Читать книгу The Lost Wagon Train - Zane Grey - Страница 4

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Hard on that sensation fell the bell-like voice of Lester Cornwall: “Mawnin’, Colonel.”

“It’s hardly good morning, Lester,” replied Latch, as he flung his blankets back and sat up. “Gray dawn of an evil day, I’d say.”

“Evil if Leighton has his way, Colonel,” rejoined the youth, in lower tone. “I don’t trust that man.”

“Did you hear anything?” demanded Latch, hurriedly pulling on his boots. Opposition, some one or something to distrust, stimulated and hardened him to realities.

“It’s enough to say now that I’m on your side,” returned Cornwall, deliberately.

“Thank you, Lester. I hope you will be justified. ... Did Leighton send you?”

“No. Nor did he like my snooping into this. I made up my mind last night I was going, and I was the first up. Leighton has Sprall and that Texas gunner with him. They’re saddling a pack-horse.”

“Humph! And where did you come in?”

“That’s what he asked. I told him I’d call you. He thinks you included me in this rum-getting.... I’m not apologizing, Colonel. Take me or leave me. It’s all one to me.”

“Cornwall, I’ve an idea that whether we fight Indians or make friends with them, massacre caravans to turn honest, go to hell or not—it’s all one to you.”

“I’d stick to you, Colonel.”

It dawned on Latch then that this young outcast had answered to some strange attachment born of the inevitable dissension in the band. There was something nonchalant and dare-devil about him which appealed to Latch.

“Heah’s my hand, Cornwall,” said Latch. “You might have noticed that I have not offered it to Leighton, or any other of our crew.”

In the gray cold dawn the younger man’s grip closed like steel on the other’s hand. Latch imagined himself past any such thing as friendship or trust. Yet here he wondered. What would wild life at a wild period do to him? He realized that there were unplumbed depths in him. Then the gruff voice of Leighton broke that handclasp. Latch buckled on his gun-belt, and examining his six-barreled pistol he returned it to the sheath.

Dark figures moved away in the gloom. Latch, with Cornwall beside him, followed them with a stride which soon swallowed up the intervening distance. They kept close to the wall, moving to one side and then the other to avoid obstructing rocks and trees. Sounds of the encampment died away. The gray dawn had imperceptibly lightened.

“Never was any good at location,” growled Leighton.

“Wal, if I’d knowed where that gin was cached you can bet your life I’d never forget,” replied Sprall, with a hoarse laugh.

“Keep quiet,” ordered Latch, in a low peremptory voice. “I don’t want the Indians to know where we hid this stuff.”

“Hell! They could sure find out quick enough,” retorted Leighton.

“Perhaps, if they had time. But there are ten thousand cracks and holes in Spider Web Canyon. It’s the damndest place I ever saw.”

They crossed a brawling brook and went on at a snail’s pace. Latch had his especial signs by which he had marked the cache. And these were peculiarly formed crags on the rim, which at length he barely discerned. Straight into the tangle of trees and rocks he led, over thick grass that left no imprint of foot, and found a crack in the wall.

“Sprall, you stay here with the horse,” ordered Latch.

The outlaw demurred under his breath. Latch led into the crack, which was narrow and dark. But by measuring off a number of strides he arrived finally at the point he sought. Feeling with his hands, he located little holes in the wall on the right side, and knew then that he was right. Day had broken and there was light enough to see the caverned walls, pock-marked with holes of every size.

“We should have brought Keetch,” said Latch. “Here, two of you help me on your shoulders. One foot on each.... There!” Latch reached for a shelf above his head, and laboriously clambered upon it. The wide portal of a cave, unseen from under the shelf, opened in the wall. Back a few feet from the entrance the cavern was full of kegs of rum—three wagon-loads. Latch remembered well, because it had taken days of excessive toil to get those kegs into that hiding-place.

“Throw up the rope,” he called. Then he lifted one of the casks and carried it to the edge of the shelf. When receiving the rope he lowered the rum on that, and pulled up to perform the same task for the second keg. The men below quite forgot that he required their aid to descend and packed their precious burden out to the horse. Latch had to get down the best way available, which was not without receiving sundry scratches and a solid thumping fall. Whereupon he hurried out of the crack to the exit.

