Under Fire

by Charles King

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  It was barely sunrise when Chrome's battalion struck the hostile campthis hot June day, and two hours later the situation was comfortlessenough--for the strikers. Hampered with their wounded and having lost adozen horses killed, the two troops of the Eleventh on whom had devolvedthe harsher share of the work had been compelled to halt in the timberand stand off the now exultant Indians. With a hundred mounted warriorsat his back and as many more afoot in the village, Red Dog promptly tookthe offensive, sent his yelling braves in big circle all around theclump of timber in which Truman and Cranston had posted their men, cutoff communication with Chrome's party, now "doing herd guard duty half adozen miles up the Ska," as some of Cranston's men derisively said, andthen, little by little, established the dismounted braves in everyhollow, behind every little ridge or mound, and soon had a completecircle of fire all about the wearied little force. As senior officer,Captain Truman was now in command of the detachment, but between himand Cranston there was a bond of cordial esteem and comradeship, and thecommand was purely a matter of form. Each had had long years ofexperience in frontier warfare, each knew just what had to be done, andneither regarded the situation as either desperate or particularlydangerous. It would have been an easy matter to cut their way outanywhere but for the helpless wounded, who would be butchered to a manif left behind. Here in the timber, with water in abundance, andcomparative shelter for the disabled men and for the horses under thebanks, they could remain until relief should reach them. This withChrome's two troops not very far away and their own old colonel, withhalf the regiment, somewhere over in the hills to the southwest, theyfelt very well assured ought to be only a matter of a few hours. "It wasbig luck," said Truman, "that our little pack-train got in when it did.Ten minutes later and they'd have been cut off and massacred."

  But the further advantage lay with the Indians that they just knewexactly where Chrome was and Tintop, too, and knew that neither one wasmaking the first effort to relieve his surrounded comrades, Tintopbecause he was twenty miles away and had no knowledge of what was goingon at the mouth of the Spirit River, and Chrome because he was utterlyrattled by the mounted warriors now beginning to appear in increasingnumbers around him. He had sustained no loss to speak of. None of hismen had been hit. Only two horses had been struck by their long-rangefire. He was, to use his own words, "Really provoked at Truman andCranston. They might know he needed them in holding such a big herd ofponies." Poor Sanders was in a miserable state of anxiety. He begged themajor to let him take ten men and go back to find them, or even to lethim go back alone. He pointed out that they must have had a fiercefight. He had found Sergeant Grant dead, and heard the fierce battlingin the villages where both troops were engaged, and then he had gallopedthrough the dust-cloud to Chrome, narrowly escaping death as he did so,and told him the situation, confidently expecting that Chrome would turnthe ponies loose, rally his men and dash back to the village; but Chromedid nothing of the kind. "They should have come to me," he said. "We'rethe ones in need," then sent him with an order to Canker, who, out onthe right flank, was making the morning blue with blasphemy, and Sanderspoured his tale into Canker's ears, and begged him to come and makeChrome understand the situation, and Canker replied that nothing shortof a pile-driver could hammer an idea into a skull as thick as Chrome's,and nothing short of a blast get anything out of it. The man was a bornidiot and had no more idea how to command cavalry in the field than he,Canker, had of teaching Sunday-school. Oddly enough, many of Canker'scontemporaries said the same of him, but one never knows and rarelysuspects half what one's brethren say or think of him. The valley wasblack with ponies, the troopers were black with dust, and a pall as ofnight hung over the herd, so dense that the sun rays were swallowed upin its depths and gave but little light below, and tears of rage andmisery that started from Sanders's eyes trickled down through a sandydesert on each sun-blistered cheek. He rode back to his temporary chiefjust as an Indian bullet had whizzed in front of the major's nose andmade his eyes almost pop from his head. "Don't you see," he urged,reproachfully, "how very much more they are around us? If Truman orCranston needed help they would have let us know long ago."

  After a brisk gallop of three or four miles up the valley of the Ska,the troopers of the --th had permitted the stampeded ponies to takethings more leisurely, and so it resulted that by six o'clock many oftheir number were stopping occasionally to nibble at the grass whichgrew here luxuriantly, but there was, all the same, a steady, persistentmovement of the living mass,--an enforced migration at the rate of atleast three miles an hour. Well out on the foot-hills Canker's troop hadthrown its flankers, while the other in long skirmish line, withappropriate reserves, interposed between the herd and possible Indianattack from the north. The eastern banks of the Ska along here were highand steep, and the stream flowed deep and rapid at their base, so attackfrom that quarter was not to be dreaded. All the same, occasionalwarriors could be seen along the bluff, scampering from point to point,firing long-range chance shots at the officers or men distinguishablethrough the edge of the dust-cloud, but venturing no closer. It wasChrome's idea, as he frankly said, to keep moving southwestward untilTintop's scouts should see the huge column of dust, and send forth tomeet and guide him with his prizes to the colonel's camp. Everyquarter-hour, therefore, was taking him farther and father away from hiscorralled comrades down-stream, but he refused to see it. "Oh, they'llcome along all right, Sanders," he declared, as he saw how hisadjutant's eyes constantly gazed back beyond the dispersed line ofskirmishers, "and we'll have a regular jubilee when we meet your colonelthis evening. Some day, perhaps, you'll get a brevet for this."

