the articles he wanted, for considerably more than half a minute elapsed before he again appeared with his Winchester on his back, a bag of cartridges slung over his shoulder and a revolver buckled about his waist. He ran to the stable, and had just put the saddle and bridle on his horse when another call of the bugle was heard. This was "To horse," and in obedience the troopers left the stable and fell into line on the parade, each man standing at the head of his nag. George did not belong in line--in fact, he did not know where he _did_ belong--so he kept his eye on Captain Clinton, and when he saw that officer mount the horse which an orderly brought up to him, George at once placed himself in his own saddle, and, riding up to the steps where the colonel was standing, awaited further developments.

"Prepare to mount!" commanded Captain Clinton as he rode up in front of his own troop, and the words were immediately repeated by the other two company commanders.

In obedience to this order each trooper placed his left foot in the stirrup, and at the command "Mount!" which was given soon after, they all rose from the ground as if moved by the same set of springs, and seated themselves in the saddles at the same instant. No man was a half a second ahead or behind his companions. The three company officers then rode back to the colonel to report that their respective companies were ready to march, and after they had listened to some verbal instructions from him, they bade him and the rest of the officers good-bye, the bugle sounded the "Advance," and the troopers, moving four abreast--or, as a soldier would have expressed it, in column of fours--rode out of the gate. There they found Wentworth seated on a wiry little mustang, which looked altogether too small to carry so heavy a rider. Recognizing George, who rode by Captain Clinton's side, he gave him a friendly nod, and without saying a word turned his horse and rode away, the troopers following a short distance in his rear.

When soldiers are on the march and in no danger of immediate contact with the enemy, they are allowed numerous privileges, of which the troopers composing this particular scouting-party were not slow to avail themselves. Some of them drew their pipes from their pockets and filled up for a smoke, others threw one leg over the horns of their saddles and rode sideways, "woman-fashion," and conversation became general all along the line. But this talking and smoking did not interfere with their marching, for they rode rapidly, and made such good progress that by three o'clock in the afternoon they were within sight of the ruins of Mr. Wentworth's ranche. And a sorry sight it was, too. Nothing but a pile of blackened sun-dried bricks remained to mark the spot on which a few days ago had stood a happy home. Household furniture of every description was scattered around, but every article had been smashed beyond all hope of repair. What the savages had not been able to carry away with them they had ruthlessly destroyed. George did not wonder that Mr. Wentworth felt vindictive. The man did not have a word to say, but the expression that came to his face as he sat in his saddle gazing sorrowfully at the ruins of his home spoke volumes.

When the troopers came within sight of the ranche, George discovered that there was a horse staked out near the ruins, and that he had an owner in the person of a tall, gaunt man, who rose from the ground and rubbed his eyes as if he had just awakened from a sound sleep. His dress was an odd mixture of the civilized and savage. He wore a pair of infantryman's trousers, a rancheman's red shirt, and an Indian blanket of the same color was thrown over his shoulders. His head was covered by a Mexican sombrero, and his feet were protected by a pair of gaudily-ornamented moccasins. While waiting for the troopers to come up he filled a short black pipe and lighted it at the smoldering fire beside which he had been sleeping.

"That's Mountain Mose," said Captain Clinton in reply to George's inquiring look. "He no doubt gave himself the name because he has lived on the Plains all his life. He is a lazy, worthless vagabond, but what he doesn't know about Indians isn't worth knowing. If he would only wake up and display a little energy, he would be invaluable as a scout."

"What is he doing here?" asked George. "He seems to be waiting for us."

"Yes, I expected to find him at this place. He has been out to take a look at the trail of that war-party who did all this damage.--Well, Mose, any news?"

"Not much, cap," drawled the scout. "You put straight for the Staked Plains, an' if you are lively enough to ketch 'em anywhar, you'll ketch 'em thar."

"Then we shall never get the cattle," said the captain. "If the Indians are going in there, they intend that the stock shall die of thirst rather than fall into our hands."