Already one keg had been looped securely upon the pack-animal, and two of the men were holding up the other keg, while the third made it fast.

“Thar!” ejaculated the Texan, who had been responsible for the securely tied hitches. “Firewater an’ delirium tremens for them damned redskins.”

“One keg is for us,” declared Leighton, with satisfaction.

Latch concluded it wise to hold his tongue. Sooner or later he would conflict harshly with his lieutenant, and a dark certainty suddenly formed in his mind. He followed at the heels of his men, aware that Cornwall, ever vigilant, kept track of him. The rain had ceased, but grass and trees were wet, and water trickled off the cliff. The clouds were breaking away to the eastward. Evidently the day would be favorable for traveling. Latch thought of the strenuous ride ahead and felt grateful for anything that would make it less onerous.

During his absence the horses had been rounded up and fetched in, the score or more belonging to his band contrasting markedly with the several hundred lean and ragged mustangs of the Kiowas. Keetch, a capital camp cook, was dealing out breakfast to the men who had not accompanied Latch. At sight of the rum-laden pack-horse they roared merry welcome. It jarred on Latch. Rum had obsessed these outlaws. Perhaps it contained the oblivion Latch craved, as well as the spirit for evil deeds.

The Kiowas’ camp hummed like a beehive, two hundred and fifty half-naked savages, gorging meat before a raid, made a picture Latch had never seen equaled. What would Satana’s entire band look like when about to charge a wagon train, or especially in the moment of triumph over the whites? Latch stumbled, having unconsciously closed his eyes. Amid the rough acclaim of his men he sat to his meal.

“Latch, our red pards are aboot to move,” called out Keetch. “It’ll shore be hell keepin’ up with them today.”

“Pack light and rustle,” was Latch’s reply.

In half an hour Latch rode out with his men at the tail end of Satana’s band. Just then the sun burst over the eastern rim, transforming the canyon from a dark, gray-fogged, stone-faced crack in the wilderness to a magnificent valley of silver and gold iridescence. The wisps of clouds lifted as on wings of pearly fire, the white cascade tumbled out of a ragged notch in the black rim, to fall and pause and fall again, like fans of lace; the great oaks, walnuts, and cottonwoods, full foliaged, dripped strings of diamonds and rubies and appeared festooned with rainbows; the long grass, emerald velvet, spread away into every lane and patch and corner and niche, and green moss climbed the walls; deer with long ears erect trooped away into the timber; and above the murmur of the stream rose the songs of innumerable birds, over which the mockers held a golden-voiced dominance.

Latch thought it a hideous dream that through this beauty and glory of nature he was riding down to heap blood and death upon innocent people of his own color. Must he steep his brain in rum to carry through this dark project? He divined that he must continually fortify himself against a background of childhood and youth and young manhood. He had not been intended for this devastating business. Strength must come from the past, from betrayed love and frustrated hope, from the poison that ran in his veins. To these he called with despairing passion.

Spider Web Canyon stepped down between narrowing rugged walls, silver reaches and green patches vying with the groves as they all loped down toward a high irregular gap, black and mysterious, where the walls converged. On either side, myriads of rents split the walls, giving them the appearance of colossal fences, with pickets and spaces alternating. Far down, the larger of these were choked with foliage. What singular contrast between this lower end of the canyon and that at the upper where the walls were sheer and in many places for rods without a crack. The eastern wall was lower and perpendicular for all of its full four hundred feet. Keetch had claimed there were places where a wagon could be driven right to the rim. This had given Latch the nucleus of an idea. Why not haul all their stolen wagons to this rim, if that were possible, lower the supplies on ropes, and topple the wagons over, never to be seen again by freighters or scouts of the plains? It was an absorbing thought.

The last red-skinned rider and his ragged wild pony vanished in the green-choked apex that led out of the gap. Keetch, with the pack-horses behind him, slowly approached the entrance to the pass.

