Chapter 12

ON THE TRAIL.

It was high noon when the young Texan woke up and when he rose Pond still lay sleeping. The former laughed lightly, as he rose and bathed his face in the limpid water, for the beard of the sleeper had got all awry, showing that it was false.

"No need for a disguise here," said the Texan. "But let him keep it up. When the time comes I'll read him a lesson."

Cutting some antelope stakes, the Texan built up a smokeless fire, and had them nicely broiled when Willie Pond woke up.

"Mercy! how I have slept!" he said, as he looked at the sun, already fast declining toward the west.

"You are not used to passing sleepless nights," said the Texan. "When we are fairly launched into the Indian country you may not sleep so sound. Take hold and eat. A hearty eater on the plains generally stands travel best. To-morrow, it is likely, we'll have a fifty-mile ride or more, if those Black Hillers get sobered down to their work. They'll do well if they make their twenty to-day."

Pond went and bathed his face and hands in the limpid water before eating, and as he expressed it, "rubbed the sleep" out of his eyes; then he went at the toothsome steak with appetite not at all impaired by the pure open air he was breathing.

The meal, taken with comfort and deliberation, occupied a half hour or more, and as there were no dishes to wash, "clearing up things" only consisting in tossing the bones out of the way, wiping their knives on a bunch of grass, scouring them with a plunge or two in the dry sand, they were all ready for next meal-time.

"Your horse hears something, so does mine," said the Texan, pointing to the animals, which suddenly stopped feeding, and with their ears pricked forward, looked off to the east-ward.

"I can see nothing. What can alarm them!" said Pond.

"They hear the tramp of the Black Hills party, I think. Horses have far better hearing than we have, and will feel a jar of the ground that would not attract our attention. I want no better sentinel than my mustang, and your Black Hawk seems to take to the watch by instinct. I will go up on my look-out post and see if anything is in sight."

Slinging the strap of his field-glass over his shoulder, the Texan hurriedly climbed up the tree. Seated among the top-most limbs, he adjusted his glass and looked away to the northeast.

"There they are!" he cried.

"Who? What?" exclaimed Pond, rather nervously.

"The Black Hillers, struggling along mighty careless. Their route covers half a mile in length; when in good marching order it should not cover a hundred yards, with scouts in the rear, front, and on both flanks, at twice the distance. That is the way we travel in Texas."

"Wild Bill has been a scout so long I should think he would know all about it," said Pond.

"A heap them scouts know who travel with Uncle Sam's troop's!" said the Texan, in a tone of contempt. "Let them ride with a gang of Texan Rangers a few months and they'd learn something. Your troops can't move, or stop to water, without sounding their bugles to tell the Indians where they are. In the morning, all day, and at night, it is toot, toot with their infernal horns, and the reds know just where to find 'em. One of our Texan Ranger bands will travel a hundred miles and you'll not hear noise enough to wake a coyote from them all. These Black Hillers travel slow to-day. They're sore-headed from their spree, I reckon."

"They deserve to be. Drunkenness always punishes the drunkard. I have no pity for them."

"Can you see any sign of them from where you stand?" asked the Texan.

Pond looked carefully off in the direction the other pointed, and replied:

"No. They do not even raise dust."

"Then we are safe here from observation. They go too slow to make dust, and they're moving over grass any way. It will be dark before they reach their camping-ground. But to make the next, which is full fifty miles away, they'll have to start earlier. Ah! what does that mean?"

"What startles you?"

"Nothing _startles_ me, but a couple of men from that party have dashed out from the line at a gallop, and they ride this way."

"Heaven! I hope Bill--Wild Bill--is not one of them!" cried Pond, greatly excited. "Are you sure they are coming here?"

"Riding _this way_ does not assume that they're coming _here!"_ said the Texan, coolly. "They may have flanked off to look for some fresh meat. Yes, that is it," he added. "They bear up to the north now; they want to go ahead of the party so as to kill something fresh for supper. Captain Jack kept sober when all the rest were drinking last night, and I'll wager he is one of the hunters, and most likely Sam Chichester is the other. We're safe from observation, Mr. Pond, so don't get nervous. We'll not see Wild Bill to-day."

Pond smiled, but there was a tremor about him that showed he was easy to take alarm and hard to get over it.

The Texan came down from the tree and busied himself in gathering some dry fuel--small sticks which would make a quick hot blaze and little or no smoke. Then he cut off some long thin flakes of antelope flesh from the saddle hanging on the tree, and half cooked, half dried it.

"Meat may be a little unhandy to get in the rear of that straggling band," he said. "If we have a little on hand, it will do no hurt."

"You are thoughtful," said Pond. "I would make a poor manager, I fear, on the plains. I should forget everything until it was needed."

"You are not too old to learn," said the Texan, laughing.

"Excuse my asking the question, but have you long been acquainted with that strange and beautiful woman, Addie Neidic?"

"Not very long, myself. But I had a brother who knew her very well, and loved her almost to madness, She was his true friend, but she did not love him."

"Is he living now?"

"Living? _No!_ If ever you meet Wild Bill--but no, it is my secret. Ask me no more about him."

Every word just spoken flew from the Texan's lips like sheets of fire; his eyes flashed and his face flushed, while his form trembled from head to foot.

"Forgive me! I did not mean to wound your feelings!" said Pond, moved by the excitement of the other.

"No matter; I know you didn't. No matter. It will all come right one of these days. I wish my heart was stone!"

Pond was silent, for he saw the Texan's eyes fill with tears, and he seemed to know that nothing which he could say could soften a grief so deeply felt.

The Texan was the first to speak.

"Addie Neidic is a strange, but a noble girl," he said. "Her father was a rough sporting man, but her mother was a lady born and bred. The mother lived long enough to educate Addie in her own ways, but she died just as Addie was budding into beauty. Addie met her lover when he was a soldier at Fort Russell, near Cheyenne. After he was driven to desertion by cruelty and injustice, she met him from time to time, and when her father died, leaving her all his fortune, she moved up to Laramie. I think I know now the reason why--she could, meet him more often."

"You said that he was an outlaw."

"Yes; when he deserted he killed the two sentinels who were on guard over him, then killed a mounted officer and rode away on his horse. He was hunted for by whole companies as fast as they could be mounted, but he could not be taken. But after that, if a soldier or an officer rode alone a mile or more from the post, he seldom returned, but his body told that Persimmon Bill, the 'Soldier Killer,' as he was called, still lived around. Wild Bill has done bloody work--cruel work in his time, but Persimmon Bill has killed ten men to his one."

"It is strange that an intelligent woman like Addie Neidic should love such a man."

"No--he is both a martyr and a hero in her eyes. A more stately form, a nobler face, never met favor in the eyes of woman. To his foes fierce and relentless, to her he is gentle and kind. She will never meet aught but tenderness at his hands."

"I wish I could have seen him."

"You may yet see him, Mr. Pond. He travels the plains as free as the antelopes which bound from ridge to ridge. Adopted by the Sioux nation, known to them as the 'White Elk,' he has become a great chief, and their young braves follow in his lead with a confidence which makes them better than the solders sent to subdue them."