"That's jest their little game, cap," said the scout, puffing at his pipe. "You see, they'll keep along on the edge of the desert, so't they can have grass an' water in plenty, an' if you don't pester 'em none they won't go into the Staked Plains at all; but if you push 'em hard they'll run the critters in thar an' leave 'em, hopin' that you will run your hosses an' men to death while you are huntin' 'em up. You won't never see the young ones, nuther; an' I don't see why the colonel sent out sich a party as this so late in the day, anyhow. We'd oughter been a hundred miles along that thar trail by sun-up this mornin'."

George felt the deepest sympathy for Mr. Wentworth, who listened attentively to what the scout had to say, although he said nothing in return. His almost overwhelming sorrow showed itself in his face, but did not take the form of words.

As Captain Clinton had made no halt for dinner, the colonel having instructed him to find and receive the report of the scout as soon as possible, he decided to stop here and allow his men an hour or two for rest and refreshment. Giving their horses into the charge of some of the troopers, he and his two company commanders walked away with the scout, while George rode off to hunt up Bob Owens. He staked his own horse out beside Bob's, and then walked back with him to take a nearer view of the ruins.

"How do you suppose that that man in the sombrero and moccasins knows that the Indians who did this have fled toward the Staked Plains?" asked Bob after he and his friend had spent some moments in silent contemplation of the savages' handiwork. "He certainly hasn't had time enough to follow the trail clear to those plains."

"Of course not," answered George. "But he probably followed it far enough to see that it leads in that direction."

"Well, explain another thing while you are about it," continued Bob. "I have been out on a scout before now after the hostiles, following a trail that was as plain as the nose on one's face, when all at once the scout would leave that trail and strike off over the prairie where there wasn't a sign of a pony-track."

"He was taking a short cut on the Indians," observed George.

"I know that, and sooner or later he would bring us back to that trail again; and sometimes we would have gained so much on the hostiles--who had perhaps been twenty-four hours' journey ahead of us when we left the trail--that we would find their camp-fires still smoking. Now, what I want to know is this: How did that scout know that those Indians were going to that particular spring or creek or ravine near which we found the trail?"

"Have you ever hunted foxes?" asked George.

"I should say I had. When I left home I owned a hound that couldn't be beaten in running them, for he was posted in all their tricks. But what have foxes to do with hostile Indians?"

"I am simply going to use the tricks of the one, which you understand, to explain the tricks of the other, which you do not understand," replied George. "They are a good deal alike in some respects. A fox, when he finds himself hard pressed, will resort to all sorts of manoeuvres to throw the hounds off the trail. One of his tricks is to run over a newly-ploughed field, if he can find one, where the scent will not lie. What would that brag hound of yours do in such a case? Would he waste valuable time in running about over that field trying to pick up a scent that wasn't there?"

"No, he wouldn't. He would run around the outside of the field until he found the place where the fox left it."

"Exactly. Now, an Indian is just as full of tricks as a fox is. When he is afraid of pursuit he will break his party up into small bands, and, although the trails made by these bands will lead in different directions at the start, you will find, if you break up your own party and follow them for a while, that they all tend toward the same points, where these little bands will all be reunited. Of course each of the trails will be obliterated as much as possible. Some of them will lead over rocky ground, where the hoof of a pony will leave no imprint; others will come to an abrupt termination on the bank of some stream; and others still will end at a place where the prairie has been burned over. When these war-parties break up in the way I have described, a place of meeting is always agreed on beforehand; and if a scout understands his business he can tell pretty nearly where that place is, for it is sure to be on the straightest and most direct route to the agency if the raiders belong to a 'friendly' tribe, or to their principal village if they belong to a tribe that is openly hostile. If these Kiowas take to the Staked Plains, they will probably enter it directly north of here, at its widest part. Then this Mountain Mose, if he is the scout he pretends to be, will leave their trail to take care of itself and draw a bee-line for the nearest water; and it will take thirty hours' rapid marching to reach it, too."