Latch, behind the rest of his band, brought up the rear. He took a last look around, the conscious act of a man who hated to leave the peace and solitude of this extraordinary canyon. It was no sure thing that he would come back. The upper and wider part of the canyon could not be seen from his position—only the wild ramparts that seemed to defy invasion of their secrets. But on his right opened the deepest and darkest cleft so far discovered in the wall, and here a slender ribbon of water fell from ledge to ledge. An eagle soared above the notch. Huge boulders fallen from the cliff lay surrounded by magnificent trees, some of which barely reached to the tops of these broken sections of cliff. The sweet, fresh, cool wetness of the morning, the glorious bright radiance on every tree, rock, bush, and plot of grass, the melody of innumerable birds, the presence of wild turkeys, deer, rabbits on all sides, the swallows flitting like a shower of steely sparks, the ripples on dark still pools of the meandering brook, and in the distance the faint roar of the waterfall—all these entered into Latch, and he felt that they were the last of good he would absorb in this life.

What folly to love this canyon—to want to own it all himself—to have it to come to as a refuge! Still he loved and wanted. The perversity of his nature dominated here.

Then he rode on down the winding green lane, into the willows and at last into the brook. Here all signs of tracks and trails vanished. And that brook would be the road of travel for many hard miles. A corner of bronze cliff bulged out over him, and when he turned it he was in the pass where the walls were scarcely forty paces apart, and had begun to sheer up frowningly.

The brook flowed over smooth hard rock that left no imprint of the hoof of a horse. There was a decided current, and in places little steps down where miniature waterfalls babbled and gurgled. Sand and gravel and small rocks had evidently been washed down the floor of this tortuous pass. Willows and cottonwoods fringed the shore lines, except where the wall came down abruptly. At times Latch could see a hundred yards ahead and catch sight of the line of riders lounging in their saddles. The only sounds were watery ones. Latch had as a boy been an ardent angler, and he absorbed himself in watching for trout and other little fish in the deeper places. He was rewarded sometimes by the flash of a silver side spotted with red, and occasionally a fuller view of a lusty trout. And he thought of what wonderful hunting and fishing he would enjoy during the long period when it would be imperative to hide in this fortress.

Some slants in the brook had made it necessary to dismount and wade carefully down where a horse could easily break a leg. And while he amused or interested himself in the course of the stream—anything to keep his mind off the deed for which this travel was necessary—the miles of canyon pass fell behind, and the volume of water mysteriously began to lessen and the walls to grow closer, steeper, and higher until at last only a narrow belt of blue sky showed something over three hundred feet above.

Thereafter the light failed perceptibly and the hour arrived when the walls were so close that only dusk, strange and wan, prevailed under them. Then the green verdure disappeared and nothing but stark, somber rock overhung the subdued and drab brook. Slides of earth and stone from above had choked the space many times, to be washed away. Huge blocks of granite obstructed places, so that it was difficult for a horse to get by. In many cases the packs had to be slipped.

All these details of escape from Spider Web Canyon augmented and at length terminated in a split so narrow that Latch could touch the wall on either side with half extended hand. Last came the deep water, where for long stretches the horses had to swim, and in several instances the men also. Latch’s horse was a good swimmer, otherwise Latch would have been hard put to an almost insurmountable task, for he was but a poor hand in the water. The current carried him through narrows where he knocked his knees against the walls. It was these swift places, fortunately short, that had played havoc with the band of outlaws on their way up the pass into the canyon. If the water had not been low the ascent would have been impossible. Also to be trapped there when a freshet came down would have been extremely dangerous.

This constricted part seemed endless in length. Each man had to keep his ammunition dry, and as some of Latch’s band used powder-and-ball pistols, this cardinally important task grew almost insupportable if not impossible. But at last, far beyond midday, they got through the Paso Diablo and entered the widening and rapidly descending canyon below. Here again the sun found them and Latch warmed to the golden rays and the ever-broadening stream of blue above.

