"Perhaps not," exclaimed Bob. "The Indians might have pa.s.sed through there when it was too dark to see where they were going."
"I know they might, but they didn"t, as I shall presently show you. The horses which made those crooked trails were not mustangs. They were American horses, and their presence proves another thing that I didn"t think to speak of before; and that is, that the Indians raided other ranches besides Mr. Wentworth"s. How do I know that they were American horses? Because their tracks were larger than a pony"s, and some of them were shod. The tracks made by the mustangs led through the open part of the timber, where there were no bushes and low branches; and this is one proof that the Indians did not pa.s.s through there in the night-time. If they had, they could not have kept in such open ground. I found further proof that these mustangs were all mounted by noticing that they did not stop to graze, as the loose horses did, being kept in constant motion by their riders. What do you think now?" asked George, seeing that Bob began to open his eyes.
"It reads like a book, don"t it?" was Bob"s reply. "But you have forgotten one very important thing. You said that the Indians pa.s.sed through those post-oaks early on Thursday morning. How do you know that they didn"t pa.s.s late on Thursday afternoon or early on Friday morning?"
"You think you have got me there, don"t you? Well, you haven"t. If there are "sermons in stones and books in running brooks," as the poet tells us there are, what is the reason that the print of an Indian pony"s hoof may not contain a page of information that will prove to be useful to him who has the skill to read it? On Wednesday night there was a very heavy dew, if you remember."
"I don"t remember," replied Bob; "I never pay any attention to such things."
"But you must pay attention to such things, and a good deal of it too, if you are going to be a Plainsman. During the last two nights there has been no dew at all. I noticed that some blades of gra.s.s, which had been pressed down by the hoofs of the horses and cattle, were covered with sand which stuck fast to them, having been dried on. This told me that the tracks were made while the gra.s.s was wet, and that the Indians had pa.s.sed that way early on Thursday morning, or before the sun had risen high enough to dry off the dew. There were not more than fifteen or twenty of them. I didn"t have time to see just how many, but they have stolen over a thousand head of steers and horses. Now, remember all I have told you, and see if I haven"t made a pretty good guess."
"Do you think we shall catch them?" asked Bob.
"Well," answered George slowly, "raiding Indians _have_ been overtaken and neatly whipped before now, but I have always believed that it was more by good luck than good management. These fellows will begin to show their tactics as soon as they find out that they are pursued. Then they will probably leave behind a few of the best mounted of the band to attract our attention and lead us away from the others, who will make all haste to take the prisoners and the stolon stock to a place of safety. If we bite at that bait, we shall lose everything, for as soon as the decoys have led us as far out of our way as they care to have us go, they will disappear all of a sudden, and we shall never see them again. If we keep on after the main body, and travel fast enough to gain on them, they will drop the stock in the desert, break up into squads of twos and threes, and we shall have nothing to do but to turn about and go home again."
The Indians did manoeuvre pretty nearly as George said they would, but Captain Clinton and his scouting-party did not go back to the fort until they had accomplished something.
CHAPTER X.
HOW GEORGE SAVED THE CAMP.
The troopers went into camp about midnight, having been nineteen hours in the saddle, during which time they had marched more than seventy miles. They halted on the bank of a small stream near a ford over which the Indians had pa.s.sed during their retreat. The trail was plain, and some of the troopers, who did not know quite as much about trailing as they thought they did, declared that they were close upon the heels of the raiders.
"How is that, George?" asked Bob Owens, who had been detailed as one of the corporals of the guard. "Some of the boys say that if we should follow the Indians for an hour or two longer we would be within sight of their camp-fires."
"What makes them think so?" asked George.
"Because they have found tracks with the sand still running into them.
Is that one of the signs by which to tell the age of a trail?"
"Under some circ.u.mstances, yes; in the present case, no. You could tell the age of a trail in that way if the ground around it had not been disturbed. This country about here is all quicksand, and you can take your stand almost anywhere along the banks of this stream, and by jumping up and down shake the ground for ten feet on all sides of you.