"How do you know? Have you ever been there?"

"No, but my herdsman Zeke has; and he has described the course to be followed so minutely that I can go there any day the sun shines or any night when the stars shine."

Bob did not say anything, but his friend noticed that he looked a little incredulous.

"It is not so difficult as it appears to be at first glance," George hastened to say. "Why, when a party of young Indians want to go into a strange country for plunder and scalps, they gather around some old warrior, who traces on the ground the direction in which they must travel in order to reach that country, describes all the water-courses and locates the principal landmarks to be found along the route; and with nothing but these verbal instructions to guide them, these little rascals, some of them not more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, will make a journey of hundreds of miles through a region that none of them have ever visited before. My bump of locality is not so large as an Indian's, but still I have a pretty good memory, and I have travelled many a mile through a strange country without going a step out of my way."

"What sort of a looking place is Staked Plains, anyhow?" asked Bob. "I have heard so many terrible stories told about it that I am almost afraid of it. What gave it that name? Are there any _stakes_ there?"

Bob was inclined to be facetious when he said this, and consequently he was not a little astonished to hear George say in reply,

"There may not be any stakes there now, but there used to be. It _is_ a terrible place, and many a wagon-train has left its bones there. It is big enough to get lost in, for it lacks only about six thousand square-miles of being as large as the State of New York; and although it is not exactly a desert, as we understand the word, it is a barren waste, where nothing living permanently resides on account of the great scarcity of water. A long time ago the Mexican traders marked out a route with stakes across the plain where they found a few small fountains, and that was what gave it the name it bears. Zeke says it is a perfect bake-oven. There are no trees to shelter you, no grass for your horses, no fuel to build a fire with, and an almost unearthly silence broods over it. I am not superstitious, but Zeke always speaks of it with a shudder, and I tell you I don't want to see any place that he is afraid of."

The two friends continued to talk in this way until Captain Clinton's cook came up and told George that dinner was ready. They rested half an hour after the meal was over, and then set out again, Mountain Mose leading the way and Mr. Wentworth, as before, riding by himself. As George was a sort of supernumerary, he was under little restraint, and consequently he rode where he pleased--sometimes in company with the scout, sometimes beside Captain Clinton, and then fell back to exchange a few ideas with Bob. He did not, however, waste much time with the scout. The latter was talkative enough until he learned that George held the same position that he did, and then he froze up at once.

"You're a pretty-looking scout, _you_ be!" he exclaimed, moving his eye over the boy's trim figure. "Do you reckon you could tell the trail of a Kiowa from the track of a coyote?"

"Yes, I reckon I could," answered George with a smile. "But you need not be jealous of me, for I shall not interfere with you in any way. I came to the post to hunt Greasers, and not to trail Indians."

"Oh, you did, eh? So you're the chap that's goin' to show the boys the way acrost the Rio, be you?"

"I am," replied George.

"Well, all I've got to say is, that them that follers you is fools. I thought mebbe you was agoin' to poke your nose into my business; and that is something I won't put up with from nobody. If thar's anything I _do_ understand, it's Indians."

This was true, but it sometimes happens that luck is not on the side of those who know the most. The scout would have given anything he possessed if he had been fortunate enough to perform the exploit that George assisted in performing before two days more had passed over his head.

Bob Owens did not fail to notice that there was not the least semblance of a trail to be seen anywhere. They had left it at the ruins of Mr. Wentworth's rancho, and he waited with no little impatience to see where they would pick it up again. He found out about sunset, for at that time the column reached the banks of a small water-course, and there they struck the trail, which was so broad and plain that it could be followed at a gallop. George, in company with some of the officers and the scout, spent a few minutes in looking it over, and then rode back to report the result of his observations to Bob Owens.

"There are not many warriors in the party," said he, "but they are so well supplied with horses that they can have a fresh mount every day if they want it."

"How do you know that?" asked Bob.