At sunset the outlaws rode abruptly out of the rock rent into a vast level valley the like of which Latch had never imagined. The Indians had pitched camp in groups under wide-spreading trees; fires were sending up columns of smoke; the mustangs in droves grazed on the green grass. Far down this magnificent stretch, ragged black patches showed against the sunset gold.

“Wal, boss, hyar’s your field,” called out Keetch, sonorously. “Look down the range.”

“Buffalo!” exclaimed Latch, suddenly sighting Indian riders in a chase.

“Shore. An’ we’ll have rump steak for supper,” replied the outlaw scout, cheerfully.

Latch sat his horse and gazed long. He could not see the extent of this field, but it certainly contained thousands of acres. From where the pass opened, the bluffs extended in wavering lines in an oval curve, growing lower until at length they smoothed out upon the open prairie. Groves of cottonwoods dotted the great field, and a long irregular green line, thick and dark, marked the course of the stream through the range. There were isolated knolls, some circled by big walnut trees, and others with a single tree to distinguish them from their fellows. The golden sun rays paved the meadows and aisles.

“No wonder the red man hated the white man!” soliloquized Latch. “To seek to rob him of this!”

“Colonel, heah’s your ranch,” spoke up young Cornwall. “And right heah I’m applying for the job of foreman.”

“Right heah you get it, Lester,” declared Latch, in a glow and flush of feeling which obliterated for the moment how vain his dream was. He knew the Kiowa would trade him this land for guns, trinkets, rum, and then fight to help him keep it.

“Keetch, you called the trick,” the leader rang out. “Latch’s Field!”

Before dark the Indian hunters returned to camp with buffalo meat, and soon the air was full of the appetizing odor of rump steak, that much-desired delicacy of the plains. Latch ate heartily, and after the meal he walked apart from the members of his band. The long strenuous ride and the conflict of feelings had exhausted him. Soon he sought rest under the cottonwood where he had taken the precaution to put his saddle, bed, and pack with the kegs of rum.

His own men appeared to be a mixed group of merry and somber members. And Latch’s keen ears registered the fact that Leighton’s coterie of outlaws belonged to the latter. Satana’s warriors feasted long and noisily on the choice viands of buffalo meat. He heard Keetch say the “damned red-skinned hawgs ate up five whole buffalo.”

Down here in the open, where it was almost prairie, Latch lost the sense of security and insulation furnished by Spider Web Canyon. This field lay at the edge of the plains, high ground without apparent slope, and subject to all the characteristics of prairie-land. In the distance bands of wolves chased their quarry, with wild deep bays as of hounds gone mad. Close at hand, bands of coyotes made the night hideous with their sharp yelps. Nevertheless, Latch slept soundly and awoke under the white stars of dawn, rested and himself again.

It was just break of day when Keetch called the men to their meal. “Fill up, you sons-of-guns, an’ what you can’t eat pack in your pockets. It’ll be a long drill today an’ no cookin’ at the end of it, if I don’t miss my guess.”

Latch hoped the Kiowas would lead off down through the wonderful field, so that he could estimate its size and characteristics. But they took a course straight north, climbed out over the bluff to the uplands, and strung out, a marvelous cavalcade of color, wildness, and movement. From the last high point Latch gazed back and down upon the place which had obsessed him. It appeared to be triangular in shape, with the apex at the gateway of the pass, and the broad end some forty or fifty miles across a still greater distance from where he made his estimates. Toward the open range the timber failed, and there strings and patches of buffalo led off from the main black herd. He chose this upper end as his own field, realizing that some day shrewd pioneers would stop to locate on that fertile soil. From this height the scene was beautiful in the extreme, a vast silvery park dotted by trees, basking in the sunrise. Only the dark and ragged break in the western bluff gave any inkling of the rough country in that direction.

Latch made it a point presently to join Satana.

“Chief, I want trade for land,” he said, turning to sweep a hand toward the field.

“Uggh. What give?” replied the cunning Kiowa.

“Much. You be friend and keep off Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Apaches, Comanches.”

“Good. Satana kill heap red man. How much trade?”

