"A Tale of the Wild West" (continued 2)

The clear ringing voice, the fluent language, the determination, even the veiled menace in the last words of the speaker, appealed straight to the most susceptible side of his savage hearers. One white man alone in their midst, and he did not shrink from threatening them with his hostility in the event of certain contingencies—threatening them, in their own estimation the most redoubtable warriors in the world! Assuredly he knew the way to their respect.

There were some there, however, in whom these last words aroused a feeling of rankling hostility, among them that fierce, that uncompromising abhorrer of the whole white race, Mountain Cat. This grim chieftain smiled sardonically to himself, as he inwardly promised what sort of treatment should be meted out to anyone whom his war-party should surprise, be they the friends of whom they might. Then ensued a period of silence, and every eye was turned with expectation upon Red Cloud.

But that crafty chief was not yet prepared to commit himself to a definite policy either way. Sitting motionless, he had weighed every word which had fallen from the speakers, and notably from the last. He was too far-sighted to plunge his nation into open war before the time was ripe: and his thinking out of the situation had convinced him that it was not. There were still cards to be played. So when he spoke it was briefly. Cautiously touching on the pros and cons of the speeches they had listened to, he announced that the situation must further be delayed, hinting that meanwhile such of his countrymen as felt aggressively disposed towards the common enemy had better exercise great prudence.

The council was at an end.

Note 1. This chief, over and above his skill and intrepidity as a warrior, enjoyed a high reputation among the Indians of the Northern Plains as a magician and a seer—a reputation really due to his astuteness, keen foresight, and extraordinary luck.

Chapter Eight.

The Scalp-Dance.

Uncas and Wingenund are very pretty creations, but they represent the savage as he really is about as accurately as the Founder of Christianity represents the average Christian of the current century. Which may be taken to mean that all preconceived and popular ideas of the “noble red man” can safely be relegated to the clouds.

Nobody was more aware of this than Vipan, consequently he knew exactly at what valuation to take all these overwhelmingly fraternal speeches of his red brethren. He knew—none better—that the wily chiefs intended to make use of him; he knew, moreover, that he could be of use to them; equally was he determined to receive a full equivalent for his services, and this equivalent he intended should be nothing less than the exclusive right of mining in the Black Hills.

His shrewd mind had grasped the sense of the council, and he realised that a sort of desultory warfare, for which no one was responsible, would be undertaken against the white men already there. These, isolated by twos and threes at their scattered mining camps, could not hope to make a successful stand against bands of savages raiding upon them incessantly. They would be driven out, and then he, Vipan, the friend and “brother” of the red possessors, would pick out all the best claims, work them with a will, and quickly make his fortune.

A daring and unscrupulous plan? Yes; but Nature had endowed the man with indomitable daring, and circumstances had combined to render him utterly unscrupulous. In advising the chiefs to ask the enormous sum named above, and to abide by their demand, he was perfectly well aware that the United States Government would not agree to it, but the larger the demand the more protracted would be the haggle, and the more protracted the haggle the more time would be his wherein to enrich himself.

There was one factor which he overlooked—or if it occurred to him he preferred to put it aside—the possibility that the yield of gold would not come up to anything like his expectations. But he was sanguine. Adventurers of his type invariably are. Give him a fair chance and his fortune was made.

Vipan was very popular in the Indian village. Apart from the consequence attaching to him as the friend and guest of the great chief—for he had taken up his quarters in Red Cloud’s own lodge—he mixed freely with all the warriors, chatting with them, and treating them as friends and equals. Indians in private life are arrant gossips, and the adventurer being one of those adaptable persons at home in any society was in great request, for he was essentially “good company,” and two-thirds of the night would be spent in this or that warrior’s teepe, the structure crowded to suffocation, listening to his droll, or tragical, or romantic stories of all parts of the world. Then, too, he would accompany the young bucks on their hunting trips, in no case allowing their success to excel his; or would organise shooting matches among them. There were instances even wherein he was not above cutting out one or two of them in some—what we will call—boudoir intrigue, purely for the devilment of the thing, and if only to show them that there was nothing in which he could not surpass them—whether in love, war, or the chase. All this told. Their respect and admiration for him were unbounded, yet had they by chance the good fortune to surprise him alone on the prairie, and get him into their power, it is doubtful whether any consideration of friendship would suffice to restrain some of the young bucks from taking his scalp. And of this he himself was well aware.

It was the evening of the day after the council. Vipan, returning from a solitary hunt, to the success of which an antelope strapped behind his saddle, and several brace of sand-grouse dangling from the same, bore silent testimony, found his thoughts fully occupied weighing the position of affairs, and the more he looked at it the less he liked it. There was a hitch somewhere, and on this he had no difficulty in putting his finger. A powerful faction in the village was hostile to him altogether, and this was the uncompromising war-faction—Grey Wolf, the chief of the Cheyenne band; Mountain Cat, the Ogallalla; also War Wolf, who, although not a chief, yet aspired to this dignity, and who, his youth notwithstanding, was a warrior of such prestige among his fellows as to be no mean adversary. These especially—and there were others—he knew distrusted him and his plans. They were inveterate haters of all whites indiscriminately, and while they had hitherto treated him with grim courtesy, yet the covert hostility of their manner and words was not lost upon so shrewd an observer as himself. But it was certain that although the distrust or antipathy of these men might place obstacles in his path, yet no sort of alarm did it inspire him with. He was the proper stuff out of which adventurers are made—utterly reckless.

The crisp, frosty ground crackled beneath the hoofs of his powerful black horse; the sun had gone down, and the white conical lodges of the Sioux village stood spectral in the grey twilight. There was a stillness and peace pervading the scene, which was very unusual in such close proximity to the savage encampment. Suddenly, shrilling forth loud and clear upon the evening air, rang out the terrible war-whoop.

To say that Vipan saw that his weapons were ready to hand would be superfluous, for they were always in a state of readiness. But he did not quite like the look of things, and more than one keen, anxious glance did he cast, without seeming to do so, into the belt of timber which he was skirting. Suddenly the semi-gloom seemed alive with dusky shapes flitting among the tree stems, and then all around him arose once more the war-whoop, which was taken up and echoed back from the village amid the frantic hammering of many drums.

“What’s it all about, Three Elks?” he asked tranquilly, as a tall warrior glided past him in the twilight.

“How! Scalp!” replied the savage laconically, and then opening his mouth he once more set up the hideous shout as he rushed on.

The aspect of the Sioux village was that of the nethermost shades with all the fiends holding high revel. For the open space in front of the council-lodge was alive with excited Indians, those coming in from without whooping or shrilling their war-whistles as they rushed into the thick of the surging throng. Gangs of squaws squatted around, keeping up a wild, nasal, yelling chant, to the monotonous “tom-tom” of drums. Red fires glared upon the night; while hundreds of excited warriors, plumed and hideously painted, falling into something like a circular formation, revolved around several poles, from which dangled and flapped scalps in various stages of preservation—some dry and parchment-like, others fresh and only half cured.

Round and round circled the wild dance, the hoarse howling of the warriors, varied occasionally by a deafening war-whoop; the nasal yelling of the squaws; the hammering of drums and the screech of whistles; the lurid glare of the fires upon the fierce bounding shapes and the hideously streaked bodies and plumed heads; the gleam of weapons and the disgusting trophies flapping up aloft; all went to make up a weird and appalling pandemonium which baffles description. And yet so contagious, so insidious in its effect was this barbarous saturnalia that Vipan could with difficulty restrain himself from rushing into the maddened throng, and, brandishing his weapons, whoop and howl with the wildest of them.

One thing he observed which, in any other man as well acquainted with the Indian character as himself, would have been productive of uneasiness. The dancers consisted almost entirely of young bucks, every chief or partisan of any note being conspicuous by his absence. But although he knew that his position was precarious in the extreme there in the midst of that crowd of savages, quickly working themselves into a state of uncontrollable excitement, yet there was such an irresistible fascination about the whole thing that he felt rooted to the spot.

Suddenly War Wolf, bounding up to one of the poles, detached a couple of scalps, and, waving them aloft, uttered an ear-splitting yell. The savage, bedaubed from head to foot with yellow paint spotted all over with blotches of vermilion, brandishing a tomahawk in one hand and the ghastly trophies in the other, while with blazing eyes he yelled forth the history of his bloody exploit, looked a very fiend. Then as his eyes met those of Vipan, standing on the outside of the circle, he gave vent to a devilish laugh, flourishing the scalps ironically towards the latter.

The war-whoop pealed forth again, shriller, fiercer, and many a bloodthirsty glare was turned upon Vipan from a hundred pairs of eyes, as the maddened barbarians revolved in their frenzied rout. But he never quailed. The fascination was complete. And through it he noted two things. Both scalps were fresh. Hardly a week had passed since they grew upon the heads of their owners—and one of them was plentifully covered with a thick crop of red hair.

A voice at his side, speaking in quiet tones, broke the spell.

“Golden Face should be hungry and tired. Will he not come in, and rest and eat?”

Turning, he beheld Red Cloud. The latter’s eyes wandered from his to the crowd of furious dancers with a meaning there was no mistaking. Without a word he turned and strolled away with the chief.

Chapter Nine.

Some Old Correspondence.

Mr Santorex and his daughter were seated in the former’s own especial sanctum, busily engaged in sorting and destroying old letters and papers.

The room was a pleasant one, somewhat sombre perhaps—thanks to its panelling of dark oak—but the window commanded a lovely view of the Lant valley. Round the room stood cabinet cupboards, enclosing collections of insects, birds’ eggs, plants, etc., and surmounted by a number of glass cases containing stuffed birds and animals. Fishing-rods on a rack, a few curiosities of savage weapons, and a portrait or two adorned the walls.