"Because I saw their tracks," replied George.

"That's not explicit enough. I suppose you did see the tracks of the horses, and so did I; but how in the world is a fellow going to tell whether or not those horses had riders on their backs? _That's_ something that can't be done."

"Don't be too sure of that. Look here! Would you believe it if I should tell you that those Indians passed along here after daylight on Thursday morning?"

"No, I wouldn't," replied Bob bluntly. He could not, for the life of him, understand how anybody could draw such conclusions as these by simply looking at the print of a pony's hoofs in the grass; and if he had not been so well acquainted with George he would have inclined to the belief that his friend was "spreading it on" in order to make himself out a wonderful trailer. "I can't make head or tail of this business, and I don't believe you can, either; that is, I mean I don't see how you can."

"Well, listen while I explain," said George good-naturedly. "In the first place, I noticed, while we were passing through that belt of post-oaks back there, that some of the horses left a very devious trail, passing through thick bushes and under trees whose branches were so low that they would have swept a rider out of his saddle if he had not been on the alert to avoid them. Those horses were all loose."

"Perhaps not," exclaimed Bob. "The Indians might have passed through there when it was too dark to see where they were going."

"I know they might, but they didn't, as I shall presently show you. The horses which made those crooked trails were not mustangs. They were American horses, and their presence proves another thing that I didn't think to speak of before; and that is, that the Indians raided other ranches besides Mr. Wentworth's. How do I know that they were American horses? Because their tracks were larger than a pony's, and some of them were shod. The tracks made by the mustangs led through the open part of the timber, where there were no bushes and low branches; and this is one proof that the Indians did not pass through there in the night-time. If they had, they could not have kept in such open ground. I found further proof that these mustangs were all mounted by noticing that they did not stop to graze, as the loose horses did, being kept in constant motion by their riders. What do you think now?" asked George, seeing that Bob began to open his eyes.

"It reads like a book, don't it?" was Bob's reply. "But you have forgotten one very important thing. You said that the Indians passed through those post-oaks early on Thursday morning. How do you know that they didn't pass late on Thursday afternoon or early on Friday morning?"

"You think you have got me there, don't you? Well, you haven't. If there are 'sermons in stones and books in running brooks,' as the poet tells us there are, what is the reason that the print of an Indian pony's hoof may not contain a page of information that will prove to be useful to him who has the skill to read it? On Wednesday night there was a very heavy dew, if you remember."

"I don't remember," replied Bob; "I never pay any attention to such things."

"But you must pay attention to such things, and a good deal of it too, if you are going to be a Plainsman. During the last two nights there has been no dew at all. I noticed that some blades of grass, which had been pressed down by the hoofs of the horses and cattle, were covered with sand which stuck fast to them, having been dried on. This told me that the tracks were made while the grass was wet, and that the Indians had passed that way early on Thursday morning, or before the sun had risen high enough to dry off the dew. There were not more than fifteen or twenty of them. I didn't have time to see just how many, but they have stolen over a thousand head of steers and horses. Now, remember all I have told you, and see if I haven't made a pretty good guess."

"Do you think we shall catch them?" asked Bob.

"Well," answered George slowly, "raiding Indians _have_ been overtaken and neatly whipped before now, but I have always believed that it was more by good luck than good management. These fellows will begin to show their tactics as soon as they find out that they are pursued. Then they will probably leave behind a few of the best mounted of the band to attract our attention and lead us away from the others, who will make all haste to take the prisoners and the stolon stock to a place of safety. If we bite at that bait, we shall lose everything, for as soon as the decoys have led us as far out of our way as they care to have us go, they will disappear all of a sudden, and we shall never see them again. If we keep on after the main body, and travel fast enough to gain on them, they will drop the stock in the desert, break up into squads of twos and threes, and we shall have nothing to do but to turn about and go home again."

The Indians did manoeuvre pretty nearly as George said they would, but Captain Clinton and his scouting-party did not go back to the fort until they had accomplished something.