“What you want?” Latch’s deal with the savage called for a surrender of all oxen and horses captured in a raid on a caravan. This had appeared to be eminently satisfactory to the Kiowa.

“Heap flour, beans, coffee, tobac,” began Satana.

“Yes.”

“Wagons.”

“No. All wagons are to be run over the cliffs and destroyed.”

“Guns, powder, ball.”

“Yes. Equal share ... same you ... same me.”

“Uggh! Good! ... Firewater?”

“Plenty for Satana. Little for Indian braves. Bad medicine. Make Kiowas crazy.”

“Satana trade. Him promise keep.”

Latch gripped the lean sinewy hand extended him, and felt that Satana, treacherous savage and deadly foe of white men, would deal with him as he was dealt by. A sense of final committal fell upon Latch. He had chosen his hiding-place, his burrow in the mountains, there to lie concealed until this or that raid had passed into the history of the frontier, forgotten in a few weeks as the unending accidents and disasters befell the travelers to the West. He had traded for his ranch land, where slowly he would develop the resources, build and fence and irrigate, so that when the war ended he could make a home. Home! He railed at his unreasonable dreams. Long before this war was over he would stop a freighter’s bullet or be hanged to a cottonwood tree. His trading, his planning, his labor, whatever these might be, would be but vain dreams. Still he persisted in them. There seemed to be an unknown self inside him, a defiant unquenchable self, some man who had a secret and terrific passion. He felt it stirring, boiling, swelling, like the change of a volcano from inertia to awakening for the eruption.

The Kiowas knew the country. They kept on straight as a crow flew, over ridge and across hollows, up and down the barrens, higher and higher across the uplands, ringed by a close horizon. An occasional wolf, lean and old, follower of the pack, watched them from some eminence. Hawks sailed over the swales where scant brush might harbor gophers and rabbits. Latch never tired of the gray reaches, the lonely monotonous eternal gray of the high range. He recognized here something similar to what he had in his mind. And again he was confronted with the thought that unless he became an ordinary ruffian, bent on robbery, gambling, and carousal, he must expect all these strange and illusive things to magnify. Why should he concern himself with what he was then, what he would become tomorrow? The fact was that despite his bitter mocking resignation his dreams prevailed. And he concluded that this was better than dwelling only upon lust for blood and gold. At least he would prolong the period before his inevitable degradation.

The long line of Indian horsemen lengthened out until it covered miles. What travelers they were! Their wild ponies kept on tirelessly. Latch’s outfit slowly fell behind. The heavier-weighted horses slowed up toward midday. Leighton had succeeded Keetch as leader of the white contingent. He rode at some distance ahead, shifting in his saddle from time to time, absorbed in his thoughts. In fact, all the men rode apart from one another. Cornwall, however, did not get far in advance of Latch.

Thus they rode on during the afternoon, hour by hour, across the ridges and hollows of the uplands, where the miles ahead appeared like those left behind. Not a track or a trail did Latch’s active eye espy. Buffalo did not frequent these barren foothills. Latch had a view now and then of the distant Rockies, rising purple-peaked above the gray land. At sunset the file of Indians appeared to deviate from their straight course north, and turn somewhat to the west. Latch then made note that they had come out on the verge of a promontory.

Leighton and Keetch waited for their followers to come up. Latch was the last to join the group, all of whom were facing intently what lay before and below them. He gathered from their rigidity and absorption that he was to expect some unusually striking scene. Keetch was pointing and speaking.

Presently Latch rode out on the brim of the plateau. His anticipation was vastly overwhelmed. The Great Plains lay beneath him, far below, gray and green, dotted and barren, merging in a dim haze.

“Wal, boss, hyar you are,” said Keetch, coming to Latch’s side. “Sort of staggerin’, huh? ... You see thet meanderin’ line? Thet’s the Dry Trail. I wouldn’t say it was a line of skulls an’ bleached bones. But you’d see some if you rode it.... I’m not shore, but I think thet ribbon far out there is the Cimarron. Our wagon train ought to be past the river. The Cimarron Crossin’ is where the Dry Trail begins. As I told you, it cuts off near three hundred miles. But it’s bad goin’. Some grass. Little water, an’ you gotta know how to find thet. I remember some of the camps. Sand Creek’s the first. Willow Bar, Round Mount, Point of Rocks, an’ so on, only thet’s not their order. We ought to be able to see Point of Rocks from hyar. But I can’t locate it.”

