Читать книгу Softfoot of Silver Creek - Robert Leighton - Страница 8

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SOFTFOOT remembered the chief’s caution to the boys against running into danger. His medicine told him not to be reckless, and he held back, watching for his chance.

The Pawnee bowmen were exceedingly clever in opening their attack. As their weapons were silent, they could kill one after another of the buffaloes without causing a general alarm. Their plan was to head off the stampeding herd and keep it compact and well surrounded.

Long Hair had singled out the leading bull, the king of the herd. He galloped nearer and nearer and came abreast of the onward plunging monster. Then he drew his bow, aiming at the exposed side behind the shoulder. When the buffalo stumbled and rolled over, the two or three bulls closely following stopped and sniffed at it stupidly, until one of them in its turn assumed the post of leader and the stampede was continued.

Long Hair and his companions now gave chase and crossed in front of the leading bulls, turning them back upon the crowded mass while the hunters rode round and round. But the great animals, already mad with fear, did not long remain close together. Soon all was confusion, horses and buffaloes racing side by side, turning up the dust with their clattering hoofs and sending forth a deafening noise of bellowing and coughing to mingle with the shrill whoops and yells of the Indians. Above the rough brown backs and woolly humps of the buffaloes, the naked shoulders and flashing arms of the men showed red and glistening as they drew their arrows to the head and drove them into the flesh.

It was not easy for Softfoot to understand how the Pawnees, riding in the thick of the furiously battling giants, could escape injury from the tossing horns and the enormously powerful frames of the angry animals they were attacking. But the ponies were watchful, nimble, sure-footed, and quick to avoid the frontal charges of the angry beasts, while at the same time dodging the badger-holes in the ground that offered traps for unwary feet.

“Why do we wait?” cried Weasel Moccasin, impatient to join in the fray.

He was riding a borrowed piebald pony that had not been too willing to obey the guidance of a strange rider. But now that the conflict was at its height, the piebald suddenly changed its demeanour. It reared up under the restraint of the taut trail-rope, pranced sideways with arched neck and twitching ears, and then, getting the rawhide bit firmly in its teeth, sprang out into the fray, plunging among the buffaloes as madly as any others of the trained runners.

Softfoot saw Weasel Moccasin being carried helplessly into the turbulent sea of shaggy-backed, gleaming-eyed monsters. He shouted to him to turn back. Instead of pulling the pony round, Weasel Moccasin began to belabour it with his quirt, which made matters worse. The pony careered onward, forcing its way into the writhing throng. Then its rider dropped his trail-rope and began to work desperately with his bow and arrows, wounding a buffalo each time, but disabling none. He was too reckless to take aim, and his silent shafts only made the bewildered animals more furious.

“It is now time for my medicine to help me,” muttered Softfoot, touching the ermine bag that hung from his necklace. “Weasel Moccasin is in great danger. I must help him or he will be killed!”

He urged Snow-white forward into the confused conflict, entering by the narrow gap that his companion had made. As he started he fixed an arrow on his bowstring, and it was then that he discovered that the arrows were not his own; but he continued shooting, always aiming at a vital part, always pulling his bow strongly.

A young bull ran into his path and stopped, barring his way. Softfoot passed his bow over his right arm, and gripped the pony between his knees. She lifted him with a splendid leap, clearing the bull and alighting easily on the farther side. He saw Weasel Moccasin close in advance of him now, hard-pressed by many hairy giants whose humps were much higher than his pony’s ears.

A monstrous long-horned bull stood at bay in front of him. Its big, bloodshot eyes glared threateningly; there was foam about its jaws and the breath came noisily from its fiery, trembling nostrils. The swelling muscles about its immense shoulders were tensed ready for a desperate forward rush at the piebald pony. There was no escape for Weasel Moccasin.

“Jump!” cried Softfoot. “Jump!”

At this moment of peril some of the warriors had opened fire with their guns. There was a sudden startled movement among the buffaloes. The great bull swerved to get at the piebald’s flank. Its own broad palpitating side was exposed for an instant. In that instant Softfoot pulled his bowstring and shot an arrow deep into the brown expanse behind the animal’s shoulder.

“Jump!” he called again.

But even though fatally wounded, the bull had already made a fierce battering charge at the piebald, flinging the pony with its rider high into the air, and then staggering backward.

Weasel Moccasin turned a somersault and dropped with a dull thud upon the buffalo just as the mighty animal was rolling over. He fell on his back, partly on the bull’s soft flank and partly on its deep, woolly mane. But his head struck against the hard bone of its bent elbow, and he was stunned. He did not move.