“Had enough of it, Chickie? Rather a sin to keep you boxed up here this lovely morning, isn’t it?”

“No, father, of course it isn’t. Besides, we are nearly at the end of these ‘haunting memories of bygone days,’ aren’t we? or we shall be by lunch-time, anyhow.”

It was indeed a lovely morning. The sweet spring air, wafting in at the window, floated with it the clear song of larks poised aloft in the blue ether, the bleating of young lambs disporting amid the buttercups on the upland pastures, and many another note of the pleasant country blending together in harmonious proportion.

“‘Haunting memories,’ eh?” replied Mr Santorex, seeming to dwell somewhat over the sheaf of yellow and timeworn papers he held in his hand. “Instructive—yes. A record of the average crop of idiocies a man sows in earlier life under the impression that he is doing the right thing. Acting under a generous impulse, I believe it is called.”

Thus with that cynical half-smile of his did Mr Santorex keep up a running comment on each separate episode chronicled among the papers and letters filed away in his despatch-box. Some he merely looked at and put aside without a word; others he descanted upon in his peculiar dry and caustic fashion which always inspired the listeners with something bordering on repulsion. Yseulte herself could not but realise that there was a something rather cold-blooded, not to say ruthless, about her tranquil and philosophical parent that would have awed—almost repelled—her but that she loved him very dearly. Her nature was a concentrative one, and unsusceptible withal. She had hardly made any friends, because she had seen no one worth entertaining real friendship for, and she was a girl who would not fall in love readily.

“I wish I hadn’t seen this just now, father,” she said, handing him back a sheaf of letters. It was a correspondence of a lively nature, and many years back, between himself and Mr Vallance. “You see, the Vallances are all coming up here this afternoon, and I don’t feel like being civil to them immediately upon it.”

“Pooh! civility means nothing, not in this location at least. Why, when we first came here we were overwhelmed with it. It didn’t last many months certainly, but it broke out afresh when rumour made me a millionaire. Why, what have you got there?”

For she was now scrutinising, somewhat intently, a photograph which had fallen out of a bundle of papers among the piles they had been sorting. It represented a youngish man, strikingly handsome, and with a strong, reckless stamp of countenance; and though the original must have been prematurely bald, the mouth was almost hidden by a long heavy moustache. A queer smile came into Mr Santorex’s face.

“Think that’s the type you could fall in love with, eh, Chickie? Well, I advise you not to, for I can’t bring you face to face with the original.”

“Why? Who is it?”

“Who is it? No less a personage than the disinherited heir, Ralph Vallance. The plot thickens, eh?”

“I didn’t know. I thought he was dead, if I ever knew there was such a person, that is. Why was he disinherited?”

“Ah, that’s something of a story. Poor Ralph! I think he was most unfairly treated, always did think so; especially when that hum—er, I mean, our spiritual guide, jumped into his shoes. No, I daresay you never heard much about it, but you are a woman now, my dear, and a deuced sensible one too, as women go, and I always hold that it is simply nonsensical and deleterious to their moral fibre to let women—sensible ones, that is—go about the world with their eyes shut. To come back to our romance. The old squire of Lant was a straight-laced, puritanical fossil, and Master Ralph was just the reverse, an extravagant, roystering young dog who chucked away ten pounds for every one that he was worth, in fact the ideal ‘Plunger’ as you girls estimate that article. Naturally, there were occasional breezes down at the Hall, nor were these effectually tempered by the crafty intervention of cousin Dudley, who ran the vicarage in those days. The old man used to get very mad, especially when Ralph began dabbling in post obits, and vowed he’d cut off that hopeful with a shilling, and leave everything to his reverend nephew. Finally, the regiment went on foreign service, and while the transport was lying at the Abraham Islands, where she had put in for coal and other supplies, that young idiot, Ralph Vallance, must needs get mixed up in a confounded domestic scandal there was no clapping an extinguisher on. The mischief of the thing was that it nearly concerned the Governor of the place, whose interest was considerable enough to get Master Ralph cashiered, in the event of his failing to send in his papers at once. Of the two evils, he chose the latter, and least; and as it could not be kept from his affectionate parent, that sturdy Pharisee duly cut him off with a shilling and departed this life forthwith. So the revered and reverend Dudley reigns in both their steads.”

“I wonder Mr Vallance has the conscience to take the property at the expense of his cousin, whatever the latter might have done.”

“You do, do you! Oh, Chickie, to think that you and I should have been sworn allies all through your long and illustrious career, and you still capable of propounding such a sentiment! Know then, O recreant, that our sacred friend, although he may be something of a kn— ah’m! has nothing of the fool about him, although the other was a consummate young ass, or he would never have gone the length of getting himself cut out of his patrimony.”

“But didn’t Mr Vallance do anything for him?”

“I have it on the best authority, that of the victim himself, that he did not. Ralph, however, was determined not to be outdone in generosity, for he came raging down here one fine day consumed with anxiety to take his reverend cousin by the scruff of the neck and give him a liberal thrashing. It was just as well, perhaps, that chance enabled me to prevent him.”

“You knew him then, father?”

“Yes, we struck up acquaintance on that occasion. Poor Ralph! He was a fine fellow, whatever his faults, and, mind you, my impression is that in the last affair it was a case of clapping the saddle on the wrong horse, that he was screening somebody else, and allowed the blame to fall on himself rather than ‘peach.’ It was magnificent, but—stark idiotic.”

“He has a very, fine face,” said Yseulte, again taking up the photograph and examining it thoughtfully. The fact that he had suffered at the hands of his slippery cousin was quite enough to enlist all her sympathies in behalf of the romantic scapegrace.

“Yes, it is. You know I am not given to indiscriminate eulogium, but without hesitation I think Ralph Vallance was about the finest specimen of manhood I ever saw.”

“What has become of him now?”

“I haven’t the faintest notion. All this happened a good many years ago, when you were almost in your cradle. Why, Ralph, if he is alive, must be getting on in years by this time. There, that’s about all the story that it’s worth your while to know, my dear, and now we’ll lock the correspondence away in my private safe. Let me have the portrait again when you have done with it.”

Yseulte, as we have said, was not a romantically inclined girl, yet, somehow, this faded portrait of the man of whom nobody had heard anything for almost as many years as she herself had lived, made a vivid impression on her. As she sat contemplating it, a voice arose from the lawn beneath, saying in the most approved Oxford drawl:

“Ah, how do you do, Mrs Santorex? I’ve brought rather a queer plant that your husband may not have in his collection. It strikes me as a curious specimen.” And then Mrs Santorex was heard asking the speaker in.

Father and daughter looked at each other with the most comical expression in the world. Then the former murmured, with a dry, noiseless laugh:

“He’s found the four-leaved shamrock. Oh, Chickie, Chickie! have some pity on poor Geoffry Plantagenet, and put him out of his misery, once and for all!”

The girl could hardly stifle her laughter. Her father, for his part, was thinking resignedly that to the bald expedients devised by enamoured youth as pretexts for numerous and wholly unnecessary visits to the parent or lawful guardian of its idol, there is no limit.

Chapter Ten.

Poor Geoffry.

The clever author of “Mine is Thine” lays it down as an axiom that nothing so completely transforms the average sensible man into a consummate idiot for the time being as an arrière pensée; and it is an axiom the soundness of which all observation goes to prove.

Geoffry Vallance, if not passing brilliant, was endowed with average sense and more than average assurance, yet when he found himself seated opposite Yseulte at the luncheon table in accordance with that young lady’s father’s impromptu invitation, his wits were somewhat befogged. Not to put too fine a point upon it, he was distressingly conscious of feeling an ass, and, worse still, of looking one. His conversation, normally lucid, and, like the brook, apt to “go on for ever,” was now a little incoherent, jerky, and limited in area; his demeanour, normally self-possessed, not to say a trifle assertive, was now constrained, spasmodic, and painfully apprehensive of saying or doing the wrong thing.

The poor fellow was over head and ears in love, which blissful state developed a new phase in his character—a self-consciousness and a diffidence which no one would have suspected to lie hidden there. Eager to show at his best in the eyes of Yseulte and her father, he, of course showed at his worst. It never occurred to him—it does not to most men under the circumstances—that heroic qualities are not essential to the adequate looking after of multifold dress baskets and hand luggage at the railway station or on board the Channel packet; that a Greek profile is hardly requisite to the unmurmuring liquidation of milliners’ bills, or the torso of a Milo to the deft fulfilment of the rôle of domestic poodle. These considerations did not occur to him, but a wretched consciousness of his own deficiencies in appearance and attainments did, and now to this was added the recollection of that ridiculous position they had seen him in only a day or two ago, and which had lain heavily on his mind ever since.

“Too great a fool ever to be a knave” had been Mr Santorex’s dictum, not meaning thereby that Geoffry was a dunce or a blockhead, the fact being that he was a hard reader and expected to take high honours at the end of the ensuing term. But in other matters, field sports and real savoir vivre, he was something of a duffer. Yet though father and daughter disliked the residue of the house of Vallance, they entertained a sort of good-humoured kindness towards Geoffry, who was at worst a muff, and good-natured, and with no harm in him. And of this feeling poor Geoffry had an inkling.

A little chaff about Muggins’ bull, and Yseulte, seeing that the topic was distressful to the hero of the adventure, good-naturedly turned it; for in spite of her previously expressed disinclination for showing any civility towards the Vallances that day, she seemed quite to have forgiven them as far as Geoffry was concerned, and was as kind to him as ever. The plant, by the way, which had served as pretext for this visit, was a fraud of the first water, but Mr Santorex, while showing its worthlessness as a specimen, had not only spared, but even flattered, the feelings of the donor, for, thorough cynic as he was at heart, in his practice he was a very tolerant man where the wretched little tricks and subterfuges of mediocrity in distress were concerned, always provided that these were not intended to serve as a cloak to knavery. When they were, his merciless predilection for, and powers of, dissection had full indulgence.

