Part 27 (1/2)
”Not to you,” was the determined answer. ”I will surrender to soldiers when they demand, and to them only, and I'll await justice as their prisoner and not as yours.”
”My G.o.d! Mr. Davies, you've _got_ to do something!” wailed the agent, shrinking still farther back now, as Red Dog's line unmistakably quickened the pace and the earth began to quiver and tremble.
”Take the men and fall back towards the agency, sir,” said Davies, quickly, sternly, and then without an instant's hesitation spurred forward. As he rode he whipped off his right gauntlet, and then halting within a horse-length of the silent warrior, held out his bare hand.
”Thunder Hawk, this is the hand of a friend. Will you ride with me and turn Red Dog back?”
”I will go with you wherever you say.”
Over among the lodges of Thunder Hawk's people the signs of intense excitement were on the increase. Women and young girls had taken up the weird war-song of the advancing array. Young men springing to their ponies and no longer able to restrain their desire to act in his behalf, all forgetful of his injunction, came galloping forth to join the band of Red Dog riding to the rescue. Over at the agency, far to the rear, there was mad flurry and consternation. Women and children of the few employes, now that there was a military post within range, were gathering up such valuables as they could carry and scurrying away along the cantonment road. Conscious of his own impotence, McPhail had lost the last vestige of his truculent manner and, eagerly availing himself of Davies's advice, turned nervously to the senior corporal of the little squad of troopers and said, ”Fall back! We've got to fall back to the reserve.” The corporal glanced first at him, irresolutely, then back at the coming reserve now spurring forward with Lutz at their head, then around at the whirl and turmoil and trouble in the villages, at Red Dog's now ”magnificently stern array,” and finally at the two figures, calmly, slowly riding straight at the very centre of the advancing line, straight at the heart of Red Dog's chanting battalion; and then, when McPhail nervously repeated his instructions, and, adding example to precept, turned and strove to lead the party in retreat, briefly addressed first his fellows and then the agent.
”Stand fast, men!--You--go to h.e.l.l!”
A moment later and far out at the front now the two figures had halted, a strange contrast. The man on the right, tall, slender, of athletic and graceful build, clad in trim simple undress uniform of the cavalry, sitting his horse as straight as a young pine; the other, bent, blanket-robed, hunched up on his pony in the peculiarly ungraceful pose of the Indian rider when at rest, but resolute and immovable; both sublimely devoted in the duty now before them. When by the sweeping advance of the Indian line these two, the young officer, the old sub-chief, were brought nearly midway between the little party of blue-coats and the great rank of red warriors, both men as by common impulse threw upward the right hand, signalling ”Stand where you are!”
to the coming line.
And recognizing their challengers, little by little, gradually reining in, the Indians obeyed. Only Red Dog, followed closely by Elk, sullenly, angrily continued the advance; his fierce eyes, avoiding Davies's calm face, were bent glowering upon his fellow-tribesman.
”Why is Thunder Hawk here?” was his demand in the Ogallalla tongue. ”Is he ally or prisoner of the soldiers?”
”Thunder Hawk is their friend and the friend of his people. The white chief came as his friend and brother to protect him from indignity. Now as friends and brothers we stand between Red Dog and the wrong he would do. Only over our bodies shall Red Dog move another lance-length against the Great Father's people.”
Davies could not comprehend this talk, but there was no mistaking its import or its effect on the rabid chief. Furiously Red Dog pressed forward, his rifle still clutched in his sinewy hand.
”Thunder Hawk is a traitor and a liar! He has sold himself to the whites! He is their prisoner, and when they have used him they will iron and brand and starve him. Even a sub-chief of the Dakotas shall not live to be their tool. Thunder Hawk rides back with us at once or dies here and now.” And around came the ready weapon, muzzle to the front, with Red Dog's hand at the guard.
”Ride back to your men, lieutenant,” muttered the old Indian. ”You have my word that I will join you as soon as I can, but this man is crazed.
He means to force a fight.”
”If that be so my place is here with you,” was the answer. ”What does he demand?” ”No parlying with your soldier friends,” shouted Red Dog, again in the Sioux tongue. Then, as though losing all control of himself in his hatred of his captor, he dashed furiously at Davies. ”Back!” he shouted. ”Back!” And he pointed with grand dramatic action up the valley. ”Back to your own people! This is Indian land.” Then seeing that his words fell on heedless ears and that Davies never relaxed his cool, steadfast gaze into the raging red face, he fell into such English as he knew. ”Run or I kill.”
And then Lutz and his reserve, just reaching their comrades under Corporal Clanton, saw a sudden flash of suns.h.i.+ne from the silver mountings of the Indian's beautiful Winchester as it was whirled to the brawny shoulder, saw sudden rear and plunge of Davies's spirited horse, a grapple as though in mid-air, and with a mad cry of ”My G.o.d! They'll murder him!” young trooper Brannan dashed forward from the ranks just as the shot from Red Dog's rifle whirled harmless into s.p.a.ce, and horse and man, the pride of the Ogallalla hostiles, were rolling in the dust, overthrown by the officers heavier charger, while the b.u.t.t of the polished weapon, wrested from the warrior's grasp and wielded by muscular hand, came down with resounding whack on the head of the struggling chief, and for the second time, in the very face of his astonished braves, Red Dog, the redoubtable, went sprawling to earth, downed by the white chief whom he affected to despise.