“I have a field-glass in my pack.”

“Wal, we can use thet tomorrer.”

“Are the Kiowas going down to the trail?”

“Reckon only to a waterhole. We’ll camp there an’ wait until the scouts locate the train. From what I gathered, Hawk Eye reckons he’ll smoke signal us day after tomorrer sometime. Thet’ll mean the wagon train will be comin’ along the trail, an’ be within strikin’ distance in their camp thet night.”

“Well, let’s follow on down. I’m tired,” rejoined Latch.

Camp that night was something to nauseate Latch. But for his canteen with water from Spider Web Creek he would have gone thirsty to bed. His men grumbled for rum. The Kiowas burned dim fires of buffalo chips and danced around them, working themselves into a warlike mood. It seemed that their strange low staccato yells pierced Latch’s slumber.

All next day he lounged in camp, in what scant shade he could find here and there. The Kiowas rode out to a man, a few of them up the slope of the hills, and most of them out on the plains to hunt. Leighton’s crowd gambled with their share of the expected raid, using pebbles as counters, and most of the day they cursed, laughed, brooded the hours away. Some of Latch’s men slept. Cornwall haunted the gamblers, a watching, indifferent, incomprehensible youth. Latch marked him for something singular. Often he approached Latch, but seldom spoke.

“Colonel, that outfit is gambling away the contents of your wagon train,” he said once.

“They’re ambitious—and trusting. Some of them may be dead.”

“Queer bunch. I imagine we’re all queer, though. I know I am, because I like this life. But not for that sort of thing.”

“What for, Lester?” queried Latch, curiously.

“I don’t know, unless it’s the spell.”

“Of blood and death just round the corner. I think I understand. It’s got me, too. But it’s not a wild joy, a wild freedom from all restraint. It’s bitter defiance.... What do you make of Leighton’s cronies?”

“That Texas gunman fascinated me,” replied Cornwall. “He’s the only one of the bunch I’d trust. He doesn’t talk much. When Leighton taunted him about Lone Wolf, this other gun-thrower from Texas, why he didn’t like it a bit. I guessed Leighton wanted Texas to pick a fight with Lone Wolf, just to see which would kill the other quickest.... Waldron is a gloomy man, haunted by a bad conscience, but excited about the prospects of gold. Mandrove may have been a preacher, but he’s pretty low down now. He too wants the raid on the wagon train to gain him money. I suspect not to gamble with, but to escape with. Creik, the damned nigger, wants some slaves to beat. Sprall itches for fight. He gives me the creeps. I’ll probably shoot him presently. And Leighton—what do you think he wants most?”

“God only knows. Perhaps to be chief of this band.”

“No. He’s just antagonistic to you. He wouldn’t have the responsibility. I’m sure he has no great desire for power. Leighton is the kind who live for women.”

“What?” demanded Latch, surprised out of his somberness.

“I’ve studied Leighton, watched him, listened to him.... If he’s a relative of yours you ought to know something about him.”

“Very little. We’re only distantly related—third cousins, I think.... I believe I did hear something about love affairs—years ago. I forget.... Well, it’s nothing to me what he was or is.”

The day passed and the night. Latch suffered under the strain. He arose feeling like a chained tiger. Cornwall, always active, eager, curious, was the first to report that Satana’s scouts were smoke-signaling from far-separated points. They had sighted the caravan. It was a moment of tremendous import. Latch did not realize until then that he had still to make a choice, a decision. Should he go on with the deal with Satana or abandon it to flee across the plains, anywhere to escape? In cold fury he again met the issue.