The hereditary searing-iron must have found place in his daughter’s composition, though untempered by the experience of years and maturity. For there was something of feline cruelty in the way in which, when luncheon was over, she lured poor Geoffry out into the garden, talking serenely in that beautifully modulated voice of hers, as, every action full of unconscious grace, she bent down to pluck a flower here, or raise a drooping plant there; or looking up into his face now and then with such a straight glance out of her grand eyes as to make the poor fellow fairly tremble with bewilderment, and stammer and stutter in his attempts to express himself, until he was pitiable to behold. But though ashamed of the impulse, Yseulte was unable wholly to resist it. This poor-spirited adorer of hers—was he not standing in another’s place, smugly enjoying and thriving upon what had been reft from its rightful owner by a pitiful and underhanded trick—a trick which, though legally permissible, was morally as complete an act of deliberate fraud as any for which men were sent into penal servitude? That photograph, you see, had fired a new train of thought in the girl’s adventurous mind. It was a splendid face, that which looked at her from the bit of faded cardboard. Its strong, reckless expression had seemed to haunt her ever since. She had never seen anything like it. And it was that of an injured and ill-used man; a man, too, with a vein of real heroism running through his character, and therefore unlike other men; for had not her father expressed his conviction that this man was suffering wrongfully, was a beggar for life, rather than speak the word which should inculpate someone else? She looked at her stuttering, flurried admirer there present, and turned away to hide a contemptuous curl of the lip; she thought of the defrauded and absent one—whose place he had usurped—wandering destitute over the earth, and her feelings were strangely stirred. Yet the former she knew well, his failings and his good points; the latter she had only seen in a portrait—and an old and faded portrait at that. Was she going to fall in love with an old and faded portrait? Well, it was beginning to look uncommonly as if she might.

Geoffry was on tenterhooks. They were alone, and likely so to be left for some little while longer at any rate. Should he try his fate? Anything was better than this suspense. He would.

Alas for the defeat of praiseworthy enterprise! The words would not come. He pounced upon a flower which Yseulte had been toying with and had thrown down, and while stuttering over the discarded blossom as a preliminary, a well-known and silky voice behind the pair made him start and redden like a child detected in the forbidden jam-cupboard.

“Ah, there you are, Geoffry. We thought you were being well taken care of by our good friends here, so we didn’t wait lunch for you. How are you, Yseulte? My young people will be here soon. I left them on the road, or just starting.”

It is doubtful whether Geoffry’s feelings towards his sire were affectionate just then. Yseulte, however, felt that the latter’s presence was rather welcome. Her adorer’s embarrassment portended something she preferred to avoid. So she welcomed the reverend squire quite cordially.

A gleam of colour on the lawn and the sound of voices betokened the arrival of the rest of the family, and lo—Lucy and Agnes and Cecilia and Anastasia, tennis-racquet in hand and arrayed in white flannels or scarlet flannels, or blue flannels, and crowned with hats of stupendous dimensions. They were all fair, blue-eyed girls, passable-looking if somewhat expressionless, very much alike, and numbering just a year apiece between their ages.

No great cordiality existed between these young ladies and Yseulte Santorex, as we have said; still, society has its duties, and leaving the latter to fulfil the provisions of this threadbare truism on the sunny lawn at Elmcote, wave we our magic wand to transport the reader to a very different scene.

Chapter Eleven.

“Hands Up!”

A dull, leaden-grey sky; a few stray feathery flakes floating upon the frosty air; an icebound stream; a dark serrated ridge rising to the heavens on the one hand; on the other a lofty peak towering away into the misty heights. The dull moaning noise of the wind through the forest, and the distant howling of wolves, for the wintry evening is rapidly closing in, renders the whole scene and surroundings indescribably desolate and dreary.

A hoof-stroke on the frost-bound earth. Who is this riding abroad in the weird wilderness at such an hour, with the snowstorm lowering overhead, darkness and the multifold perils of the great mountains in front! Phantom steed and phantom rider?

Whether visionary or material, however, the latter glances upward anxiously from time to time. Darkness and the impending storm! What he urgently needs is daylight and tranquillity. He reins in his powerful black steed, and gazes intently for a few moments at the towering peak half lost in the snow-cloud; then abruptly turning his horse, rides about forty yards at right angles, and again sits contemplating the lofty crag.

Somewhat of an extraordinary proceeding this. Why does not the man hasten upon his way? A matter of but a few hours and these desolate solitudes will be the theatre of such a strife and whirl of the elements that any human being, one would think, would strain every effort to reach a place of safety and comfort before the fury of the tempest is upon him. But this man seems in no sort of hurry; indeed, were it not for his occasional anxious glances heavenward, he might be deemed ignorant of the impending cataclysm.

“There is Ma-i-pah, the Red Peak,” he muses. “There is the forked pine, and I have got them in line. So far good. The next thing is to find the scathed tree. But—oh curse the snow-cloud! It may be months before—”

“Cau-aak!”

A flap-flap of wings in the brake. A raven, rising almost under the horse’s feet, wings its way to the boughs of a neighbouring oak.

So sudden is the hideous croak, echoing upon the stillness of this deathly solitude, that even the iron nerves of the horseman are not proof against a superstitious thrill. But those nerves are strung up to a pitch of suppressed excitement which is all engrossing.

“Cau-aak—Cau-aak!”

A second raven rises from the brake, and floats lazily off to join the first, resembling in its grim blackness some foul demon of the wilderness disturbed in his den of horrors. Struck with an idea, the rider turns his horse and enters the covert. Following him, we seem to have stood on this spot before.

There are the two crosses recently cut upon the huge pine-trunk, so recently that the fresh resin exuding from them is all red and sticky as though the very tree were weeping blood for the two hapless ones, victims of a deed of blood, lying beneath it. There is the mound of earth and stones. Stay! that mound has surely undergone a transformation; for it is half overthrown, and the earth is rent and burrowed, and cast up in all directions. And there, scattered around, lie the bones of the murdered men, broken and picked nearly clean by the carrion beasts and birds of the wilderness. By a ghastly coincidence, the two scalpless heads, half denuded of flesh, lay side by side grinning as if in agony, their sightless sockets, gory and half filled with earth, gaping up at the intruder. An awful, an appalling sight to come upon suddenly in the twilight gloom of that grisly forest—a sight to shake the strongest nerves, to haunt the spectator to his dying day.

But he who now looks upon it is little concerned, though even he cannot repress a slight shiver of disgust as he contemplates the horrid spectacle. He dismounts, and leading his horse away from the mournful relics, at which the animal snorts and shies in alarm, hitches him up to a sapling, and then proceeds narrowly to scrutinise the ground.

The man’s figure looks gigantic in the semi-gloom, as casting his ample buffalo robe off one shoulder, he lays his rifle on the ground and extracts something from the breast of his fringed hunting-shirt. It is nothing less than a crumpled and dirty piece of paper, oblong in shape, and containing what is evidently a plan of some sort, rudely drawn, and undecipherable without the aid of a few words equally rudely written and misspelt, clearly the work of some unlettered person.

“Forkt pine, Red Peak, Blarsted tree, the creek where half-buried rock!”

“The plot thickens,” murmurs the investigator excitedly, conning over the laconic cipher. “Having established the relationship between the forked pine and Ma-i-pah, otherwise the Red Peak, the next thing is to discover the blasted tree, which should not be difficult, unless the term represents obloquy rather than the effects of lightning. That done, the rest will be easy.”

A few steps further into the brake. Suddenly the blood surges into his face. Something white and ghostlike glints athwart the gloom. A huge pine, dead, and stripped of all its lower bark, clearly by several successive strokes of lightning. This can be no other than the “blasted tree” of the cipher. Almost trembling with excitement, once more he unfolds the dirty sheet of paper and eagerly scans it.

“Hands up, stranger! Hands up! or you’re a stiff ’un, by God!”

The harsh, threatening voice, cleaving the twilight solitude, where a moment before Vipan had imagined himself absolutely alone, was enough to unnerve a less resolute hearer. It proceeded from a tall, sinister-looking man, who standing on a ridge or bank some five-and-twenty yards off, and slightly above him, had him covered with a rifle-barrel. There was no disputing the grim mandate. The other held him at a complete disadvantage. Any hesitation to comply would mean a bullet through his heart that instant. But while holding both hands high above his head, his eyes were keenly on the look-out for the smallest chance.

“I don’t seem to have the pleasure of your acquaintance, friend,” he answered coolly. What a fool he was to have parted company with his Winchester, he thought.

“You don’t?” yelled the man, amid a volley of curses. “You soon will, though, I reckon, you pesky-white Injun. I’ll learn you to set the red devils on to scalp and knife my pardners. Now, you jest throw down that hunk of paper, slicker nor greased lightning—mind me.”

The tone was so fierce and threatening that there was no room for delay. No man living was more keenly competent to realise the situation than he who had now the worst of it.

“All right,” he answered. “I’m standing on it. You’ll see it when I move my foot.”

“Don’t move a hair else then, or you’re a stiff,” was the grim uncompromising reply.

“Now,” went on the fellow, having assured himself that the paper was there, “take six steps backward—six and no more. Quick march!”

With the deadly rifle-barrel still covering his heart, Vipan obeyed.

“Well! what’s the next thing?” he said, and at the same time he noticed that the other carried a lariat rope dangling in loose coils from his left arm.

“The next thing, eh?” jeered the fierce aggressor. “I and some of the boys have kept our eye upon you for a good while, and the next thing is we’re going to lynch you. Now—Turn round!”

