Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Pursuit; Or, The Heavy Hand of Justice - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 5

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Because of the intense midsummer heat in that desert region, Buffalo Bill did not journey far that morning, but relieved his horse of its double burden long before noon, and took shelter from the burning sun in the shady depths of the cañon, at a point where its sides were scalable for man and beast.

Pizen Jane seemed impervious to the heat, and declared her anxiety to go on. But she descended into the cañon, and there helped the scout eat the food which remained after her famine feast of the morning.

Throughout the journey, and now, as she and the scout rested, she asked strange questions without number, all tending to show that she still did not believe he was the man he represented himself to be.

What her own intentions and plans were she cloaked with much cleverness, though she talked all around the subject, drowning it in a very sea of words.

Buffalo Bill gained the idea, however, that she had suffered some wrong at the hands of some man, or men, or that some bitter grief and disappointment had come to her; for the avenging, or righting, of which she had set forth alone on this dangerous trail. In addition, it seemed that she suspected him of being in some manner concerned in the wrong done her, and that she had proofs of it she more than once hinted.

“I begin to fear you are crazy, madam,” he said, at length, when she had vexed him with her many hints of personal wrongdoing. “But please remember that I never met you before, and know absolutely nothing of any of the men you so veiledly speak of. I might know more, if you would be more open in what you say.”

“And then you’d know too much, if you ain’t the reel Buffler!” she cackled. “Pizen Jane may be homely lookin’, and no doubt she is, but she ain’t no fool.”

They did not go on until the cool shadows of evening covered the trail. They continued the journey far into the night, going forward by the light of the moon.

The hour was late, when Pizen Jane gave a convulsive leap, and threw her arms around the scout’s body, with a quick motion.

“Did ye hear that?” she asked breathless.

The scout drew rein.

“I heard nothing,” said he. “What did you——”

“There it is ag’in! Wolves, as I’m a mortal sinner! And they’re answering each other, I’ll be bound. Jes’ listen at ’em!”

The scout could not fail to hear them now, for their howls swept out in a wild chorus.

“Wolves?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Comin’ this way?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

She observed that in spite of his careless reply he touched up the horse with the spur.

The wolves were in two bands, apparently; one band on the mountainside, off on the left, and the other behind, in the trail, or in the river cañon. Those on the hillside were nearest, and their howls soon became frightful.

“Chasin’ us?” she asked.

“We’ll hope not.”

“Well, I know they aire! Ye can’t fool me. I’ve had experience. This ain’t the fust time I’ve heerd ’em.”

She put her hand into her bosom and drew out a revolver.

“This ain’t big enough to kill many wolves with,” she remarked; “but it’s big enough to kill me, which it’ll do if the wolves should seem about to git me. I’d ruther die by a bullet than to have them critters tear me into giblets. Ugh! Hear ’em yellin’!”

It was not a pleasant sound, and again the scout touched the horse up with the spur.

The country lay more open before him, a fact of which he was glad. The moonlight and open country lessened the danger from the wolves; for, like all evil creatures, they loved the darkness rather than the light.

The horse was now flying along, oblivious of its double burden. It not only heard the wolves, but had scented them, and was frightened.

The howling drew nearer, and soon the wolves, sweeping down from the hills, were seen running along the trail just behind the fugitives, and off on the left, beyond revolver shot. They grew constantly bolder and bolder, so that soon they were close upon the horse. They seemed to recognize the helplessness of the fugitives, pitted against so many; for the wolf gains courage from numbers, and is boldest when in big packs.

Soon the wolves became so reckless that they dashed into the trail, partly surrounding the horse. Then they began to leap at its nose, and sought to strike their teeth into its legs for the purpose of hamstringing it, after the manner in which they were accustomed to bring down deer and other game.

The scout shot one that sprang at the horse’s head; and then dropped another that had leaped to the horse’s haunches.

“Downed ’em, ye did!” cried Pizen Jane. “Good for you! It makes me ’most love ye, Buffler, to see you drop ’em like that.”

He made no answer save a grunt of wrath.

“Buffler,” Pizen Jane cackled, “I know you’re enj’yin’ my society, even if the wolves is chasin’ us!”

“I should feel better if you were not here,” he answered, quite frankly.

“Why, Buffler?”

“Because of the wolves. You have no need to ask.”

He fired at another.

It fell with a yelp, being only wounded; but immediately its ferocious comrades sprang on it, tearing it to pieces almost instantly, being rendered savage beyond belief by the scent of its flowing blood.

Even the bold scout shuddered as he saw that. He had seen its like more than once, yet it never failed to impress him with a sense of the awful ferocity of wolves when maddened in that way, and of his terrible peril. He knew that if his horse fell, or if either of the riders should be thrown to the ground, a horrible death could only result.