That encampment became possessed of devils. Satana sent out riders, evidently to get reports from the scouts. He would not allow the white men, even Latch, to climb the hill. He permitted no cooking fires. Dozens of circles of savages were dancing their war-dance. Latch’s men eagerly approached him for liquor, and being refused kept up the importunity, growing sullen and insistent. They had eyes like wolves, except Cornwall’s, which resembled blue ice. Latch himself had to fight a need of stimulant. With Keetch he planned an attack on the caravan, drawing maps on the ground, figuring every detail. Satana was a sharp observer of this practice, sometimes approving with an “Uggh!” and more often shaking his head.

“Boss, thet old bird has got a haid on him, an’ don’t you overlook it. What he’s drivin’ at is thet we can’t plan the attack till we see where the wagon train camps. Unless it’s out in the open. Which, of course, any old freighter or experienced scout would insist on.

“Which would be most favorable to us?” demanded Latch.

“I’d prefer a brushy place or willow swale for them to camp,” replied the old frontiersman, thoughtfully. “The redskins, you know, can’t be held back, specially if they have a little rum—an’ it takes damn little to infuriate an Injun. Let’s put the brunt of the attack up to the Kiowas an’ leave us men to keep back an’ do the sharpshootin’ from cover. In case the attack is out in the open, some of us are goin’ to git plugged. We’ve got to put in our lick, too.”

“I appreciate that.... Well, tell Satana as soon as we locate the wagon-train camp we’ll plan the attack. And he must plan the hour.”

“Uhuh,” replied Keetch, and conversed with the chief. Presently he turned again to Latch. “Satana wants to know when they drink the fire water.”

“What’s your advice, Keetch?”

“Hell! Parcel the rum out tonight. There’s twenty gallons, an’ a thimbleful of thet stuff will make a devil of any savage unused to likker.”

The Kiowa scouts from the south rode in before sunset, reporting that the caravan was on the Dry Trail abreast of Satana’s camp, and not far away. Just after dark the riders from the north rode in to report that fifty-three wagons had gone into camp.

“Tanner’s Swale,” asserted Keetch, after listening to the reports. “Thet’s a waterhole off the trail. Brushy with willow an’ hackberry. Pretty high banks on each side of the swale, an’ not far apart.... The damn tenderfeet! Wonder who’n hell is boss of thet wagon train. Reckon they think they can hide. My Gawd! ... Wal, boss, it’s set to order.”

Latch stood erect, taut as a wire, with a strange ringing in his ears. Cold sweat broke out all over him.

“Keetch, ask Satana what his hour is for the attack,” said Latch, his voice sounding far away to him.

Satana well understood. He made an imperious gesture.

“Dark—before day come.”

“It is settled.... Keetch, tell him we will follow his braves and fight with them.... Spare no man—woman—or—or—child! ... They are not to set fire to wagons or shoot the stock.”

The interpreter made that clear to the chief. “Good!” he grunted.

“Now, men, we can’t be cowards and let the Indians do it all. But my orders are to keep back, under cover, and withhold your fire until you see a man to shoot at.... That’s all. Fetch the kegs of rum. Cornwall, get the small cups out of my saddle-bag.”

“Aggh!”

“Rush ’em out, Keetch!”

“Boss, how much do we git out of thet twenty gallon?”

Presently in the dim light of a buffalo-chip fire Latch was witness to a scene he would never forget. To each of his men, after portioning out the first to Satana, he allotted a full coffee-cup of rum. Then the liquor of one keg was poured out into buckets from which the small cupfuls were swiftly dispensed to the Indians. Silent, with eyes of dusky fire, the savages presented themselves for their portion. Many of the young braves choked as if indeed they had swallowed fire. Their very bodies leaped. From the drinking they went to the war-dance. But this night they made no sound, and the weird crouching steps appeared all the more sinister.

The second ten-gallon keg was tapped and again Latch allowed his men a drink. What heady stuff it was—how it burned his vitals—killed some struggle within—gave rein to the evil in him! It seemed a kind of ceremony, this drinking-bout, for it entailed silence and stilled mirth. His greedy men glared with fiery eyes at these slim savage striplings, erect, proud, fierce, ignorant that their courageous souls had been damned by the white traitors.