The man in his eagerness had made a step forward, with the result that, the little ridge of ground whereon he was standing being slippery with the frost, he missed his footing, stumbled, staggered wildly in his efforts to recover his balance, and finally rolled headlong almost at Vipan’s feet.

Crack!

The aggressor lay writhing in his death-throes. All this time warily on the look-out for the smallest chance in his favour, Vipan, quick as thought, had whipped out the little Derringer which he carried in his breast-pocket, and sent a bullet through his adversary’s brain.

“I think I’ve turned the tables on you with effect, my hearty,” he said, contemplating the dead man with a savage sneer. Now that there was no further necessity for coolness, his blood boiled at the recent humiliation this fellow had made him undergo. “Ha, ha! Go and tell your two precious ‘pardners’ what a sorry hash you made of it on their account, you miserable idiot, and bait a few more Tartar traps down in the nethermost shades. Ha, ha!”

The first thing he did was to pick up and secure the sheet of paper. Then he searched the dead man lest anything bearing upon the cipher might be in his possession, but without avail. He was about to leave the spot, when an idea struck him.

For a moment he stood contemplating his late enemy. Bending down, an expression of strong disgust in his face, he gripped the dead man by the hair—a couple of quick slashes, and the scalp was in his hand. Then he drew his knife across the throat of the corpse.

“The Sioux—his mark,” he muttered, with grim jocosity. “Faugh! Now to stow away this beastly thing,” wiping the scalp upon its late proprietor’s clothing.

He removed the latter’s weapons—rifle, revolver, knife—and keeping a sharp look-out against any further aggression, regained his horse. In mounting, he trod on something which crackled crisply. It was a dried and shrivelled knee-boot, from which the leg-bone still protruded. And his attention being once more attracted to these ghastly relics, it almost seemed to him that the two heads had changed their position, and were glaring at him with hideous and menacing scowl. The ravens, from a neighbouring tree, renewed their lugubrious croak, as if resentful at being so long kept away from their repulsive feast. Overhead, the sky grew blacker and blacker, and the snowflakes whirled round the horseman as he emerged from the gloom of that grisly brake.

“There’s more carrion for you, you black devils,” he muttered, apostrophising the ravens. “Heavens! What had I to do with the brute’s unwashen ‘pardners’? If I’m to be held answerable for the scalp of every idiot who goes to sleep with both eyes shut, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Ha, ha! The red brother comes in mighty convenient sometimes.”

Thus musing, he had gained the crossing of a mountain torrent, at the entrance to a long, narrow cañon, whose sheer, overhanging walls were gloomy and forbidding, even by the light of day. Dismounting, he took out the scalp, and wrapping it round a stone, hurled it away into a deep, swirling pool, whose centre was free from ice. The dead man’s weapons followed suit.

“There! Pity to throw away good serviceable arms, but—‘Self-preservation, etc.’ I only treated the dog as he would have treated me, but I don’t want to establish a vendetta among his desperado mates with myself for its object. A lot the scoundrels care about such a plea as self-defence. No. Let them credit the reds with the job.”

The rising gale shrieked wildly overhead, but within the black walls of the cañon the wayfarer was entirely protected from its force. The snowflakes, large and fleecy, now fell thickly about him. And now there was exultation in place of the former anxiety in his glance as ever and anon he studied the dark and overcast sky.

“Better and better. Nothing like snow for covering up a trail, and by the time it’s open again there’ll be not much left of yon carrion. Up, Satanta! We’ll soon be home now.”

The black steed arched his splendid neck responsive to his master’s voice. And his said master, muffling himself closer in his buffalo robe, settled himself down in his saddle with every confidence in the ability of one or other, or both of them, to keep the right trail, even through the pitchy blackness which was now descending upon them. The driving snow, the shrieking of the gale, the howling of wolves in the dark forest, the grisly sight left behind, the stain of blood, were nothing to him who rode there—on—on through the night.

Chapter Twelve.

“To Quit.”

When Vipan narrated the events of the last chapter to his friend and partner, the latter looked grave.

“I know the chap you dropped,” he said, “and he’ll be no loss to this territory, nohow. He’s one o’ them desperate, hard-drinkin’, cussin’ bullies that a whole township—ay, and many a township ’ll be only too glad to see laid. But then, you see, there are his mates to reckon with; bullies, all of ’em, like himself. I’m afraid if they light upon the trail we shall have some warm work along.”

“But they won’t light on it, Bill, thanks to this friendly blizzard. Why, the snow’ll be there for the next three months, but most, if not all, of my late friend won’t. He’ll be pretty evenly distributed among the wolves and crows by that time,” was the grim reply. And the speaker kicked the logs into a blaze, and took a long pull at his whisky-horn. “Besides,” he added, “I took all precautions. If they do strike the trail, they’ll credit the whole business to the red brother.”

The scout puffed earnestly at his pipe for some little while, his features in no wise relaxing their gravity.

“See here, Vipan,” he said, at length; “that’s one side of the affair I’ve been cudgelling over. Most of the chaps located around have got a notion that you’re too thick with the reds, and they’re pretty mad. I’ve run against several of ’em, and have been hearin’ some tall talk among ’em while you were away down there. Now, the best thing we can do is to clear out our caches (Note 1) as soon as the weather lifts, and git.”

“No, no, Bill; that’s not my line at all. It’s no part of my idea to be choused out of the goose with the golden eggs just as I’ve brought that biped home, not to mention being obliged to sneak away from a lot of yapping curs, any one of whom I’m ready to meet, how, when, and where he chooses.” And Vipan’s face was a picture of contemptuous resentment.

“Whatever they are, old pard, they can shoot—they can. I don’t know what’s to stand in the way of a straight volley just any time we hap to be on the move, even if not when we poke our noses out of our own door. But if your mind’s set on stayin’ on, I’ll just dry up.”

The other’s face softened. This staunch and loyal comrade of his was prepared, as a matter of course, to stand by him and equally share the peril in which the jealous resentment of the incensed miners placed or might place himself.

“Now, look here, old chum,” he said, “I’ll just tell you what sort of a prospecting I’ve made. I always maintained the upper bend of Burntwood Creek was worth tapping. It’s my private opinion we’ve at last struck the real yellow, and if you don’t think it worth following up after what I’m going to show you, why I’ll fall in with your idea, and light out now for some where else. Look at this,” and he placed in his friend’s hand the paper which he had taken from the pocket of one of the dead miners whom he had helped to bury.

Smokestack Bill studied the plan thoughtfully for a few moments.

“It’s tarnation vague,” he said at length: “‘Forkt pine, Red Peak, blarsted tree, and the creek where half-buried rock.’ Why, there’s parks of forked pines, and as for the blasted tree it’s like enough to be some stem against which one o’ them chaps was squelched by his mule, and known only to them. And the creek’s just chock full of half-buried rocks.”

“Ha, ha, ha! Bill, my boy, I’ve located them all—all but the half-buried rock, that is. The tree’s a scathed pine all right, close to where the two fellows were scalped. I was just going to locate the creek part of the business, when that unhung skulker ‘jumped’ me. You may just bet your bottom dollar we’ll light upon something rich.”

“Well, well, I’ll see you through it,” said the other in a tone as if he began to think there might be something in it. “But seems to me we shan’t be much the better for a lot of gold even if we find it. You’re bent on a rush to Great Britain, Vipan, I can see that. Well, my boy, if we light on a find, you can take the bigger half, and go and pay off old scores with the party that’s tricked you. I’ve not much use for the stuff, I reckon.”

“Bill, old friend, you’re an extraordinary production of your day and species—a thoroughly unselfish specimen of humanity to wit. Now, do you think it in the least likely that I should agree to any such arrangement? No, no; share and share alike is the motto between partners. If we make a good thing of it we’ll take our jaunt together.”

“’M, p’raps. Cities don’t like me, and I don’t like cities. If it were otherwise I should be jingling my tens of thousands of dollars to-day, instead of owning nought but a good rifle, a good horse, and a cache full of pelts. There’s mighty mean tricks done in cities, and those done in a lawyer’s office ain’t the least mean. My old dad was in that line, and though a good chap in other ways, I saw queer things done in that office of his. I couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t stand the life, so I kicked over the stool and struck out West. I got blown up in a Missouri steamboat first thing, and came down on a chunk of the smokestack into the mud on the Nebraska side—leastways, that’s what the boys declared, and that’s why they call me Smokestack Bill, though I reckon I must have got astride of the smokestack while I was half drowning. And now my brother Seth, who took kindly to lawyering, is the richest man in Carson County.”

“But that you are thoroughly happy as a plainsman, Bill, I should say you had made a mistake,” answered Vipan, in whom the other’s story seemed to have touched a sympathetic chord. “Otherwise the man who sacrifices wealth—beggars himself for a principle—is a consummate ass, and deserves all he condemns himself to; that is, a lifetime spent in regretting it,” he added, with an unwonted bitterness. “But never mind that,” resuming his normal tone. “When the snow melts we’ll go down and prospect Burntwood Creek, and as it’s unlucky—deuced unlucky—to discount one’s successes beforehand, we’ll just dismiss the subject out of hand until then. Meanwhile, life being uncertain, we’ll cache the cipher in some snug place in case anything should happen to me.”