“Buffler,” said Pizen Jane at length, as he brought down another wolf, thus feeding it to its comrades, “I know this trail, havin’ been over it before, and you don’t know it; but there’s a ford right ahead, where the trail dips down and then crosses the river. If you can reach that ford, you can git in the water there and make a stand agin’ ’em wuth while. They’ll git us, otherwise.”

She did not emit that cackling laugh now; in fact, she had begun to appreciate her horrible danger, and was speculating as to its outcome.

“Thank Heaven for that!” said the scout. “Perhaps I can hold them off until the ford is reached.”

He had fired every cartridge out of his revolver, and now drew another.

“Can you reload this one?” he said, passing it back to her, with some cartridges.

“Yes,” she said; “and shoot it, too!”

She proceeded to show that she could, by bringing down a wolf that tried to leap upon the horse, close by her. The claws of the wolf struck through the thick hide of the horse just as she fired, and, contracting in a death clutch, they raked the skin open, so that blood flowed.

The horse gave a jump that came nigh hurling Pizen Jane to the ground; but she threw her arms round the scout and held on like grim death.

A dozen wolves had leaped on the one she shot, and were rending and devouring it; but others came on, more frantically determined than ever to pull down the horse, now, that they scented the hot blood which streamed from its flank.

Buffalo Bill brought down one of the pursuing wolves, and Pizen Jane another.

Though the living ones stopped to rend the dead and dying, the delay was brief enough.

Yet it enabled the sorely pressed horse to gain on its fiendish foes.

“The ford’s jist ahead of ye now!” Pizen Jane screamed in the ear of Buffalo Bill.

In another minute he saw before him the darkly flowing waters of the river, which had emerged from its cañon bed and here flowed through a quiet landscape.

Buffalo Bill spurred the frantic and terrified horse into the river until the water came up over the girth.

“Draw up your feet,” he said to Pizen Jane.

“I ain’t neither sugar ner salt, to be melted away by a little water,” she declared; “and I dunno but I could swim if I was driv’ to it; so don’t worry about me. Jist so we git out o’ reach o’ them screechin’ varmints, is all I ask.”

The pursuing and infuriated wolves dashed up to the edge of the water.

Buffalo Bill turned in the saddle and dropped one of them by a well-directed shot, and then wounded another.

The ferocious survivors began to tear at the fallen wolves as soon as they were down, so that within a few minutes nothing was left of them but shining, dislocated bones. The sight was enough to make the scout and the woman shudder.

Buffalo Bill urged the horse still farther out into the river, until the water stood midway of its sides.

The wolves on the shore seemed, within a few minutes, to number scores, and even hundreds. Their snapping teeth, fiery eyes, and struggling movements made the shore a writhing mass of fiendish forms. Some of them dashed into the water and began to swim out to the horse; but they were at a disadvantage in the water; for they could not there make the tremendous leaps that would carry them to the horse’s back, nor could they move quickly enough to baffle the revolver fire of the scout and Pizen Jane.

Pizen Jane was reloading and firing the revolver the scout had given her, with a coolness and courage that would have befitted a man.

Between them they succeeded in shooting every wolf that swam close to the horse.

The dark bodies of dead wolves bobbed in the stream below the ford, where there were some eddies, that, catching them, whirled them slowly round and round.

But the fate of the wolves already slain had small deterrent effect on those still living, and their numbers seemed inexhaustible. Where they came from could hardly be told; they seemed to spring out of the very ground; and they ran snapping and yelping along the banks, on both sides of the river now, while at intervals a few of the most desperate plunged in and tried to reach the horse and its riders.

Generous as his supply of ammunition was, Buffalo Bill began to fear it would soon be exhausted.

Suddenly, while the wolves still raved on the shores of the moonlit river, and dashed into the water in efforts to reach the horse, a wild scream was heard near by, which had on them a marvelous effect. It was the scream of a panther. The big beast had scented the flowing blood, and doubtless had come for a feast.

The leaping forms of the wolves dropped out of sight with almost startling suddenness, as the lithe body of the panther came down the hillside with springing leaps.

“Glory be!” cried Pizen Jane, with an almost hysterical cackle. “The painter has druv ’em off.”

The “painter,” as she called the panther, came on toward the river, not at first seeing the horse midway of the stream. In another moment it would have been cracking the bones of the dead wolves, if the horse had not been startled by its coming and began to plunge in the water, making a good deal of noise.

The panther stopped, throwing up its head and looking down at the horse. It was startled, and seemed too surprised for a moment to move. Then, with a quick leap, it turned aside; and in another instant it, too, was lost to sight in the darkness.

“Glory be!” Pizen Jane mumbled.

Buffalo Bill saw now that she was trembling, as if her nerves were exhausted.

“Shall we ride out now?” he asked.

