"I"ll bring you out all right!" he said. "I owe you a life anyway for saving me from that bear. I learned a little something about surgery when I was in Illinois, and I guess I can fix you up."
He got me back to camp after a long and painful hour and with a wagon-bow, which he made into a splint, set the fracture. But our enterprise was at an end. Help would have to be found now, and before spring. One man and a cripple could never get through the winter.
It was determined that Harrington must go for this needful a.s.sistance just as soon as possible. He placed me on our little bunk, with plenty of blankets to cover me. All our provisions he put within my reach. A cup was lashed to a long sapling, and Harrington made a hole in the side of the dugout so that I could reach this cup out to a snow-bank for my water supply.
Lastly he cut a great pile of wood and heaped it near the fire. Without leaving the bunk I could thus do a little cooking, keep the fire up, and eat and sleep. It was not a situation that I would have chosen, but there was nothing else to do.
The nearest settlement was a hundred and twenty-five miles distant.
Harrington figured that he could make the round trip in twenty days. My supplies were ample to last that long. I urged him to start as soon as possible, that he might the sooner return with a new yoke of oxen. Then I could be hauled out to where medical attendance was to be had.
I watched him start off afoot, and my heart was heavy. But soon I stopped thinking of my pain and began to find ways and means to cure my loneliness. We had brought with us a number of books, and these I read through most of my waking hours. But the days grew longer and longer for all that. Every morning when I woke I cut a notch in a long stick to mark its coming. I had cut twelve of these notches when one morning I was awakened from a sound sleep by the touch of a hand on my shoulder.
Instantly concluding that Harrington had returned, I was about to cry out in delight when I caught a glimpse of a war-bonnet, surmounting the ugly, painted face of a Sioux brave.
The brilliant colors that had been smeared on his visage told me more forcibly than words could have done that his tribe was on the warpath.
It was a decidedly unpleasant discovery for me.
While he was asking me in the Sioux language what I was doing there, and how many more were in the party, other braves began crowding through the door till the little dugout was packed as full of Sioux warriors as it could hold.
Outside I could hear the stamping of horses and the voices of more warriors. I made up my mind it was all over but the scalping.
And then a stately old brave worked his way through the crowd and came toward my bunk. It was plain from the deference accorded him by the others that he was a chief. And as soon as I set eyes on him I recognized him as old Rain-in-the-Face, whom I had often seen and talked with at Fort Laramie, and whose children taught me the Sioux language as we played about the wagon-beds together. Among these children was the son who succeeded to the name of Rain-in-the-Face, and who years later, it is a.s.serted, killed General George A. Custer in the ma.s.sacre of the Little Big Horn.
I showed the chief my broken leg, and asked him if he did not remember me. He replied that he did. I asked him if he intended to kill the boy who had been his children"s playmate. He consulted with his warriors, who had begun busily to loot the cabin. After a long parley the old man told me that my life would be spared, but my gun and pistol and all my provisions would be regarded as the spoils of the war.
Vainly I pointed out that he might as well kill me as leave me without food or the means to defend myself against wolves. He said that his young men had granted a great deal in consenting to spare my life. As for food, he pointed to the carca.s.s of a deer that hung from the wall.
The next morning they mounted their ponies and galloped away. I was glad enough to see them go. I knew that my life had hung by a thread while I had been their involuntary host. Only my friendship with the children of old Rain-in-the-Face had saved me.
But, even with the Indians gone, I was in a desperate situation. As they had taken all my matches I had to keep the fire going continuously. This meant that I could not sleep long at a time, the lack of rest soon began to tell on me. I would cut slices from the deer carca.s.s with my knife, and holding it over the fire with a long stick, cook it, eating it without salt. Coffee I must do without altogether.
The second day after the departure of the Indians a great snow fell.
The drifts blocked the doorway and covered the windows. It lay to a depth of several feet on the roof over my head. My woodpile was covered by the snow that drifted in and it was with great difficulty that I could get enough wood to keep my little fire going. And on that fire depended my life. Worse than all these troubles was the knowledge that the heavy snow would be sure to delay Harrington.
I would lie there, day after day, a prey to all sorts of dark imaginings. I fancied him killed by Indians on the trail, or s...o...b..und and starving on the Plains. Each morning my notches on my calendar stick were made. Gradually their number grew till at last the twentieth was duly cut. But no Harrington came.
The wolves, smelling meat within, had now begun to gather round in increasing numbers. They made the night hideous with their howlings, and pawed and scratched and dug at the snow by the doorway, determined to come in and make a meal of everything the dugout contained, myself included.
How I endured it I do not know. But the Plains teach men and boys fort.i.tude. Many and many a time as I lay there I resolved that if I should ever be spared to go back to my home and friends, the frontier should know me no more.
It was on the twenty-ninth day, as marked on stick, when I had about given up hope, that I heard a cheerful voice shouting "Whoa!" and recognized it as the voice of Harrington. A criminal on the scafford with the noose about his neck and the trap sagging underneath his feet could not have welcomed a pardon more eagerly than I welcomed my deliverance out of this torture-chamber.
I could make no effort to open the door for him. But I found voice to answer him when he cried "h.e.l.lo, Billy!" and in response to his question a.s.sured him that I was all right. He soon cleared a pa.s.sageway through the snow, and stood beside me.
"I never expected to see you alive again," he said; "I had a terrible trip. I didn"t think I should ever get through--caught in the snowstorm and laid up for three days. The cattle wandered away and I came within an ace of losing them altogether. When I got started again the snow was so deep I couldn"t make much headway."
"Well, you"re here," I said, giving him a hug.
Harrington had made a trip few men could have made. He had risked his life to save mine. All alone he had brought a yoke of oxen over a country where the trails were all obscured and the blinding snow made every added mile more perilous.