  "Damn the brevet!" groaned the youngster. "Give me a sight of 'C' and'F' Troops safe and sound, and I'd rather have it than any brevet increation." Then a brilliant idea struck him. "By the way, major, supposethey don't come along, what will you do for breakfast and dinner?They've got the pack-train--unless the Indians have."

  "By heavens, I never thought of the packs. They were way behind when westruck the village," said the major, whipping out his watch. "It's 6.30now. Sanders, I reckon you'll have to go back and see what's become ofthem. Take six or eight men from the reserves here and try to rejoin usby eight." And glad enough to slip out from the shadows of thatoverhanging pall, Sanders went, half a dozen Arizona "jayhawkers" ridingsilently with him.

  And that was the last Major Chrome saw of his battalion adjutant, of the"Eleventh" half of his battalion, and of all but one of the sixjayhawkers referred to, in many a long week. One of the latter made hisway back afoot in the course of half an hour, saying his horse was shotunder him in the valley, which was thick with Indians, and Chrome lookedyellow-white and a trifle undecided. But again the big herd of poniesfrom some unseen cause was in rapid motion, loping away southwestward.All the guards and flankers were on the run, and it was half an hourbefore things quieted down again, and when eight o'clock came Cankersent in word that there were dozens of Indians on the bluffs ahead wherethe valley narrowed, and it would be well to halt and round up the herdright there and wait for Cranston and Truman, and Chrome so ordered.Presently the dust-cloud began to settle, and by and by, when it floatedslowly to earth again, half a dozen at a time, under cover of theircomrades' carbines, the troopers ventured to the stream to fill theircanteens and souse their grimy heads. There, peacefully grazing again,were the Indian ponies by the hundreds and their dusty guardians by thescore; but, far as eye could see down the beautiful valley, not a signof Sanders, his party, his comrades of the Eleventh, or, worse than all,of the pack-train, and Chrome and his people were getting hungry.

  There were still with him the sergeant and trumpeter who had brought thedespatch from Colonel Winthrop, and to them again did Chrome appeal foran estimate of the probable distance and direction of the colonel'scamp. With an officer and twenty troopers as an escort they rode to thesummit of the nearest bluff on the western shore, and with theirfield-glasses studied the landscape for miles. Far to the southwes
t laythe placid valley, unvexed now by sign of hostile force of any kind, andthe sergeant indicated, some fifteen miles away, the butte near whichthey made their crossing of the stream the previous day. Far to the westand northwest rolled a wild, tumbling sea of prairie upland, wave afterwave of gray-green earth, spanned at the horizon by the black,pine-covered range of the Medicine Hills, pierced nearly due west fromthem by the deep slit the sergeant said was Slaughter Cove. To thenorthwest they could trace the general course of the Wakon valley,though the stream itself was nowhere in view, even among the broaderlevels toward its mouth, for everything down the Ska beyond a pointthree miles away was hidden from their sight by the bold cliffs thatjutted out almost into the foaming waters. "Somewhere off there, fifteenor twenty miles," said the sergeant, pointing towards Slaughter Cove,"the colonel is probably marching." He had pursued the warriors into thehills after their heavy fight, and wouldn't let up on them till he ranthem back to the agency, but the camp where he had left his wounded, hiswagons, and supplies and their guard couldn't be more than twenty milesfarther up the valley. Of the Indian village they had attacked atsunrise nothing could be seen. Eastward and south westward the oppositebluffs cut off the view, and such Indians as watched them did so fromthe concealment of the ridges and ravines. Chrome's triumphant rejoicingof the early day was rapidly giving place to uneasiness. In the absenceof rations even martial fame is an empty thing. It was a bitter pill tohave to go down and consult with Canker, but he did not know what elseto do. Noon found him, watched by the lurking Indians among the bluffs,still guarding his captured herd and waiting for Sanders to come alongwith the pack-train. But there was no dinner for Chrome's command thatday, and, by nightfall, even the ponies were gone.

  Barely two hours after the triumphant appearance of Red Dog and hisreinforcements on the scene of the morning's fight, Truman and Cranston,making the rounds together, came upon Davies among the rifle-pits on thenorth front, instead of resting with the wounded under the banks. He wasstill pallid and ill, but, having dressed and bandaged his wound and hada refreshing dip in the stream, he had made his way out among the men.He shook his head gravely in answer to Truman's suggestion that he oughtto be lying down. "We _are_ lying down all around here, sir," he said,"and I can get more rest out here than under the banks."

