Part 8 (1/2)
”Well, I swear!” exclaimed the major. ”Didn't you understand me to say I wanted to hear all about his march as soon as he finished supper?”
”I certainly did,” replied Captain Truman, with an accent on the I that meant volumes.
”So did I,” growled Hastings; but he never could bear Devers, who was persistently distorting or misunderstanding the orders the adjutant was compelled to convey to him.
”Well, let him sleep,” said Warren, finally. ”I suppose he's tired out, and very probably Davies will speedily come in.”
But midnight came and no Davies. Out on the prairie--now dimly lighted by the rays of the waning moon--the pickets at the east had descried no moving objects. Every now and then the yelp of a coyote on one side of camp would be echoed far over at the other. These, with an occasional paw or snort from the side-lined herd, and the murmuring rush of the river over its gravelly bed, were the only sounds that drifted to the night-watchers from the sleeping bivouac. Towards one o'clock the sergeant of the guard came out to take a peep. Later, about two, Lieutenant Sanders, officer of the guard, a plucky little chap of whom the men were especially fond, made his way around the chain of posts and stayed some time peering with his gla.s.s over the dim vista of prairie to the eastward.
”I declare I thought I saw something moving out there,” he muttered, after long study. ”Are you sure you've seen or heard nothing?” he inquired of the silent sentry.
”Not a thing, lieutenant, beyond coyotes or Indian signals, I can't tell which. They keep at respectful distance, whatever they are.”
”Well, even if Mr. Davies's horses were too used up to come, the couriers ought to have got back long ago. Tell them to find me as soon as they come in,” said he, and went back to his saddle pillow in the heart of the grove. At its edge a solitary figure was standing gazing out into the night.
”That you, Sanders?” hailed a voice in low tone.
”Yes,” answered the lieutenant, shortly, for he recognized Devers and he didn't like him.
”Isn't Davies in yet?”
”No, and it's two o'clock.”
”Oh, he'll turn up all right,” said the captain, in airy confidence. ”It was all absurd sending him out to scout a smoke,--as if we hadn't seen and smelled smoke enough this summer to last a lifetime. He's probably camped down the valley somewhere, and they're all waiting for morning.
I'm not worrying about him.”
”No, I judge not,” muttered Sanders to himself, as he trudged on in the dark. ”You're simply keeping awake for the fun of the thing.” But even Devers got to sleep at last, and when he woke it was with a sudden start, with broad daylight streaming in his eyes, and stir and bustle and low-toned orders and rapid movement among the men, and Hastings was stirring him up with insubordinate boot and speaking in tones suggestive of neither respect nor esteem.
”Come, tumble up, captain; we're all wanted; Davies has been cut off and ma.s.sacred.”
Already his orderly had led up the captain's horse, p.r.i.c.king his ears and sniffing excitedly around him, and with trembling hands the young German was dragging out from among the blankets the captain's saddle, the hot tears falling as he stooped. His own brother was of Davies's party. Devers was on his feet in an instant, dismayed, and, buckling on his revolver, he went striding through the trees to where Warren stood, pale and distressed, questioning a haggard trooper,--one of the couriers sent on for Davies the previous evening. Devers burst in with interrupting words, and was instantly coolly checked.
”Never mind now, captain. Mount at once and get your men in saddle.” Nor would Warren see or speak with him, as with a hundred troopers at his heels--all whose horses were even moderately fit for a ten-mile trot--the major led the way down the valley, a few eager scouts cantering on before. All Devers could learn as they jogged along was that Tate, one of the couriers, had ridden in at seven on an exhausted mule to say that not until after dawn had they found Davies's party,--seven of them,--stone dead, stripped, scalped, gashed, mutilated almost beyond recognition, far out on the slopes east of that fatal spur over which the September sun had risen before he came, leaving his stunned comrade trailing hopelessly behind.
CHAPTER IX.
The prairie sod was torn by the hoofs of a hundred ponies. That was evident. All around a little sink in the surface at a distance of several hundred yards the warriors must have dashed and circled for full an hour. Here along the rim of the shallow basin, each behind the bloated and stiffening carca.s.s of his horse,--each surrounded by threescore copper sh.e.l.ls, showing that he had fought till hope and ammunition both were gone,--lay the poor remains of the gallant boys who had ridden silently away in obedience to their orders on the previous afternoon,--recognizable now only by their teeth or some still ungashed body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by little confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably, had been earlier shot by the storm of centring bullets; some, possibly, had sent their last shot into the reeling brain,--death by one's own hand being better at least than by slow and fiendish torture; and at last, probably just at dusk, the triumphant savages were able to close in upon their helpless prey and reap their reward of scalps and plunder and wreak their fury on a mute and defenceless foe.
But in a search of full an hour not a sign had Warren's best scouts discovered of Davies or his companion. The Indian trail, that of a war-party of at least fifty or sixty braves, led away southward again, into and through the timber in the distant river bottom, and there it became scattered, most of the party seeming to have ridden on towards the reservation in the darkness of the night, while others turned up-stream, and their pony-tracks led towards the point where Warren's battalion had bivouacked. These were probably the causes of the flitting shadows Sanders had detected far out on the prairie,--these the owls and coyotes whose weird cries had at intervals disturbed the silence of the night. Solemnly, sadly, now, the burial-parties labored. The soil was comparatively soft in the neighboring ravine,--much more so than higher up the slopes where the two crack shots had fallen earlier in the afternoon,--and here, with picket-pins and a spade or two which happened to be with the pack-train, a trench was scooped out, into which the poor remains were lowered and then covered with stones, dragged from the depths of the neighboring _coulee_. It took some hours to finish the sad duty, and meanwhile sharp-eyed scouts were busily occupied striving to determine what had become of Davies and Sergeant McGrath.
