Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Ruse; Or, Won by Sheer Nerve - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 12

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The trail of the Redskin Rovers became difficult to follow in the hills, and Buffalo Bill lost much time.

Night was approaching, and he had the feeling that the Indians were far ahead of him, a feeling which produced a lack of caution, when he suddenly found himself surrounded.

The place was a little glade in the hills, with rock walls about it. The scout had ridden into it, with head bent down and eyes searching the trail, when Nebuchadnezzar gave a quick jump of alarm, and with head up and eyes rolling in alarm, tried to stampede. The wise old brute had been taught to fear Indians, and even the scent of Indians frightened him. Only the fact that the wind was blowing strong from him to them had kept the horse from smelling them before it was too late.

Buffalo Bill knew that Indians were near when Nebuchadnezzar began his capering; and then he saw them on the rocks about him.

The redskins were well armed with rifles and bows, and Buffalo Bill recognized the futility of fighting or flight. Though he might slay a few of them, there was no doubt that they could kill him before he could get out of the glade. Hence he elevated his hands, palms outward, in token of friendship, while the Indians swarmed down the rocks upon him.

The old horse snorted angrily and rushed at the redskin who first tried to get hold of the bridle.

“Give gun!” said one of the Indians, in a commanding tone.

It was hard to do; but the scout surrendered his weapons, retaining, however, inside his hunting shirt, a little revolver, which he always kept there concealed. More than once it had escaped detection, and now again it escaped.

The only weapons left him were that small revolver, a small knife hidden in one of his boots, and a fine, thin saw embedded in the wide rim of his hat.

He handed over the other weapons with apparent cheerfulness. Then he saw in the midst of the crowding redskins the one who had attacked him the day before, and whose mustang he had killed. This Indian gave him a black look, and the scout knew that he would prove an implacable and treacherous foe.

The presence of this Indian explained, it seemed, the attack on Latimer’s house. It was hostility to Buffalo Bill, fomented by the rage of this redskin, which had brought it about. Buffalo Bill himself was the object of the attack.

The excited cries of the redskins showed full well that they understood the importance of their capture.

“Fortunately, the Indian whose mustang I killed isn’t a chief,” was the scout’s reflection. “He would have me burned at the stake!”

With feelings of uneasiness, he allowed himself to be bound and led away.

Nebuchadnezzar still snorted and showed his dislike of Indians; yet he was forced to go along, and he received on his rough hide some heavy blows and kicks as the reward of his protests.

The distance which the Indians traversed was not great. They had a camp not far off, and to it they conveyed the scout, who was not greatly surprised, on arriving there, to find prisoners in the camp before him. Latimer was there, together with Nick Nomad and Pizen Kate.

Latimer maintained a gloomy silence; but Nomad received Buffalo Bill with sundry cackles, and Pizen Kate in a manner befitting her previous performances.

“That is what comes of a husband runnin’ away from the wife of his bosom,” Pizen Kate declared, with a snapping of her eyes. “If he had stayed to home, dutiful and kind, as he ort, this would never ’a’ come about; but he had to leave me alone, forlorn and forsaken, and this is the result of it. I’ve been givin’ him a piece of my mind about it, too.”

“Buffler,” said Nomad, “I’m glad to see ye, and likewise I ain’t glad to see ye. Seems a singular statement, don’t it? But I don’t need to explain.”

“I think I should like to have you do some explaining,” said the scout.

“About drappin’ through thet hole in the floor?” said Nomad. “Waal, thet war cur’us, and no mistake. I run into the room, and the floor jes’ yawned fer me, and I went through. I fell so durn hard, landin’ on the sharp p’int of my spine, that I didn’t know anything fer about a day, seemed ter me.

“When I come to myself better it war dark in there—darker’n a stack o’ black cats. I crawled along, and crawled along, and by and by I tumbled out of the hole kerplunk into ther river. I come nigh about bein’ drownded then. When I went under I swallered enough water, I reckon, ter float a boat, and I come near going down and stayin’ thar.