Three months went by. All the rigours of winter had set in upon the Black Hills. Everywhere the snow lay in an unbroken sheet, attaining in many places such prodigious depths as almost to bury the brakes and thickets of a shorter growth. The dark foliage of the great pines afforded some relief from the dazzling whiteness around, but even that was almost concealed by the huge masses of snow which had there effected lodgment. And here and there a mighty cliff of red sandstone stood forth from the surrounding snow, its face half draped with glistening icicles. But the weather was glorious, and the air as exhilarating as champagne. The peaks, shining like frosted silver, rearing their heads to the ever-cloudless blue—that marvellous combination of subtle shades of the richest azure, tempered with green, which is produced by contrast with a snow-enshrouded earth—the smooth face of each great precipice, frowning beneath its brow of dark and bristling pines; the muffled roar of the mountain torrent struggling for freedom, far down under its successively imprisoning layers of ice; the wild cry of bird or beast, even more at fault in the icebound rigours of its native waste than its artificial enemy, man—all this went to make up an engraving from the scenes of Nature in her winter magnificence, in all her savage primeval beauty, in her unsurpassable and most stately grandeur.

In the midst of it all our two friends were thoroughly comfortable. They trapped a good deal and hunted occasionally. Many a valuable fur of silver fox and marten and beaver were added to their stores, and the thick coat of the great white wolf, and the tawny one of the cougar, or mountain lion. Two grizzlies of gigantic size also bit the dust—the redoubted “Old Ephraim” standing no chance whatever before the rifles of two such dead shots—while deer, both black-tailed and red, unable to make much running in the deep snow, fell an easy prey.

The entrance to their cabin was all but buried in snow, but within it was thoroughly warm and snug. Here, before a blazing fire, they would lounge at night. Stores of every kind were plentiful—flour, coffee, and sugar, whisky, warm furs, and abundance of tobacco—and surrounded by every creature comfort they would sit and smoke their long pipes, after a day of hard and healthful exercise, while the wind shrieked without, and all the voices of the weird wilderness were abroad, and the great mountains reverberated ever and anon the thunderous boom of some mighty mass of snow which, dislodged by the wind or its own weight, roared down the slopes, perchance to plunge with a crash over a huge cliff. Now and then old Shanks would lift his shaggy head and growl as the dismal yell of a cougar would be borne upon the night, but he was well-used to the sounds of the forest, and quickly subsided again. And the ghostly hooting of owls, and the shrill barking of foxes, in the dark pine forest mingled with the ravening howl of the wolves in ceaseless chorus from the frozen and wind-swept slopes.

Sometimes an Indian, belated on his hunt, would take advantage of their hospitality, and on such occasions Vipan would delight to “draw” his savage guest, with the result that the red-skinned warrior, replete with good cheer and good humour, would lie back on his furs, puffing out huge clouds of tobacco smoke, and narrate—with that absence of reserve which characterises the savage when so engaged—many a strange tale of love and war, and among them, here and there, an instance of such fiendish and ruthless atrocity as would have caused the ordinary listener’s hair to stand on end with horror and repulsion, not swerving in the smallest degree from his smiling and good-humoured imperturbability during the narration. But Vipan was wholly proof against any such ordinary weakness. The way to know Indians, he said, was first to get them to talk, and then to let them talk. He wanted to know Indians thoroughly, and reckoned by this time he had about succeeded. So in him the red warrior found an attentive, not to say appreciative, listener.

Thus the months went by, and when the crocuses and soldanellas began to appear from beneath the melting snow, and the torrents and creeks ran red in the first spring freshets, an impatience, a feverish longing to be up and doing came upon Vipan, rendering him moody, and at times irritable. But until the rivers should have run off the melted snows nothing could be done. In vain his comrade preached philosophy.

“I judge you’ll get no good by tearing your shirt, old pard,” said the honest scout. “See here, now. Did you ever set your heart on a single thing, that when you got it you wondered how the snakes you could ever have been so hot on gettin’ it? No, you didn’t. About this placer. Maybe we shall find plenty of stuff—maybe little—maybe none at all. But whatever we find or don’t find, it’s no part of good sense to tear our shirts a’ thinkin’ of it.”

“No, it isn’t,” agreed the other. “But—‘many a slip,’ etc.”

“’M, yes. What’s the odds, though? We can always light on fresh ground. And if the reds go on the war-path soon as the grass grows, it’d do us both good to get a scouting berth with the command for a spell.”

Vipan’s forebodings were destined to be realised. A few mornings later the two occupants of the winter cabin were awakened by the trampling of many hoofs. With their minds full of the threats of those around them, both seized their rifles and stood ready for any emergency. But with no body of jealous and exasperated miners had they now to deal. Cautiously peering forth, their gaze fell upon the trappings and accoutrements of a cavalry patrol.

A furious curse escaped Vipan’s lips. His plans were ruined.

Note 1. A cache is a sort of underground storeroom or place of concealment—generally jar-shaped—wherein peltries and other goods are deposited, pending their convenient removal.

Chapter Thirteen.

Henniker City.

Henniker City was a typical prairie township in no wise bearing out the imposing idea which its name might convey.

It might have contained some five score dwellings, mainly of the log-hut order; a few frame houses, with real glazed windows figuring as the aristocratic and advanced representatives of civilised architecture among the more primitive structures. It boasted a brace of churches, one of which, only occasionally used, having been reared through the efforts of a travelling priest attached to the nearest Catholic mission, the other representing no creed in particular, though chiefly resorted to by what our friend Smokestack Bill was wont to define as “the pizenest kind of Hard-shell Baptists,” a definition we should be loth to attempt to elucidate. It boasted more stores than churches, and more drinking saloons than stores. It contained a bank, whose manager reckoned handiness at drawing, and, if necessary, using, the six-shooter at least as essential a qualification for his clerks as the footing up of figures. It boasted a sheriff, whose three predecessors had “died in their boots” within less than the same number of years. And for population, fixed and floating, it mainly comprised about as daredevil, swash-bucklering, unscrupulous a set of cut throats, as ever shot a winning adversary at euchre or “held up” (from “Hold up your hands”—the “road agent’s” warning) the Pony Express.

Such was the place to which our two friends were moved by the detachment of troops which had so suddenly and unwelcomely invaded their mountain retreat. A shout of mingled mirth, derision, and resentment went up in the township at this fresh evidence of the high-handedness of Uncle Sam, and in a trice the whole population crowded around the prisoners and their escort.

“Hello, pard!” sung out a slouching-looking fellow in a frowsy shirt and cabbage-tree hat, addressing Vipan. “Don’t be down on your luck, now. When the Colonel here’s fightin’ the Sioux, we’re the boys to slide back and pouch the stuff. Hey!”

“Say, Colonel! Going after Sittin’ Bull soon?” sung out another, to the officer in command of the cavalry. “’Cause Smokestack Bill’s the boy to raise a mob of scouts for yer, and we’re the boys to jine.”

“Not till you put a hunk of lead through yon cussed white Injun, I reckon,” growled a forbidding ruffian, on the outskirts of the crowd, with a scowl at Vipan.

“Snakes! Wasn’t he with the Injun as scalped Rufus Charlie and Pesky Bob?” said another, taking up the suggestion. And then a knot of men, gathered in conclave, eyed the object of the discussion in a manner that boded no good.

Meanwhile the crowd, surging round the new arrivals, continued to pour forth banter and queries.

“Got the ‘dust’ about yer, strangers, or did yer cache it?”

“Say, pardners, whar did yer leave yer squaws? Or did Uncle Sam confiscate ’em as national property? Ho, ho!”

“See here, boys, am I sheriff of Henniker City, or am I not?” drawled a cool, deliberate voice, as the chaff reached its height. “’Cause if I am, jest clear a way; and if I’m not, I reckon I’d like to cotch a glimpse of the galoot as says so.” A shout of mirth greeted this speech, and speedily a lane was opened through the crowd, down which advanced a tall, spare man. This worthy’s sallow visage was adorned with a grizzled beard of the “door-knocker” order, above which protruded a half-chewed cigar, a pair of whimsical grey eyes, and a determined mouth. In his hand he carried a Winchester rifle, and the inevitable six-shooter peeped forth from his hip-pocket.

“How do, Colonel? Brought me some more citizens, hey? Smokestack Bill, as I’m a miserable sinner! That your pard, Bill? All right, come this way. Citizens of Henniker, the High Court is about to sit.”

Without more ado, the two “prisoners” and their custodian, resuming the thread of their previous conversation, followed the whimsical sheriff into the Courthouse, as many as could crowding in until the room was full, laughing, chatting, bantering each other; kicking up an indescribable uproar. At last, raising his voice above the shindy, the whimsical sheriff succeeded in obtaining something like silence.

“Citizens!” he said, “we must proceed with the business which has brought us together. The prisoners at the bar having been handed over to me to be dealt with according to law—that is, kept in custody until able to take their trial for ’truding on Indian lands—cannot be so kept because the gaol with which this city is supplied would not hold a clerk of a dry goods store, let alone a couple of Indian fighters. That being so, the prisoners may consider themselves under bail to the tune of fifty dollars apiece, to appear when wanted; snakes, and that’ll be never,” he parenthesised, in an undertone. “Citizens, the court is adjourned—and now disperse—git—vamoose the ranch. Those who are not too drunk will go home peaceably, those who are, will adjourn to Murphy’s saloon and get drunker. Prisoners at the bar, you will accompany me right along and take supper. I have spoken.”

If any confiding reader imagines that when night settled down upon Henniker City the wearied denizens of that historic township retired to their welcome couches to recruit their toil-worn limbs in sweet and well-earned repose—why we are sorry to dispel the illusion. But in the interests of stern truth we must place it upon record that the hours of darkness usually witnessed the liveliest of scenes, for it was only then that the township began to live. The saloons drove literally a roaring trade, for the shindy that went on in them as the night wore on, and their habitués waxed livelier, was something indescribable. Miners in their rough shirts and cabbage-tree hats, here and there a leather-clad trapper, cowboys and ranchmen in beaded frocks and Indian leggings, and more or less “on the burst,” but all talking at a great rate; all tossing for, or shouting for, or consuming drinks, and, we regret to say, a large proportion somewhat the worse for the latter. Now and then a chorus of ear-splitting whoops, a clatter of hoofs down the street, to an accompaniment of pistol-shots, while the red flashes and whistling of balls in the darkness, warning those who might be under cover not to venture forth just yet, told that a group of cowboys were engaged on the time-honoured and highly popular pastime known among their craft as “painting the town red,” i.e., galloping through the streets whooping and discharging their six-shooters at everything or nothing. But this was far too ordinary an occurrence to attract any attention. It all meant nothing. Here and there, however, it did mean something. Partitioned off from the bar-room was the space devoted to card-playing, and it might be that from here the ominous sound of cards vehemently banged down with a savage curse upon the table warned those who heard it to stand clear. In a twinkling the flash and crack of pistol-shots—then a lull, and amid inquiries from many voices, eager, hurried, perhaps in a lowered tone, a dead man is raised and deposited on a table or carried forth to his home if he have one.