When our heavy column crossed the ford and climbed this bank, it shook the earth, and that was what set the sand to running down into the tracks."
"I declare!" exclaimed Bob, gazing admiringly at his friend; "is there anything a trailer isn"t obliged to know?"
"If he wants to be an expert he must keep his eyes and ears wide open, and pay strict attention to little things which almost anybody else would consider to be beneath his notice. It is wonderful what proficiency a person who has a talent for such things can acquire by practice. For example, this scout of ours could learn more about a trail in two minutes than I could in an hour. But he is fearfully jealous,"
added George with a laugh, "and you ought to have seen how mad I made him while we were pa.s.sing through that belt of post-oaks this afternoon.
Seeing that Captain Clinton was waiting very impatiently for information, I volunteered the statement that the hostiles had pa.s.sed that way early on Thursday morning, and that Mr. Wentworth was not the only one who had suffered at their hands. The captain asked Mose what he thought of that, and Mose replied, "I think jest this here, cap: if that kid is agoin" to lead this yere party he had better say so, an" I will go back to the post. He"s a"most too fresh, an" he"d better go back in the woods an" practise at holdin" his chin." But he did not contradict my statement, and that was all the evidence I needed to prove that I was right in what I said. The tracks here on the bank are not as fresh as you suppose. If they were wet, it would be a sign that the Indians crossed the ford since three o"clock this afternoon."
"Why since three o"clock?" asked Bob.
"Because the sun went under a cloud at that hour, and hasn"t showed himself since to dry off the water that the horses and cattle brought out of the stream on their feet and legs."
While the two boys were talking in this way George was getting ready to go to bed. The camp was located at the foot of a perpendicular bluff which was perhaps twenty feet in height. On the top of this bluff the horses were picketed, and beyond them were the sentinels who were to look out for the safety of the animals and keep guard over their slumbering companions. Everything outside of the circle of light made by the camp-fires was concealed by the most intense darkness. Not even a star twinkled in the sky. George spread his blankets in a sheltered nook at the foot of the bluff and courted the "drowsy G.o.d" in vain. He was tired and his eyes were heavy, but he could not go to sleep. After rolling and tossing about for nearly two hours, he became too nervous to remain inactive any longer, so he slung his rifle on his back and climbed to the top of the bluff, where he found Bob Owens and two other non-commissioned officers sitting beside a fire and conversing in low tones. At another fire a short distance away sat Lieutenant Earle, the officer of the guard, nodding over his pipe.
"Hallo!" exclaimed Bob, "what brought you out here?"
"Oh, I want somebody to talk to," replied George, throwing himself on the ground by his friend"s side, "Somehow, I can"t sleep, and that"s a new thing for me."
"You are not afraid of the hostiles, are you?" asked a corporal from the other side of the fire.
"Oh no, because I know that we have nothing to fear from them on such a night as this. If there were any hostiles in the neighborhood, they might slip up and steal a few horses, if they thought they could get away with their booty, but they wouldn"t attack a party of the size of ours and bring on an open fight. It is too dark."
"Why, that is just the reason they _would_ attack us," exclaimed the corporal, who, although he had often been on a scout, had never partic.i.p.ated in a battle. "They rely upon the darkness to cover their movements and to a.s.sist them in effecting a surprise. I have read it a hundred times."
"Ah, yes," replied George--"story-book Indians make attacks at all hours of the day and night, but live Plains Indians don"t. The reason for it is this: They believe that they will go into the happy hunting-grounds with just the same surroundings that attend their departure from this world. If an Indian is crippled or blind or ill, he will be just the same Indian in the spirit-land. If he dies from the effects of disease, he will suffer from that disease for ever; but if he is killed in battle on a pleasant day, and while he is in the possession of all his strength and faculties, he will go straight to the Indian"s heaven under the most favorable circ.u.mstances."