In this work the major himself took the lead, and here Devers's statements had to be drawn upon. Old Indian-fighters pointed out many a significant sign to sustain the theory that the fight must have lasted full an hour,--the trampled condition of the turf,--the quant.i.ties of sh.e.l.ls lying behind every little hummock or ridge in the surrounding prairie that commanded the position of the defence or afforded shelter from its fire. Down in the very ravine in which the bodies were buried, full four hundred yards from the scene of their desperate stand, the soft, sandy soil was pawed and trodden by waiting war-ponies, whose riders, lying flat on their stomachs along the bank above, had kept their watch upon the besieged, firing whenever head or hand appeared above their carca.s.s fortification. The whole ingenuity of the Indian plan became apparent as the situation was studied. Noting after ten o'clock that morning that the battalion was no longer marching due south, but had turned, heading southwest straight away for the landmark of the valley,--that distant, black, pine-crested peak,--the lurking warriors had devised their scheme to lure a scouting detachment away from the support of the column. Far down in the river bottom, ten miles away to the left of the trail, they had built at the springs a ”shack”
from the relics of some miner's outfit captured thereabouts earlier in the summer, and waiting until the head of the column was approaching the crest of the water-shed to the north, set fire to their pile and then secreted their main body in a deep ravine to await results, while small parties were thrown well forward to pick off venturesome individuals, if only such rode out in reconnoissance. If the white chief ”bit” and detached a small party, then every effort was to be made to keep the battalion occupied and interested,--to draw it along, if possible, towards the southwest,--just a few daring spirits devoting themselves to this duty, while the stronger party, keeping in hiding until they lured it far beyond rescuing distance, gradually encircled the isolated squad and at last pounced upon their prey. It is no new device. It was to prevent just such a play that Warren had ordered Devers with his troop to keep midway, holding Davies's little party in sight and support and the main column in communication. Had Devers obeyed the instructions given him and gone on down along that jutting spur instead of far to the west of it, the catastrophe would have been averted,--the Indian attack, even if attempted, could have been beaten off.
In bitterness of spirit the major was riding over the field, too full of exasperation as yet to trust himself to send for and speak to his subordinate, even when he felt that he must hold conference with him in order to determine how best to direct the search. Twice or thrice had Devers essayed to open communication with his chief and impress him with his views, but Warren had sent him word by Hastings to supervise at the designated point--which he himself selected--the burial of the men, while he, the major, went on with the search. Time and again it was noted how often Devers would climb the bank and anxiously gaze off to the west toward that fatal curtain,--the spur that separated him from the sacrificed detachment the night before. What his thoughts were could only be conjectured, but little Sanders seemed to hit pretty near the mark when he confided to Hastings that Differs didn't seem to care a d.a.m.n whether Warren followed the Indian trail or not; what he was afraid of was that the major would ”get onto” his own. And indeed as the morning wore on it began to look as though that were what the major was bent on doing. The scouting-parties had come back with their report of what they had found in the river bottom, and by this time Warren with his escort was three miles over to the west and slowly searching along the east face of the spur, peeping into every hollow and depression that might shelter a human form and looking everywhere for the print of horses' hoofs. At ten o'clock he had sent to Devers for some intelligent non-commissioned officer who could point out about where they had last seen Davies as he crossed the ridge returning to his men at sundown, but Devers very plausibly responded that while it might not be difficult to do so from where they parted, ”just over on the west side,” it couldn't be reliably done from so far to the east. The reply must at least serve to delay matters awhile, and every moment was of value to Devers.
His own theory was that, as twilight was setting in as Davies recrossed the ridge, everything beyond in the low grounds was in deep obscurity.
The attack had probably begun about the time the young officer, with Murray, first crossed the ridge in obedience to the captain's orders to report to him in person. Less than an hour, Devers thought, elapsed before he could again have come within sight of the spot where he left his little command. By that time all was practically over. In the gathering darkness and in the glut and greed of their savage triumph the Indians had crowded about the victims. Davies and the sergeant, returning, had been allowed unmolested to make their way well down toward the scene. The fire in the bottom was fed to lure them on (it was still smouldering when Warren's men trotted thither in the morning), and the two had either been captured alive and run off with the main body to grace the stake at the scalp-dance to be held with fiendish rejoicing somewhere beyond danger of interruption, or else, warned in some way, the two had sought to escape, and had been headed off and killed in some of the still unexplored ravines or _coulees_ farther to the southwest.
In either case, provided the major did not persist in his investigation and so discover how very far Devers had led his troop away from sight or support of Davies's men, and how utterly he had failed to carry out his orders, the captain felt tolerably confident that all the blame would be landed where it properly belonged,--on the shoulders of the dead and defenceless lieutenant, whose reluctance to undertake the duty many had observed, and whose womanish swoon at sight of the slaughtered men had not only proved his unfitness for frontier service, but long delayed his return to his party. Devers had always said Davies was entirely overrated by the colonel and Truman and others; he had held all summer that the lieutenant was a ”molly-coddle;” he had been reproved more than once for what they termed his injustice to his subaltern, and now Davies had proved just exactly what he knew he would prove,--a carpet knight, a prayer-meeting soldier, with neither grit nor brawn nor backbone; and if he was killed, at least he had died in time to save the regiment from having to blush for him in the future. Devers had served throughout the war of the rebellion in a regiment that saw no end of hard fighting, but always when he happened to be on sick-leave or detached service of some kind, for in all of his years of service no man in his grade or corps had so seldom been under fire, either in the South or on the plains.