“Who is it?”

“How did it happen?”

“Was it a fair draw?”

“Oh yes, both blazed together!” “All right—fair and square enough!” and the other players resume their gamble, and the talkers their narratives, and more drinks are ordered, and nothing further is thought of the affair.

At that time Henniker City was blessed—or the reverse—with a considerable influx on its normal population. Grouped around the outskirts of the town lay the tents of many of the dispossessed miners—who, like our two friends, had been removed from the Indian lands. All these men were more or less discontented; and suffering in addition from enforced idleness, it follows that monotony and drink rendered them ripe for any mischief which might suggest itself. Moreover, among their ranks was a sprinkling of the very scum of the frontier—horse thieves, “road agents” or highwaymen, professional assassins, and bullies of repute whose presence here was due to the fact that they had rendered every other State too hot to hold them, and where, did they venture to return, they would be lynched without fail, if not shot on sight.

Into one of these tents we must invite the reader to peep with us.

Look at those two knights of the hang-dog countenance. He who is now speaking would stand not a chance before any intelligent jury, if only on account of his aspect alone. By the dim oil-lamp in the tent we can make out two other forms lying around, but the cloud of tobacco smoke, added to the dimness aforesaid, precludes a more familiar study of their not less forbidding features.

“See now, Dan,” hang-dog number one was saying. “May I be chopped in splinters by the reds if I allow this darned white Injun to get away out o’ this without a carcase full o’ lead. So we’d better go up and finish the job to-night.”

“Can’t be done, I reckon. What about his pard—eh? To say nothin’ about Nat Hardroper, who seems to have kinder taken him up!”

“Darn his pard, and darn Nat Hardroper!” replied the other, furiously. “Only a set of doggoned skunks ’ud have elected Nat Hardroper sheriff, and only a set of white-livered coons ’ud have kep’ him in the berth. I guess I don’t fear him.”

“See here, Rube,” suggested the other, “why not tumble to my plan? He’ll be going to Red Cloud’s village in a day or two—see if he don’t. Then we can ambush him at Bald Eagle Forks and plant him full of lead.”

“Don’t want that. Want to string him up. Shooting’s too good. Didn’t he set the red devils on to sculp my pardners? Didn’t he wipe out my brother? leastways, he must have, for I reckon Chinee-Knifer Abe ain’t the boy to be taken playin’ possum. Ef it hadn’t bin for a squad of his reds, we’d have strung him up down in Burntwood Creek the day before the snow.”

“Guess our scalps sat loose that day. Snakes! but they ran us hard,” answered the fellow addressed as Dan. “This Vipan ’d have been buzzard-meat then but for that.”

“Reckon he shall be to-night,” furiously retorted the first speaker. “I’ve said it—and Bitter Rube ain’t the boy to go back on his word. That blanked white Injun, helpin’ to dance around my pardners’ sculps!”

And a volley of curses drowned the speaker’s utterance.

Chapter Fourteen.

In a Tight Place.

“Stranger—I guess I want this floor!”

The place, an inner room partitioned off from Murphy’s saloon; the time, late evening; the speaker a tall, half-drunken ruffian in frowsy miner’s dress; the spoken to, Vipan—who, lounging against a table was chatting with the saloon-keeper; the tone, insolent and threatening to the last degree; the attitude, that of a man sure of his advantage.

“Stranger—I guess I want this floor!”

“And I guess you’ve got it,” came the quick reply, but not more quickly than the change of attitude which it described. For, in a twinkling, a straight “right and left” from the shoulder had sent the aggressor to earth like a felled ox, while his pistol-bullet buried itself in the wall half a yard above Vipan’s head.

Then ensued a stupendous hubbub. Pistols cracked, as the stricken man’s mates in the outer room hurled themselves at the partition door intent on taking up their comrade’s quarrel. But the door, a solid slab one, met them in full career, pinning the foremost of their number half in, half out.

“Now, Dan Harper, back’s the word!” said the quiet, but stern voice of Smokestack Bill, to whose promptitude was due this first check to the enemy.

“You move a little inch forward and you’re a stiff, you bet.”

“Leggo the darn door, then—F-fixed t-tight,” gasped the pinned one, who, with the muzzle of the scout’s six-shooter within an inch of his nose, would willingly have obeyed, but could not. Smokestack Bill, however, relaxing his pressure, the crushed one was able to draw back, considerably bruised, into the outer room, and the door was jammed to, but not before a couple of bullets fired into the room had narrowly grazed Vipan’s shoulder.

“Now then, boys,” called out the scout. “Anyone feel like trying an entrance? Better not, believe me.”

All this had befallen within infinitely fewer minutes than it takes to chronicle. The felled bully lay prone where he had first dropped, stunned, insensible, and motionless—and disarmed, for the first act of his adversary was to put it out of his power to get the advantage of them. The room, half filled with stifling smoke from the pistol-shots; the barricaded door, against which the besieged ones had run up a couple of casks; the two determined men, fully prepared to defend themselves at the expense of any number of their adversaries’ lives; the fierce, threatening summons to yield entrance from the infuriated gang without; all went to make up a strange and startling metamorphosis on the hitherto quiet evening, which the two men had reckoned upon when they retired into the private room of the saloon-keeper to be clear of any disturbance.

“Air you agoin’ to open?” sung out a harsh voice, at the close of a muttered consultation. “We know you, Smokestack Bill, and we’ve nothin’ again you. But that pizen skunk, the white Injun, we’re bound to have him if we burn down the old log to do it. So you come out of it, Bill, right along, while you can.”

“You be advised, Dan Harper,” cried the scout in reply. “You’re a dead man this very night if you don’t git—mind me.”

“So are a dozen of you, by God!” sung out Vipan. He knew the whole business was a deliberate plan to take his life. The ruffian whom he had felled was to pick a quarrel and shoot him on sight, while his scoundrelly mates stood ready to make sure of him if the first part of the scheme miscarried. A roar went up from the crowd. “Let’s get at him! What’ll we do with him, boys?”

“Tar and feather him!”

“Burn him at the stake!” “Scalp him!” “String him up!” were some of the yells that burst from the maddened throng as it surged round the building, narrowly scanning every door and window for a chance of forcing an entrance. But the defenders of the inner room knew better than to be caught that way.

“One minute before you begin any tricks,” cried the scout, and his voice had the dangerous ring about it of that of an ordinarily cool and quiet man roused at last. “One minute, and just listen to me. We’ve molested nobody, and don’t want to molest nobody. Bitter Rube in here picked a quarrel with my pardner and got knocked down. If he’d done it with any of you boys he’d have been shot dead. He’ll be shot before anyone gets in here—”

“Darn Bitter Rube! Serve the bunglin’ fool right! What do we care about Bitter Rube? It’s the pizen white Injun we’re going to lynch—and lynch him we will—by God!”

“Try it!” rejoined the scout. “There’ll be a few of you dead in your boots before mornin’, I reckon. And anyone who thinks Smokestack Bill the boy to go back on a pardner is makin’ an almighty big error in the undertaking. So now, stand clear for squalls.”

A roar and a yell was the only reply. A deafening crash, as some of the rioters in the outer saloon vented their rage in smashing all the glass they could lay hands on; then a shock, as the end of a beam, wielded as a battering ram, came full against the door. A couple of flashes and reports, mingling like a single one. The beam fell to the earth at the same time as three of its bearers, whom the fire of the besieged, discharged through a chink at such close quarters, had literally raked in line. The remainder promptly got out of the way.

“Put in the faggot. Don’t give any of the skunks a further show,” yelled the frantic mob, exasperated by this reverse. And a rush was made for the further end of the building.

Chapter Fifteen.

Judge Lynch takes a Back Seat.

It is not wonderful, all things considered, that the citizens of Henniker, together with its fortuitous and floating population, should have been moved to such lengths as to resolve upon lynching Vipan. Indeed, it would have been surprising had matters turned out otherwise. Here was a man they very much more than suspected of being in league with their barbarous and dreaded foes, at a time when the frontier was almost in a state of war. A man of known daring and unscrupulousness, and whom they knew to have been present—the only white man—at an important council, involving issues of peace or war; to have taken part in its deliberations, going even so far as to advise the chiefs, and that, if report were to be believed, by no means in the direction of peaceful results. Several of their friends and neighbours had been murdered and scalped, those who had escaped a similar fate being obliged to carry on their mining or other operations rifle in hand, even if not forced to quit altogether. Meanwhile, this man, it was well known, could move about the country perfectly unmolested, visiting the Indian encampments at will—indeed, in one instance he was known to have witnessed a scalp-dance, wherein the prime attraction of the entertainment lay in the exhibition of the scalps recently torn from the heads of two of their murdered comrades.

And then he was an alien, which was the crowning point of the whole offence; and the good citizens of Henniker were virtuously stirred that a foreigner—an Englishman—should, while dwelling on their free and sacred soil, presume to be on friendly terms with its dispossessed and original owners; even as here and there in Great Britain may still be found a misguided and hard-headed Tory moved to honest indignation at the prospect of Fenians and Invincibles and National Leaguers stirred up to dynamite and murder by Irish-American agents and American dollars.