Softfoot believed that he was not seriously hurt. He forced his way up to him, leant over, and seizing one of his hands, drew him upward until he got an arm round him and could hoist him securely across Snow-white’s withers and hold him there as he glanced anxiously round for a means of escape.

But the danger was not yet over. The warriors were pressing the buffaloes closer behind him, firing at them. Softfoot was crushed helplessly in the frantic, jostling crowd, and his hands were not free to use his bow.

He had difficulty in keeping his seat. Had he been thrown, he would quickly have been trampled to death. Snow-white was but a feeble animal to battle her way out from such a dense, grinding crush. Yet she kept her feet and avoided the tossing heads and menacing horns.

The pressure seemed to be getting worse. Softfoot was beginning to lose hope when suddenly the cows in front of him scattered in many directions, driven from side to side by a rider who dashed into their midst, firing shot after shot with such astonishing speed that even in his situation of peril Softfoot wondered how the man could have time to reload his gun after each discharge.

He looked forward over the sea of tossing humps and saw the man riding directly towards him through an open lane in the wildly scattering herd. He was not a Pawnee; nor was his tall, rangy mount an Indian buffalo pony. Softfoot quickly recognized him as the paleface stranger whom he had named Blue Eye.

With prodding spur and coaxing words, Blue Eye forced his great horse forward into the tight throng. He had slung his rifle over the pommel of his stock saddle and was firing now with his revolver, taking quick, sure aim at each buffalo that came in his way. His trained mount swerved or leapt to avoid the stumbling, panic-stricken cows and madly careering bulls. And at last he reached Softfoot’s side.

“Is your friend badly hurt?” he inquired, speaking in the Pawnee tongue. “I see his pony is done for. I saw what happened. I watched you riding after him. Wait! Let me help you.”

He dismounted and lifted Weasel Moccasin to get him astride in a comfortable position with his back resting against Softfoot’s chest. Then he turned and looked down at the injured pony, which he saw was very far gone. Blue Eye mercifully fired a bullet into the white star on its forehead.

“A good prairie pony lost by bad management,” he said. “You are both too young to be allowed out on a buffalo hunt,” he added, and seizing Snow-white’s halter rope, he mounted his own animal and slowly led the way out to open ground. Here, clear of the buffaloes, he again dismounted and gave Weasel Moccasin a drink from his water bottle.

“He is not dead,” said Softfoot. “But I think his head is very sore.”

“Likely,” nodded Blue Eye, speaking now in the white man’s tongue, which Softfoot did not understand. “Concussion of the brain, I guess. But you stopped that big bull from trampling him. If he’d jumped, he wouldn’t have been hurt.”

As he got again into his saddle, he glanced at the two feathers in Softfoot’s head-band. They told him that the boy had won distinction in his tribe, while the injured boy, as he noticed, wore no such badges.

“What made him ride into the middle of the stampeding herd?” he asked. “He ought to have known better.”

“It was his pony’s fault,” Softfoot explained. “We were told to keep out of danger. But his pony carried him in. He could not stop her. He could not turn her back.”

“Then why in thunder did you follow him?” questioned Blue Eye. “Did you want to get killed? What made you go after him as you did? Weren’t you afraid?”

“I was afraid,” admitted Softfoot. “I was like the grass in the wind. But I wanted to do the thing I was afraid of doing. That is why I followed Weasel Moccasin. He was in danger.”

The blue eyes of the bearded frontiersman were fixed upon Softfoot with something of admiration in their expression. They noted the Pawnee boy’s regular features under the paint that was already smeared with prairie dust and perspiration. They noted the well-developed muscles of his arms and thighs, and the healthy smoothness of his bronzed skin. They noted also that the boy’s hand went more than once to the little white bag hanging from his necklace.

“You wanted to do the thing you were afraid of doing?” Blue Eye repeated thoughtfully to himself. “Why, that’s just about as good a definition of courage as ever I’ve heard.” Aloud, he said: “What is your name, kid? I want to remember you by it.”

“It is Softfoot,” he was told.

“Is that your medicine that you’re so careful of?” The white man smiled when Softfoot again drew his necklet away from Weasel Moccasin’s head.

“It is my medicine,” answered Softfoot. “And you too, Blue Eye—you also are wearing a sacred medicine.”

The frontiersman’s flannel shirt was open at the throat. Round his sun-tanned neck was a fine chain of gold and glistening beads.

The thought of the necklace so accidentally revealed brought a curious flash to the white man’s blue eyes.