Part 8 (2/2)
Seven bra.s.s rings were on her thumb and a carved wooden armlet encircled the wrist. These I was vandal enough to accept from Burfield. There were more rings and armlets, but enough is enough. As the gew-gaws had a peculiar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped them in my gloves, and surely if trifles determine destiny, that act was one of the trifles that determined the fact that I was to be spared to this life for yet a while longer. For, as I was carelessly wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very much turned up, Burfield suddenly started and then began bundling the wrappings around the mummy at great speed. Something was serious. I stooped to help him, and he whispered:
”Thought I heard a noise. If the Indians catch us, there'll be trouble, I'm afraid.”
We hastily stood the mummy on end, head down, against the tree, and tried to make it look as though the coyotes had torn it down, after it had fallen within reach, as indeed they had, originally. Then we crawled to the other end of the gully, scrambled up the bank, and emerged unconcernedly.
There was nothing in sight but long stretches of sage brush, touched here and there by the sun's last gleams. We were much relieved.
Said Burfield:
”The Indians are mighty ugly over that Spotted Tail fight, and if they had caught us touching their dead, it might have been unhealthy for us.”
”Why, what would they do?” I asked, suddenly realising what many white men never do--that Indians are emotional creatures like ourselves. The bra.s.s rings became uncomfortably conspicuous in my mind.
”Well, I don't suppose they would dare to kill us so close to the agency, but I don't know; a mad Injun's a bad Injun.”
Nevertheless, this opinion did not deter him from climbing a tree where three bodies lay side by side in a curious fas.h.i.+on; but I had no more interest in 'dead-trees,' and fidgeted. Nimrod had wandered off some distance and was watching a gopher hole-up for the night. The place in the fading light was spooky, but it was of live Indians, not dead ones, that I was thinking.
There is a time for all things, and clearly this was the time to go back to Severin's dollar-a-day Palace Hotel. I started for the bicycles when two black specks appeared on the horizon and grew rapidly larger. They could be nothing but two men on horseback approaching at a furious gallop. It was but yaller-covered-novel justice that they should be Indians.
”Quick, Burfield, get out of that tree on the other side!” It did not take a second for man and tree to be quit of each other, at the imminent risk of broken bones. I started again for the wheels.
”Stay where, you are,” said Burfield; ”we could never get away on those things. If they are after us, we must bluff it out.”
There was no doubt about their being after us. The two galloping figures were pointed straight at us and were soon close enough to show that they were Indians. We stood like posts and awaited them. Thud, thud--ta-thud, thud--on they charged at a furious pace directly at us. They were five hundred feet away--one hundred feet--fifty.
Now, I always take proper pride in my self possession, and to show how calm I was, I got out my camera, and as the two warriors came chasing up to the fifty-foot limit, I snapped it. I had taken a landscape a minute before, and I do not think that the fact that that landscape and those Indians appeared on the same plate is any proof that I was in the least upset by the red men's onset. Forty feet, thirty--on they came--ten--were they going to run us down?
Five feet, full in front of us they pulled in their horses to a dead stop--unpleasantly, close, unpleasantly sudden. Then there was an electric silence, such as comes between the lightning's flash and the thunder's crack. The Indians glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each measuring the other. Not a sound broke the stillness of that desolate spot, save the noisy panting of the horses as they stood, still braced from the shock of the sudden stop.
For three interminable minutes we faced each other without a move. Then one of the Indians slowly roved his eyes all over the place, searching suspiciously. From where he stood the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale bra.s.s rings and armlet were in my gloves which I held as jauntily as possible. He saw nothing wrong. He turned again to us. We betrayed no signs of agitation. Then he spoke grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly face:
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIVE FEET FULL IN FRONT OF US, THEY PULLED THEIR HORSES TO A DEAD STOP.]
”No touch 'em; savey?” giving a significant jerk of the head towards the trees.
We responded by a negative shake of the head. Oh, those bra.s.s rings! Why did I want to steal bra.s.s rings from the left thumb of an Indian woman mummy! Me! I should be carving my name on roadside trees next!
There was another silence as before. None of us had changed positions, so much as a leaf's thickness. Then the second Indian, grim and ugly as the first, spoke sullenly:
”No touch 'em; savey?” He laid his hand suggestively on something in his belt.
Again we shook our heads in a way that deprecated the very idea of such a thing. They gave another dissatisfied look around, and slowly turned their horses.
We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground and--who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the pa.s.sive elements of a tragedy.
I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelt on the handle bar of the doctor's wife's bicycle, and we hurried home like spanked children. That night, after I had delivered unto the doctor's wife her own, and disinfected the gewgaws in carbolic, I added two more subjects to my Never-again list--bicycling in Montana and 'dead hunts.'
XIII.
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