I was still unable to walk, and he had to do all the work of packing up for the trip home. In a few days he had loaded the pelts on board the wagon, covered it with the wagon-sheet we had used in the dugout, and made me a comfortable bed inside. We had three hundred beaver and one hundred otter skins to show for our work. That meant a lot of money when we should get them to the settlements.
On the eighth day of the journey home we reached a ranch on the Republican River, where we rested for a couple of days. Then we went on to the ranch where Harrington had obtained his cattle and paid for the yoke with twenty-five beaver skins, the equivalent of a hundred dollars in money.
At the end of twenty days" travel we reached Salt Creek Valley, where I was welcomed by my mother and sisters as one returned from the dead.
So grateful was my mother to Harrington for what he had done for me that she insisted on his making his home with us. This he decided to do, and took charge of our farm. The next spring, this man, who had safely weathered the most perilous of journeys over the Plains, caught cold while setting out some trees and fell ill. We brought a doctor from Lawrence, and did everything in our power to save him, but in a week he died. The loss of a member of our own family could not have affected us more.
I was now in my fifteenth year and possessed of a growing appet.i.te for adventure. A very few months had so dulled the memory of my sufferings in the dugout that I had forgotten all about my resolve to forsake the frontier forever. I looked about me for something new and still more exciting.
I was not long in finding it. In April, 1860, the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell organized the wonderful "Pony Express," the most picturesque messenger-service that this country has ever seen. The route was from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, a distance of two thousand miles, across the Plains, over a dreary stretch of sagebrush and alkali desert, and through two great mountain ranges.
The system was really a relay race against time. Stations were built at intervals averaging fifteen miles apart. A rider"s route covered three stations, with an exchange of horses at each, so that he was expected at the beginning to cover close to forty-five miles--a good ride when one must average fifteen miles an hour.
The firm undertaking the enterprise had been busy for some time picking the best ponies to be had for money, and the lightest, most wiry and most experienced riders. This was a life that appealed to me, and I struck for a job. I was pretty young in years, but I had already earned a reputation for coming safe out of perilous adventures, and I was hired.
Naturally our equipment was the very lightest. The messages which we carried were written on the thinnest paper to be found. These we carried in a waterproof pouch, slung under our arms. We wore only such clothing as was absolutely necessary.
The first trip of the Pony Express was made in ten days--an average of two hundred miles a day. But we soon began stretching our riders and making better time. Soon we shortened the time to eight days. President Buchanan"s last Presidential message in December, 1860, was carried in eight days. President Lincoln"s inaugural, the following March, took only seven days and seventeen hours for the journey between St. Joseph and Sacramento.
We soon got used to the work. When it became apparent to the men in charge that the boys could do better than forty-five miles a day the stretches were lengthened. The pay of the rider was from $100 to $125 a month. It was announced that the further a man rode the better would be his pay. That put speed and endurance into all of us.
Stern necessity often compelled us to lengthen our day"s work even beyond our desires. In the hostile Indian country, riders were frequently shot. In such an event the man whose relief had been killed had to ride on to the next station, doing two men"s ride. Road-agents were another menace, and often they proved as deadly as the Indians.
In stretching my own route I found myself getting further and further west. Finally I was riding well into the foothills of the Rockies.
Still further west my route was pushed. Soon I rode from Red b.u.t.tes to Sweet.w.a.ter, a distance of seventy-six miles. Road-agents and Indians infested this country. I never was quite sure when I started out when I should reach my destination, or whether I should never reach it at all.
One day I galloped into the station at Three Crossings to find that my relief had been killed in a drunken row the night before. There was no one to take his place. His route was eighty-five miles across country to the west. I had no time to think it over. Selecting a good pony out of the stables I was soon on my way.
I arrived at Rocky Ridge, the end of the new route, on schedule time, and turning back came on to Red b.u.t.tes, my starting-place. The round trip was 320 miles, and I made it in twenty-one hours and forty minutes.
Excitement was plentiful during my two years" service as a Pony Express rider. One day as I was leaving Horse Creek, a party of fifteen Indians jammed me in a sand ravine eight miles west of the station. They fired at me repeatedly, but my luck held, and I went unscathed. My mount was a California roan pony, the fastest in the stables. I dug the spurs into his sides, and, lying flat on his back, I kept straight on for Sweet.w.a.ter Bridge eleven miles distant. A turn back to Horse Creek might have brought me more speedily to shelter, but I did not dare risk it.
The Indians came on behind, riding with all the speed they could put into their horses, but my pony drew rapidly ahead. I had a lead of two miles when I reached the station. There I found I could get no new pony. The stock-tender had been killed by the Indians during the night.
All his ponies had been stolen and driven off. I kept on, therefore, to Plonts Station, twelve miles further along, riding the same pony--a ride of twenty-four miles on one mount. At Plonts I told the people what had happened at Sweet.w.a.ter Bridge. Then, with a fresh horse, I finished my route without further adventure.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PURSUED BY FIFTEEN BLOODTHIRSTY INDIANS, I HAD A RUNNING FIGHT OF ELEVEN MILES]
CHAPTER II
About the middle of September the Indians became very troublesome on the line of the stage along the Sweet.w.a.ter, between Split Rock and Three Crossings. A stage had been robbed and two pa.s.sengers killed outright. Lem Flowers, the driver, was badly wounded. The thievish redskins also drove stock repeatedly from the stations. They were continually lying in wait for pa.s.sing stages and Pony Express riders.
It was useless to keep the Express going until these depredations could be stopped. A lay-off of six weeks was ordered, and our time was our own.
While we were thus idle a party was organized to carry the war into the Indians" own country, and teach them that the white man"s property must be let alone. This party I joined.