But how came it that so much should be known of Vipan’s movements, seeing that he himself was almost the only white man who could safely penetrate the semi-hostile country or venture among the roving bands who even then were raiding and murdering at their own sweet will? Well, human nature is rather alike all the world over. Gossip on that wild Western frontier was circulated through very much the same channels as, say, at Lant with Lant-Hanger in the county of Brackenshire—through the agency of the squaws to wit. Some of the miners owned red spouses, others, again, were not above open admiration for the savage beauties—and, presto!—sooner or later the gossip of the Indian villages leaked out.

Peering through the chinks, the besieged could descry a sea of threatening faces, savagely hideous in the red torchlight. Prominent among these was a man who held a noosed cord. Hither and thither he moved, stirring up the crowd, his sinister features distorted with malicious rage. Hatred, envy, disappointed greed, all were depicted there, as with blood-curdling threats the mob clamoured for the object of its resentment.

Suddenly a clatter of approaching hoofs became audible alike to besiegers and besieged. The crowd paused aghast, the first thought being that of an Indian attack. Then a score of horsemen darted into the light, and a ringing voice was heard inquiring—

“Say, boys, what in thunder’s all this muss?”

“That’s the sheriff,” said Smokestack Bill, coolly, lowering his revolver. “We’re out of this fix, anyhow.”

A roar was the answer.

“The white Injun! The pizen white Injun! We’re going to lynch him.”

“I guess not,” was the reply. “Not while Nat Hardroper’s sheriff of Henniker City. When it comes to reckoning with that invaluable officer, Judge Lynch’ll have to take a back seat. Eh, boys?” turning to his well-armed followers, a score of cowboys and well-disposed citizens, whom he had prudently collected in haste on receiving the first intimation of a riot.

“That’s so, sheriff,” was the prompt reply.

“Say, Dan Harper,” called out the sheriff, “Judge Lynch’s sittin’ in the State you’ve just left. Why not go and talk to him there?”

The face of the fellow named blanched at this allusion.

Meanwhile the crowd, composed mainly as it was of ruffians and bullies, began to show a disposition to slink off, in the presence of these well-armed and determined representatives of law and order.

“Never mind, boys,” shouted someone. “We’ll plant him full of lead yet. Now let’s git.”

“How do, sheriff?” said the scout, calmly stepping forth with extended hand. “Guess you’ve raised the siege on us right slick in the nick of time.”

“How do, Bill? How do, colonel?” to Vipan. “Now you come right along to my log and we’ll talk.”

“Hold hard, friends,” objected Vipan. “We’ve got to drink first. Murphy, bring out the juice.”

“Whurroo, sheriff darlint,” chuckled the saloon-keeper. “Whurroo! but it’s purty shootin’ there’s bin around here afure you came. Be jabers! and thur’ll be a big inquist to-morrow, and the power of the ‘crame’ ’ll be on hand for the jewry, I reckon. Bedad! and whur’s that shuck-faced omadhaun?” he added, gazing at the corner. For Bitter Rube, having recovered his confused senses, had profited by the confusion to steal away unperceived.

“Now, boys, mind me,” said Nat Hardroper to Vipan and the scout, after a substantial supper a few hours later. “This same Henniker City’s a powerful survigerous place. I’ve got you out of one fix, but I can’t go on getting you out of fixes. It’s too big a contract on one man’s hands, I want you to see. Now, a power of those chirruping roarers’ll be on your trail first thing you show your noses out of this shebang. If I warn’t sheriff this’d be my advice—to take your hosses this very night and git. But it ain’t my advice, because, you see, I am sheriff, and you’re under my charge. No, no; it ain’t my advice.”

Save for the faintest possible wink, he looked them straight in the face, as solemn as an owl. Vipan burst into a roar of laughter.

“Right you are, Nat. It’s not your advice—we’ll remember that.”

“Well, good-night, boys; good-night.”

They shook hands heartily. But our two friends did not go to bed; they went to the stable. By daybreak they had put a considerable number of miles between Henniker City and themselves.

Chapter Sixteen.

A Conjugal Debate and its Sequel.

With all his failings, the Rev. Dudley Vallance had one redeeming point—he was excessively fond of his children; but it is probable that he loved his only son more than all the rest put together. To him he could refuse nothing. Indeed, so loth was he to part with him even for a time that he could not bring himself to allow Geoffry to enter any profession. He must remain at home. There was no need for him to earn his living, since he would one day succeed to the Lant property, and meanwhile he could be learning to look after it.

Fortunately, Geoffry was something of a bookworm, and studious of temperament, or the bringing-up he had received, and the aimless life which it entailed upon him, would have sent the boy straight to the dogs. As it was, he was cut out by Nature for a college don rather than for a country squire, and during his University career he was known essentially as a reading man.

It may be imagined, then, that when he returned home at the end of the summer term, after taking a brilliant double first, the pride and delight of his reverend parent knew no bounds, and by a series of festivities, unparalleled since the distinguished youth’s coming of age, was Lant-Hanger at large, and particularly its “County Society,” bidden to share the parental joy.

But, alas! that the latter should be so short-lived. The object of all this fun and frolic seemed in no way to relish it at all. Instead of returning home cheerful, overflowing with spirits, thoroughly enjoying life with the zest of the average young Englishman who has just scored a signal success, and sees a congenial and rose-bestrewn future before him, poor Geoffry seemed to have parted with all capacity for enjoyment. He was pale and listless, absent, bored, and—shall we own it?—at times excessively irritable, not to say peevish. His father was deeply concerned, and his mother, who read off the symptoms as briefly as the village doctor would diagnose a case of incipient scarlet fever, felt more of anger than concern.

“I really don’t know what to do about the boy,” said the Rev. Dudley, dejectedly, coming into his wife’s morning-room the day after the last of their house party had dispersed. “It’s dreadful to see the poor fellow in such low spirits. He must have been working too hard, whatever he may say to the contrary. It’s hard to part with him so soon, the dear fellow, but we positively must send him abroad to travel for the summer. Nothing like travel.”

“Try him, and see if he’ll go,” was the short reply.

“We must insist upon it. We must get medical advice—a doctor’s opinion to back us up. The boy will be ill—ill, mark me. He eats nothing. He doesn’t sleep, for I hear him moving in his rooms far into the small hours. He looks pale and pulled down, and doesn’t even care for his books. Then, when all the people were here, he would steal away from everybody, and wander about and mope by himself all day. We had some nice people, too; and pleasant, good-looking girls. Come, hadn’t we?”

“Oh, yes; a most complete party. Only one ingredient left out.”

“And that?”

“Yseulte Santorex.” And Mrs Vallance shut down the envelope she was closing with a vicious bang.

“God bless my soul! you don’t say so? Surely it hasn’t gone so far as that?”

“It has gone just as far as that abominable girl could carry it,” was the uncompromising reply. “Surely you are not simple enough to imagine that the daughter of that hybrid Spanish atheist would neglect such an opportunity? The girl has simply made a fool of him.”

“You dislike her to that extent?” said Mr Vallance, vacantly, his mind full of the woeful plight into which his son was plunged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think her not a bad sort of girl considering the fallow in which her mind has been allowed to lie. And Geoffry might do worse.”

“Oh, yes. He might, but not much. A forward, bold, masculine minx, tramping the countryside, fishing and shooting. And she is utterly devoid of respect for her elders, and as for principle or religion—faugh! I beg leave to think, Dudley, that he hardly could do worse.”

This spitefulness on the lady’s part was not wholly devoid of excuse. For her elders, as represented by Mrs Dudley Vallance, Yseulte certainly had scant respect. And then, if she became their son’s wife, the day might come when Mrs Vallance would have to abdicate Lant Hall in her favour, whereas no such calamity could in the nature of things ever befall its reverend squire. Of course Geoffry must marry somebody or other one day; but Geoffry’s mother could contemplate such a contingency with far more equanimity than that of being dispossessed by a girl whom she detested, and whom she knew despised her.

“Well, well! we won’t say that; we won’t say quite that,” rejoined Mr Vallance. “Perhaps you are a little hard on poor Yseulte. She is young, remember, and at a thoughtless age. But she is thoroughbred in the matter of birth, and will be well off. We must not expect everything at once. And the girl is very pretty, with all her faults. I am not surprised at Geoffry’s infatuation.”

“No more am I,” was the short reply.

“Oh, but you must look at a question of this kind apart from prejudice. And then I can’t bear to see poor Geoffry simply eating his heart out like this. I am becoming seriously alarmed about him; and I tell you what it is, my dear, as he really has staked his happiness on this girl, he shall have her. I’ll see Santorex about it this very day.”

“Oh, well, if you have quite made up your mind, the sooner you do so the better,” answered his spouse, resignedly.

“Very well, then, that’s settled,” said the Rev. Dudley, with a sigh of relief.

There was just one thing they forgot, this worthy couple, namely, that before settling a matter of the kind so comfortably and out of hand, it might be necessary to obtain the concurrence of the party most concerned, to wit Yseulte Santorex herself. But that Yseulte might unhesitatingly decline the honour of the projected alliance never occurred to them for one moment, and any suggestion of the bare idea of such a contingency would have thrown them into a state of wild amazement.

During the above debate, the subject thereof was doing exactly as his father had said; wandering about by himself—and moping. Strolling down the cool mossy lane, shaded between its high nut-hedges, he found himself upon the river-bank. It was time to go home. They would be wondering what had become of him; perhaps sending everywhere in search of him. In his then morbid frame of mind, Geoffry shrank from being made a fuss over. Mechanically he turned to retrace his steps.