  But Truman did not know that, weak as he was, the Parson was dividinghis time between the wounded and the effectives, ministering to the oneand cautioning the other, for the latter could not always resist thetemptation to fire at such Indians as appeared in view within five orsix hundred yards, and ammunition might be scarce before the siege wasended. Grimly, but without uneasiness, the command watched Red Dog'sscientific manoeuvres in his "surround," the mounted warriors beinggradually replaced, except on the open prairie, by the bereavedvillagers. "Oh, we can stand off double their force easily," was theconfident saying of the old hands. "We have food, water, ammunition, anda smart chance for more fighting," so what more could soldier ask? Therewas even jollity in the little command, despite the losses of the earlymorning. There was keen and lively interest in Red Dog's movements when,by nine o'clock, it was seen that he was calling most of the mountedwarriors around him and could be heard haranguing them at the fartherend of the village. None of the lodges had been taken down,--there wereno ponies to haul them away,--but those nearest the southern end werenow deserted of women and children and used only as shelter for a fewlurking braves. Presently on every side the Indian prowlers opened sharpfire on the troops, a long-range and hap-hazard fusillade, for what withlogs and earth, sand, trees, and river-banks and little wooded isles,the defence was well covered, only some of the horses being where theycould be plainly seen. The bullets came zipping overhead or spittingvengefully into the sand, doing little harm, yet teaching the troopersto lie low; and then in the midst of it all Red Dog rode magnificentlyaway from the north end of the village, across the open prairie, headingfor some point far up the valley of the Wakon, and sixty braves rodevaliantly at his back. He was a good half-mile away from the defence,but the troopers let drive a few shots, "for old acquaintance' sake," asone of them expressed it, but without disturbing the pomp and dignity ofthe procession. It was soon out of sight, and then the encircling fireslackened. "Now, what on earth are they up to?" was the question.

  And in less than an hour after his disappearance there came newexcitement, and the men set up a cheer. Sharp firing was heard towardthe south. What could it mean but that their comrades of the --th werefighting their way back to join them? Then four or five horsemenappeared along the southward slopes, darting and dashing about as onlyIndians ride, evidently firing at something between them and the Ska,and Truman ordered a platoon to mount and drive away the Indians on thatfront so as to open a road for the new-comers to enter. This wasaccomplished with little loss, for the Indians broke from before thespirited dash, but rallied, of course, far out on the flanks, and againpoured in their rapid fire from their repeating rifles, and then after awhile the troops could be seen slowly retiring, firing as they fellback, some afoot now, and some leading and supporting in saddle otherswho were evidently wounded, and finally, as these latter came within afew hundred yards of the rifle-pits, the cry went up that it wasLieutenant Sanders and some of the --th, and so it proved. Four morewounded to care for, and Sanders, faint and heart-sick, among them.

  "I tried to get old Chrome to drop that herd and come back to you," hemoaned, "but it was useless. He wouldn't have let me come--only to gethim something to eat. Damn this having to fight Indians under officesoldiers anyhow!" And with this pithy protest on his blue lips thelittle bantam fainted away.

  Then Chrome wasn't coming. Truman looked grave and Cranston angry. "Nomatter. We can lick them endwise by staying just where we are," he said."Relief is bound to come to-night."

  Later that afternoon, under the shadows of the willows, there gathered alittle group, perhaps a score of officers and men, all who could bespared from their stations in the rifle-pits, listening to the solemntones of one of their number reading the service for the burial of thedead. Never did Cranston take the field without Margaret's stowing inthe corner of his saddlebag a little prayer-book of her church, and thisthe captain had handed silently to Davies. Side by side the forms of thetwo sergeants and their comrade troopers were laid in the sandy pit.Reverently the bearded, war-worn men uncovered and stood with droopingheads while their grave young officer read the solemn words. Here andthere along the big circle of their surrounding foe the faint distantcrack of the rifle punctuated the sentences as they fell from soldierlips, and every moment a bullet whistled overhead. Somewhere down thevalley, borne on the wings of the breeze, the wail of Indian womenmourning their braves slain in the earlier battle echoed and almostoverwhelmed the solitary voice that rose in soldier tribute to thesoldier dead. Then with one brief, fervent prayer, the solemnly murmured"Amen," carving no line, raising no stone, but tamping deep and heavythe earth upon their blanket-shrouded forms, without the troopervolleys, with only the faint soft winding of the trooper's last earthlytrumpet-call singing "lights out" to sadly listening ears, the littlegroup dispersed, each man going to his post.