"Suppose he is killed on a rainy day?" said the corporal on the other side of the fire.
"Or a snowy one?" chimed in a sergeant.
"Then he is doomed to paddle through rain or snow through all eternity,"
replied George; "and that he doesn"t like either is proved by the fact that he will not stir out of camp while it is raining or snowing if he can help it. If an Indian is hanged, like Captain Jack or those thirty-seven warriors who were executed at Mankato in 1863 for partic.i.p.ation in the Sioux ma.s.sacre, he loses all chance of ever seeing the happy hunting-grounds. So he does if he is scalped; and that"s the reason Indians make such efforts to carry off the body of a fallen comrade. A Plains Indian never willingly goes into a fight during the night. If he did, he would make it much warmer for us here on the frontier than he does now. He may make use of a night like this to get into position for an attack, but if left to himself he will not raise the war-whoop before daylight, because he believes that if he is killed during the dark he will be condemned to pa.s.s all eternity in darkness."
"Well, that is something I never knew before," said the corporal, "and I have been on the Plains a good many years. Now that I think of it--"
"Corporal of the guard, No. 7!" came the call through the dense darkness, whereupon Bob Owens jumped to his feet.
"What"s the trouble out there, I wonder?" said he.
"Go and see," replied the sergeant with a sleepy yawn: "that"s the only way to find out."
"Sergeant," said the officer of the guard, "if those horses have had gra.s.s enough, have them brought in and tied to the stable-lines. Look well to their fastenings."
"Corporal of the guard, No. 7!" came the call again; and this time it was uttered in a louder and more earnest tone.
Bob, who was walking toward post No. 7 with a very deliberate step, now broke into a run, and George jumped up and followed him. A fortunate thing it was for that camp and its inmates that he did so. His thorough acquaintance with the ways of some of the inhabitants of the Plains enabled him to prevent a catastrophe which would certainly have resulted in a serious loss of life, and brought Captain Clinton"s scout to an inglorious end then and there. When he and the corporal reached post No.
7 they found the sentry on duty there lying flat on his stomach and gazing earnestly toward the horizon.
"What"s the matter, Sprague?" demanded Bob.
"I don"t know, I am sure," replied the sentry. "If the hostiles had made up their minds to pay us a visit, they wouldn"t make such a racket as that, would they? There! don"t you hear it? Something"s coming this way, I tell you, and coming on a keen jump, too."
The three held their breath and listened intently. A second later the breeze brought to their ears the sound that had attracted the attention of the sentry--a deep, rumbling sound, faint and far off, but increasing perceptibly in volume. It resembled the constant muttering of distant thunder, but they all knew it was not that. Bob"s face brightened at once, but George"s grew pale. The corporal did not know the danger that threatened them, but his companion did; he had heard something like it before. He had heard it on the night that Fletcher and his band of raiders stampeded his stock, and he had thrown himself into an old buffalo-wallow and allowed three hundred frantic cattle to gallop over his head.
"Why, it must be cavalry from Fort Tyler," said Bob at length.--"But I"ll tell you what"s a fact, boys," he added, as a fresh gust of wind brought the sound more plainly to his ears: "there must be lots of them, for I never heard such a roar of hoofs before. They are coming this way, too. I hope they"ll not run over us."
"Well, they _will_ run over us," said George, speaking quickly but calmly, "unless you take immediate steps to prevent it. They are not cavalry; they are buffaloes."
"Oh! ah!" exclaimed Bob.
"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the sentry, jumping to his feet.--"Don"t tell the boys what I called you out for, will you, corporal? To tell the truth, I was just a little bit--"
He finished the sentence by shrugging his shoulders, and Bob, who knew what he meant by that, was about to a.s.sure him that he would say nothing in the hearing of the "boys" that would enable them to "get the laugh"
on him, when George Ackerman broke in with--