“Great events from little causes spring.” The little cause in this instance was a little flock of sheep, which a farmer’s lad, aided by his faithful collie, was driving into the lane from an adjacent field. The animals were kicking up a good deal of dust; Geoffry was no fonder of walking in a cloud of dust than most people. The lane was narrow, and sheep are essentially idiotic creatures; were he to try and pass these, they would, instead of making room for him, inevitably scamper on ahead as fast as their legs could carry them, thereby kicking up about ten times more dust. That decided him. He would extend his walk.

Over a rail, an unexpected flounder into a dry ditch, and he stood up to his neck in brambles and nettles. But the sting of the latter was hardly felt; for his eyes fell upon an object which set his knees trembling and his heart going like a hammer. A moment earlier and he would have missed the phenomenon which evoked this agitation, but for the sheep. What was it? Only a broad-brimmed straw hat, and beneath it a great knot of dark brown hair rippling into gold.

It needed not this, nor the supple figure in its cool light dress which became visible, as with an effort poor Geoffry staggered up from his thorny hiding-place, to reveal the identity of this new feature of the situation. She was standing with her back towards him, about fifty yards away, taking a fishing-rod to pieces, and she was alone.

At the tearing and rustling noise caused by his efforts to free himself from the clinging brambles, she turned quickly, the half-startled look upon her features giving way to a wholly amused one as she took in the situation. Geoffry, noting it, felt savage, reckless, mad with himself and all the world. Could he never appear before her but in a ridiculous light—the central figure of some absurd situation?

“Why, Mr Vallance, you seem to have fallen among thorns,” she cried, adding, with a merry laugh, “and the thorns have sprung up and choked you. But never mind. Sit down and rest here in the shade, while I do up my tackle, and then we can walk home together as far as our ways lie.”

The tone was kind and sympathetic, and Geoffry felt soothed. Red and perspiring, he cast himself down with a grateful sigh upon a mossy bank, in the shadow of the great oak beneath which she was standing.

“That’ll be some consolation,” he replied ruefully. “It was nothing, though—the tumble, I mean. I must have caught my foot in something, and came a cropper. But, it was well worth while.”

Yseulte smiled, trying hard not to render the smile a mischievous one.

“Well, you’re the best judge of that. And now, have all your visitors left?”

“Yes, and a good job too,” was the fervent reply.

“How ungrateful! I’m sure they did their best to make themselves agreeable, especially to you. Confess; you are dreadfully bored now that they are gone.”

“Not in the very least. You are here—and—and—” He broke off, helpless and stuttering.

“But I shall not be much longer. I am going away too.”

He sprung to his feet as if he had been stung.

“What? You are going away? When?”

“Very soon. In a week or ten days; perhaps not quite so soon.” Already she wished she had not told him. It would have been better, for every reason, that he should have heard the news at second hand.

“In a week or ten days!” he echoed. “But not for long—Yseulte, say it will not be for long!”

If at times the girl had been guilty of a touch of feminine spitefulness in the reflection that she had completely subjugated—and through no artful intent—the hope of this family whom, not without reason, she detested, assuredly she felt sorry and ashamed of it now, as she noted the pitiable effect which her announcement produced upon her admirer. His face was as pale as death.

“But what if it will be for long?” she answered, gently. “For months, perhaps—or a year.”

“Then I’ll go and hang myself.”

Poor Geoffry! For weeks—for months—he had been anticipating such a moment as this; had revolved every kind of set speech; every form of the most moving entreaty; every promise to devote his life to her happiness and welfare; all in the most impassioned language that the earnestness of his love could suggest: and had shivered with apprehension lest his nervousness and misgiving should intervene to mar the effect and leave him stuttering and looking an ass; yet now that the critical moment had come, all his carefully-planned oratory had resolved itself into the brusque, passionate statement—“Then I’ll go and hang myself.” Yet never was declaration more exhaustive.

She understood his meaning; she did not wish him to say more; and her tone was very gentle, very pitiful, as she replied:

“Be a man.”

The utterly wretched expression upon his face, showed that he had understood her. Never was proposal more terse; never refusal more prompt and decisive. It was impossible for each to misunderstand the other.

“Have I no chance, Yseulte?” he said, the eager trepidation of his former tone having given way to one of dull hopelessness, which moved her infinitely.

“No,” she answered, gently. “It would be cruel to leave you in any doubt. There are many reasons against it—insuperable reasons.”

“Oh, what are they? Tell me what they are,” he cried, relapsing into his former tone. “They can be removed—there is nothing I will not do, or give up, for you. What are they? You don’t like my people, I know; but you have always been kind and friendly with me. Surely my relations need not stand in the way?”

“You must not ask me for reasons, Geoffry. Let us talk over this rationally. If I cared for you as you wish, nothing should stand in the way. But as I do not, even you would not thank me for coming between yourself and those who do. Only think what a firebrand I should be.”

“No, you would not. I tell you there is nothing I would not do for you—or would not give up for you. Only just try me.”

What complication-loving fiend should have brought to her recollection then the vision of that pictured face which had made such an impression upon her—the face of the disinherited heir of Lant Hall? The leaven of her father’s cynical philosophy almost moved her to experiment on this corpus vili ready to her hand, and ascertain whether his protestations would go the length of espousing her ideas of right and wrong as regarded that particular subject. But she restrained herself in time.

Very dejectedly and in silence he walked beside her as far as their ways lay together. He would fain have reopened his pleadings, but with a hurried farewell she left him before he could detain her.

“Well, Chickie? Been having it out with Geoffry Plantagenet?” said her father, who, from his library window, had witnessed their parting at the divergence of the roads.

“Yes; that’s just what I have been doing. And—I think, dear, we oughtn’t to laugh at poor Geoffry quite so much.”

“Oh, that’s how the land lies, is it?” answered Mr Santorex, struck by the unwonted gravity which she had brought to bear upon the subject. “All right, we won’t. Not that we shall have much longer to laugh at anyone,” he added somewhat ruefully.

Chapter Seventeen.

War Wolf is “Wanted.”

“Say, Vipan. Guess we’d better draw off out o’ this for a bit. There’s no call for us to help do police work just now, and we can’t stand looking on. There’ll be hair-lifting here in a minute, I reckon.”

Thus Smokestack Bill to his friend and boon companion as the two lounged on the turf, a hundred yards or so from the trading store attached to the Blue Pipestone Agency. The place was alive with Indians, gathered there for the purpose of drawing the rations with which a paternal Government supplied them, contingent on their good behaviour and in consideration of their peaceably abiding on their reservation and eschewing the fiery delights of the war-path. So Uncle Sam’s red nephews occupied the ground in crowds, indulging in much jollification on the strength of newly-acquired beef and flour and other commodities which should refresh and comfort both the inner and the outer man, and while the squaws were busily packing these upon their much-enduring ponies, their lords were lounging about, chatting, smoking, merry-making, and having a good time generally. Meanwhile, the trading post had been doing a brisk business.

“Police work, eh?” returned Vipan, with a glance at the detachment of U.S. Cavalry, which, encamped in the neighbourhood of the store, showed no sign that any serious undertaking was in contemplation. “Who are they after nobbling?”

“See here, old pard—if I didn’t know you well enough to stake my life you’d never go back on a pardner, you and I wouldn’t be here together to-day. If they can’t claw hold of their man, it mustn’t be through any meddlin’ of ours.”

“Who is it they want?”

“War Wolf.”

“The devil they do! They gave out a different story.”

“That’s so. Joe Ballin, who’s with them, ’s an old pard of mine. We’ve done many a scout together in ’67 and ’68. Well, he told me all about it. This command is out after no less a chap than War Wolf. You see the pizen young skunk has been braggin’ all over the section how he scalped Rufus Charley and Pesky Bob, them two fellers we buried down by Burntwood Creek. It’s got to the General’s ears, and now they’ve come to take him over to Fort Price. They’ve given out a lie that they’re bound down the river on the trail of a Minneconjou who ran off a lot of Government beef last month, but that’s just a red herring. As sure as War Wolf comes along, they’ll grab him—mind me.”

Vipan meditatively blew out circles of smoke into the air, without replying. This was a most untoward contretemps. He remembered the scalp-dance which he had witnessed; the two scalps—including the red-haired one—which War Wolf had so boastfully brandished during that barbarian orgie, and it flashed across him vividly now that, were the Indian arrested for the deed, the bulk of his clansmen and the Sioux at large would look upon himself as having betrayed their compatriot into the enemy’s hand, or would for their own purposes affect to. Here were the troops, and he, Vipan, on good terms and hob-nobbing with their leaders. The capture—if it took place—would be to himself most disastrous. It was characteristic of the man that he lost sight of the grave peril in which he himself would be placed, alone here in the midst of hundreds of exasperated savages. His plans of future enrichment would be utterly broken up, and it was of this he was thinking. Unscrupulous, self-seeking as he was, Vipan had his own code of honour, and he would no more have dreamed of betraying his friend’s confidence than of cutting his friend’s throat. But had the information reached him through any other channel, it is more than doubtful whether Uncle Sam’s cavalry would have effected their capture that day.

“You’re right, Bill,” he said, at length. “There’ll be an almighty rumpus if that game’s tried on. Why, there are enough reds here to chaw up this command twice over, and they’ll do it, too, I’ll bet a hat. Why the devil did they send out so few men?”

“Well, what d’you say? Hadn’t we better git?”

“Not this child. You see, if we make tracks, and War Wolf gets grabbed, the reds’ll certainly think I gave him away. He’s an infernal young skunk, and I’d gladly see him hung; still, it nohow suits my book that he should be just now. So I’ll see it out, but if you’d rather be outside it, don’t stay. We can rendezvous anywhere you like afterwards.”