  An hour later still and the bluffs were throwing long shadows across thevalley, and the crack of Indian rifles and occasional loud bark of thecarbine close at hand seemed growing more frequent, and watchers at theoutskirts became conscious of increasing excitement among the warriorsup the valley to the west as well as over to the south, and listeningmen, laying their ears to earth, declared that there was tremor andvibration, and dull distant thunder of myriad hoofs, and over in thevillage there was hurrying to and fro and growing clamor of squaws andchildren, and dusky women could be seen clutching their little ones andspeeding away towards the hills down-stream, while others began rapidlytearing down the painted lodges of hide or cloth, and such Indians ashad no mount, but were skulking under the banks or among the bluffsacross the stream, could be seen leaping and crouching and racing backtoward the village, and presently there went u
p a shout from thelookouts towards the upper Ska: "Big dust-cloud coming. Must be the ponyherd again!" And men began springing to their feet and scrambling out oftheir shelters, and staring around them and waving their hats andshouting congratulation and encouragement, and ducking suddenly as morebullets came whistling in, and from a low rumble the sound rose todistant thunder, and from that to nearer uproar, and Truman and Cranstonmade a rush for their own herds, ordering the men to side line andhopple instantly, for the surviving horses were excitedly sniffing theair, pawing and snorting, and then there hove in sight up the valley thewiry leaders of the herd, galloping wearily, behind them a dull,dust-hidden, laboring mass, the main body of the Indian prizes sweptaway at sunrise. But who and what were these darting along the flanks ofthe coming host, lashing furiously in and out, ever guiding,controlling, commanding even while hurrying on? No blue-shirted,slouch-hatted, broad-belted troopers these! No cheering comrades of thestalwart --th, but in their stead few, but far more skilful, the mostaccomplished herdsmen in all creation,--Indians by the dozen. And thenat last, amid the yell and clamor and shot and shout and furious rush ofriderless steeds, came explanation of the mysterious foray up the Spiritvalley. Circling far to the west and south, riding like the wind whenonce well out of sight of watching foes, the Ogallallas had swung aroundbetween the Ska and Winthrop's distant column, threaded ravines anddepressions well known to them from boyish days, and finally creepingbehind the curtaining bluffs into full view of the great herd drowsilynibbling in the broad, sunny valley, had burst with maddening yell andwaving blankets and banging rifles, with sudden fury from their covert,tearing by the weary pickets, stampeding their horses, and so had gonethundering down upon the startled herd and, skilfully encircling it fromthe south, reckless of rallying cry and rapid shot from Canker's men,had sent the whole pack, with many a cavalry charger too, whirlingbefore them in wild triumph down the echoing valley, back to the waitingvillage whence they came. "Red Dog versus Chrome Yaller," wailed littleSanders from his bed of leaves. "Who wouldn't have bet on the bay?"

  Vain the major's valiant effort to mount and follow. Forty at least ofhis horses were swept away in the rush, his own among them; vainlong-range shots and Canker's vivid blasphemy. Black in the face withrage, he mounted such men as had managed to restrain their horses andwent charging after, leaving Chrome to the care of his fellows. Vain therapid and telling fire opened upon herd and herders by Truman's men asthey came within range. Down went two or three yelling, paintedwarriors, down a dozen ponies here and there, but on went the leaders,plunging breast-deep into the stream, and, followed by the whole mass,forded the Wakon in a flood of foam and splash and spray, losing only atrivial few in the glorious effort, and then, sweeping well around therifle-pits of the command, were welcomed with mad rejoicing and acclaimin the heart of the thronging village.

  Instantly now did they send forward their own skirmish line,--scores ofIndians crawling, snake-like, through the grass, and from all sidespouring rapid fire in on Cranston's front to keep him and his fellowsfrom attempting to mount or attack, which, indeed, would have been ahopeless effort. The timber rang with the fierce volleying, and in theexcitement and exposure that resulted four more of the little commandwere shot, Truman himself receiving a painful wound in the side. Forhalf an hour there was yell and clamor and furious crash of firearms,but all this time the lodges were rapidly disappearing, the Indianhouseholds were piling their goods and chattels, their babies, the oldand the wounded and the helpless, even their dead, on travois and dragof lodge-poles, and then, guided by old chiefs, whole families wereflitting away down the Ska, and finally, as darkness lowered on thevalley, and the last lodge was down and gone, and the last warriors drewaway from their front, and silence and peace settled down upon theexhausted command, Cranston, laying his broad hand on Davies's shoulder,looked into his tired eyes with a world of soldier trust and admirationin his own, and said, "If there was such a thing with us as promoting aman on the battlefield, my lad, this day's work would win it for you."

  And before the other could answer, far up the valley of the Wakon haileda trumpet call. Over from the bluffs across the stream another answered,and man after man sprang from his blanket to give a welcome cheer. "Wemight have known those beggars would have been in no such hurry to getaway," said Truman, faintly, "but for old Tintop's coming with the wholecommand."