“The river is purty swift, as mebbe ye know, and it kerried me down considerable. When I got out, I didn’t know where I war, fer a fac’. But I sized up the sitervation as well as I could, and tried ter make back tracks. Waal, I run inter the Injuns while doin’ that, and they took me in. And hyar I am, and I don’t like ther looks of it.”

“If you wouldn’t talk so much, Nicholas, you’d git fatter!” Pizen Kate snapped.

That irresistible chuckle of old Nomad’s sounded.

“Katie, I don’t want ter git any fatter. A fat man can’t run; and I reely feel ther need of runnin’, so long as you persist in pursuin’ after me.”

“We’ll all quit runnin’, seems to me, now! Seems to me we’re in fer it. I don’t see nothin’ to laugh about, I don’t. Yit there you set and grin like a monkey! I keep wonderin’ what I ever married you fer, anyhow.”

“Me too!” said Nick. “And I keep wonderin’ why, havin’ found me out, you chase me about so. See what’s happened to ye by doin’ thet! If you’d stayed in Kansas City——”

“If you had stayed in Kansas City, you mean!” she snapped. “Wasn’t you the first one to leave there? And ain’t it the duty of a dutiful wife to foller her husband wherever he goes? Nicholas, if I——”

“Too much talk!” one of the Indians grunted.

Pizen Kate shut up like the closing of a steel trap, but she gave the redskin a black look.

The Redskin Rovers paid at first little attention to their captives, after they had duly celebrated the capture of the noted Long Hair. They were now busy in getting supper, using some of the things taken from Latimer’s. Nevertheless, the rebuke of the Indian could not keep either Pizen Kate or Nomad quiet very long.

“I told you I was goin’ to camp outside and watch fer things, and that I knowed somethin’ was goin’ to happen last night,” said Pizen Kate, addressing Buffalo Bill, whom she still persisted in calling Persimmon Pete. “It happened, all right. But I guess I wasn’t a very good watcher. Mebbe I cat-napped a little. Anyway, I was a pris’ner of these red rascals almost before I knowed it.”

She seemed to have no true perception of the very serious position she was in, although, as if to silence her, Nomad made wry faces while she talked, and now and then retorted with some curt warning.

In the midst of the talk old Nebuchadnezzar drew attention to himself by a shrill squeal. As he squealed he launched out with his hind feet; and an Indian who had been standing so near him that it drew his disapproval received the full force of the heavy kick and sat down on the ground with a loud grunt of pain.

Nomad cackled with uproarious laughter.

“Te, he! Did ye see him, Buffler? Ole Nebby ferever! He jes’ natcherly can’t stand an Injun! They make him that mad thet he jes’ has to go fer ’em when they comes nigh him. He thinks they ain’t human, and I’m somewhat er that opinion myself.”

The bowled-over Indian rose in a rage and proceeded to belabor the gnarled old beast; and as a result received another kick that sent him sprawling again.

The roars of laughter from the other Indians showed how they appreciated the fun. Their laughter so angered the bruised redskin that he would have shot Nebuchadnezzar dead but for the prompt interference of a man who had but recently come into the camp.

That he was a white man, and the real leader of the Redskin Rovers, Buffalo Bill was sure as soon as he saw him; but he was dressed as an Indian, and his hands and face were so covered with paint that one not closely attentive would have been sure he was an Indian.

This leader caught the wrathy redskin by the throat and thrust him back when he picked up a rifle and would have shot the old horse, and the language he used, though in the Indian tongue, told Buffalo Bill even more clearly that he was a white man, for it was imperfect, showing that he had not fully mastered it.

“Thet’s a white man, Buffler,” said Nomad; “and he’s an outlaw, I reckon, and is pertendin’ thet he’s an Injun. Them things I never could stand. Still, it does sorter warm me up and make me feel kinder good toward him ter have him chip in thet way in behalf of ole Nebby.”

“The question that’s troublin’ me,” said Pizen Kate, who was apparently not interested in either the exploits or the safety of Nebuchadnezzar, “is, now that we’re here, how we’re goin’ to git away from here? Aire we ever goin’ to git away?”

It was a question that also troubled the other prisoners.