Before she could answer, the sharp report of a revolver, or rifle, sounded. It was some distance away; yet the stillness which had followed the cessation of the wolf attack made it possible for sounds to carry a long distance. Following the first shot, came others in quick succession.

“Some other pore critter attacked by them varmints!” Pizen Jane interpreted.

“Yes.”

“I hope they don’t git him, if he’s honest and hon’rable; I hope he’s nigh to the water, and can git into it, as we did.”

The scout was listening for a repetition of the shots.

“I hope a painter will come ’long to his ’sistance, as it did to ours.”

The shots did not sound again.

“They’ve killed him, er he’s druv ’em away, er mebbe the painter skeered ’em. I’m swearin’ by painters, frum this time on!”

Pizen Jane’s tongue would wag, no matter what happened.

“If I thought we could aid him, and he needed aid now, I’d try to go to his help,” said the generous scout.

“But we don’t know where he is!”

“He’s out in that direction, somewhere.”

“And he may be a road agent, or even an Injun. More likely to be, than an honest man.”

“Very true; yet I shouldn’t want any human being to be torn alive by wolves.”

“It’d serve some of ’em right,” avowed Pizen Jane, with a grimness that was not pleasant. “Some on ’em that I know of, and am lookin’ fer, ought to be chopped into giblets. If the wolves should kill ’em, it’d save me the crime of murder when I meet ’em.”

When the shots did not come again, and nothing occurred to indicate who the man was, or what had happened to him, the scout abandoned his desire to go to his aid.

He feared the return of the wolves; and so he kept his horse in the stream, though the beast was soon shaking from the chill of the cold water.

“It’s a tarnal queer thing, Buffler, ther way that animiles do,” averred the woman, dropping into a mood of philosophy. “The wolves warn’t afeared of us, even when we laid ’em out on the shore like chopped corn, though they was skeered o’ that painter; and the painter that wasn’t afeared of the wolves, was afeared of us. Varmints aire that queer there’s no knowin’ what to expect of ’em.”

For nearly an hour the scout kept his shivering horse in the stream; but when it was seen that the wolves were not likely to return soon he rode out of the water.

On the shore he went into camp, and there he built a fire. The fire would help to keep the wolves at bay; and also it was needed to enable him and Pizen Jane to dry their wet clothing.

He screened the fire as well as he could; yet he knew it might be seen; and he was in a land where he could expect to meet enemies in human shape as terrible as the wolves and as little given to mercy. To guard against surprise, he for a time stood in the darkness beyond the rim of the firelight, watching there, while the woman by the fire dried and warmed herself.

Far away he heard wolves howling, and they may have been some of those who had pursued him; but the man who had fired the shots did not make himself known.

The stars and the moon swung their slow way westward, and the night grew late. At last the scout returned to the fire, fed it with wood, and sat down.

Pizen Jane had fallen asleep, but his return aroused her, and she raised herself on her elbow.

“Buffler,” she said, smoothing back her tangled hair, “what aire ye goin’ to do now?”

“In what way?” he asked. “When?”

“Why, to-morrer?”

“I hardly know.”

“Well, I know you’re lookin’ fer road agents!”

“You seem to think you are a mind reader,” he declared, with a laugh.

“I am. I kin read yer mind same’s my own.”

“What am I thinking of?”

“That you wish Pizen Jane was in purgatory, er some other furrin country!”

He laughed again, and she laughed with him.

“Hardly that, of course.”

“You’re wishin’ I wasn’t with you?”

“Your society is very pleasant,” was his gallant statement; “but you will admit that this is hardly the sort of country where a woman can feel safe.”

“And that’s why I’m goin’ to hang to ye. You can’t git rid of me. I’ll cling to ye like the bark on a tree, and you can’t help it. Fer, ye see, you’re huntin’ road agents, and so am I. And if you find ’em, and I’m with ye, why, I’ll find ’em, too. And that’s what I want.”

He smiled into the firelight.

“I thought you were of the opinion that I was a fake, and you meant to cling to me for the purpose of finding out?”

“Well, that is one reason,” she admitted, with blunt frankness. “If you ain’t the reel Buffler Bill, why, I want to know that, too. And then I’ll be makin’ things mighty int’restin’ fer ye.”

She laughed again, sliding from her stern grimness and threatening into laughing good humor.

“I’ll watch a while, if ye want to sleep,” she said. “I’ve had my forty winks, and can git along now till morning.”

The scout felt sure that he could trust this woman not to harm him in his sleep. She still mystified him, and he could not yet fathom her purpose in being there; for he did not credit her with all the motives she professed. However, he trusted her, and so after a while he lay down for a time, leaving Pizen Jane on guard by the dying camp fire.

The horse was picketed on its lariat a few yards away, and was certain to give an alarm if wolves or other wild animals approached.