In the fierce mellay that followed the advantage lay with the first to move. Lutz and his party had not really checked their gait, and so leaped into the charge with a flying start. Sixteen ready troopers had darted forward to the support of their beloved young officer. Thunder Hawk had lashed his pony so as to interpose between him and the rush of the Indian band, but even as those red-skins nearest the centre, where the drums and rattles were keeping up their low, threatening din, with one impulse dashed forward to rescue the chief, those on the flanks, far-seeing, held wisely back, even while around the prostrate chief there raged for a brief, hot, furious moment a wild babel of threat and execration, a mad whirl of brandis.h.i.+ng knives and pistols and naked red limbs and brawny arms in dusty blue, Hawk and two other stalwart Sioux had thrown themselves between avenging blows and the young white chief, standing afoot now with pale, set face, over his writhing victim. Lutz and his men, lunging in among the lighter ponies, bore them back by sheer force of weight. 'Only one or two shots were heard; even in that frantic turmoil friend and foe alike seemed to realize that a battle must be avoided so long as each side held possession of its own. And then from the outskirts came loud yells of warning. By fives and tens the mounted warriors melted hurriedly away, and presently all the broad prairie to the eastward, back toward the lodges from which they came, was alive with circling, darting, screaming red-skins, keeping up their shrill appeal to brethren still hot-handed in the struggle for out from behind the curtain of the agency corral swept the long column of galloping horse under its curtaining cloud of dust, and down at full speed came the whole squadron, far more than Red Dog's band dare tackle in heady fight. Out from beneath his struggling pony they dragged him, bleeding and bedaubed with sweat and paint and blood, and when presently as the long skirmish line of Cranston's troop swept over the spot and drove before it all the mounted warriors, only two or three of the faithful remained to share the fortunes of their fallen chief, for like Thunder Hawk, Red Dog was the prisoner, not of the Great Father's agent, who was somewhere far to the rear, but of the soldier chief of the cantonments, who came galloping up in the wake of the cavalry, wrathful, if anything, that the whole thing was over without a fight.
And then, and not until nearly ten minutes after he had downed his man, was it noticed that Mr. Davies had not recovered color, that he was too faint to remount his horse.
”What is it, lad?” murmured Cranston, with keen anxiety in his eyes.
”I'm stabbed, captain. I--think you'd better not let Mrs. Davies know.”
But Davies need not have worried on that score. When a little later they bore him, faint, unconscious from loss of blood, to his own roof at the agency, there was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears,--Mira had fled with the McPhails with the first alarm, and was in hiding somewhere up at the cantonment.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
One soft spring morning, some two weeks later, a little knot of officers had gathered about the Cranstons' quarters at the cantonment. Under an awning of tent flies they were conning the papers that had just reached them and eagerly discussing their contents. Mrs. Cranston, a shade of anxiety on her winsome, sunburned face, was glancing quickly from one speaker to another. Through the open door-way in the cool interior Miss Loomis could be seen bending over the boys as they fidgeted at their books. Neither felt like studying this day of days, for absorbing news, and lots of it, had come. To begin with, a general court-martial had been ordered to meet at Omaha for the trial of Captain Devers, Eleventh Cavalry, and officers of high rank and distinction were to be his judges. With Atherton as president of the court there could be no ”monkey business,” said Mr. Sanders, by which that young gentleman was understood to mean that there would be no trifling with the subject. It was noticeable that neither Riggs nor Winthrop was of the detail, an omission readily understood, as Devers would unquestionably object, as was his privilege, to either or both on the ground of bias, prejudice, or malice, which, whether sustained or not, would lead to their asking to be excused from serving and so reducing the array. The court had been ordered from division head-quarters by the lieutenant-general himself, and its members, as a rule, were summoned from distant posts and commands, so as to preclude the possibility of the accused captain saying it was ”packed” from the ranks of his enemies. In other words, except Atherton, the court was made up entirely of officers who had taken no part in the campaign of the previous summer. It was understood that the charges were grave and numerous; rumors of misconduct in the face of the enemy, disobedience of orders, misrepresentation of facts, etc., being among the items mentioned. Major Warren had been summoned from abroad a month earlier than he had planned to come. Colonel Peleg Stone and Mr. Leonard had both been notified that they would be required as witnesses, so had Captains Cranston, Truman and Hay, Lieutenants Boynton, Hastings and Davies. The court could not meet before mid-May because several of the members came from the department of Dakota, far up the Missouri, but that it was to be a ”clinch” at last was the generally expressed sentiment. Devers had run to the end of his tether, said Boynton, unfeelingly. ”I could add a charge or two myself if I didn't know he was loaded with them so deep that he can't stagger.”
Boynton, limping still, had come back to resume command of the agency guard, for Davies's wound had proved deep and serious. He had been stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after Cranston's skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,--for White had dared the wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,--walked the garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big hospital tent, really the most comfortable dwelling at the station, now that the weather was growing warm, and there, attended by Burroughs and ministered to by a pathetically pretty wife (who had somewhat recovered from her panic, now that she was within the stockade of a military post with lots of men around to watch her and be fascinated), was on the road to speedy convalescence. He was being allowed occasional visitors, and while his own comrades vied in their attentions, nothing could exceed the anxiety of old White, the major commanding. Twice did he have Thunder Hawk recount to him the details of Davies's calm courage in this second daring capture, red-handed, of the rebellious chief, and White went to Cranston like the blunt, outspoken campaigner that he was.
”It begins to look to me,” said he, ”as if this young fellow had been most d.a.m.nably backbitten. You can haul Devers before a court, but what can we do with these women?”