The Prairie Chief

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER SIX.

  A STRANGE VISITOR.

  Curious mingling of eagerness, hope, and fear rendered Softswan for someminutes undecided how to act as she gazed at the fallen man. His garbwas of a dark uniform grey colour, which she had often heard described,but had not seen until now. That he was wounded she felt quite sure,but she knew that there would be great danger in descending to aid him.Besides, if he were helpless, as he seemed to be, she had not physicalstrength to lift him, and would expose herself to easy capture if theBlackfeet should be in ambush.

  Still, the eager and indefinable hope that was in her heart induced thegirl to rise with the intention of descending the path, when sheobserved that the fallen man again moved. Rising on his hands andknees, he crept forward a few paces, and then stopped. Suddenly by agreat effort, he raised himself to a kneeling position, clasped hishands, and looked up.

  The act sufficed to decide the wavering girl. Leaping lightly over thebreastwork, she ran swiftly down until she reached the man, who gazed ather in open-mouthed astonishment. He was a white man, and the ghastlypallor of his face, with a few spots of blood on it and on his hands,told that he had been severely wounded.

  "Manitou seems to have sent an angel of light to me in my extremity," hegasped in the Indian tongue.

  "Come; me vill help you," answered Softswan, in her broken English, asshe stooped and assisted him to rise.

  No other word was uttered, for even with the girl's assistance it waswith the utmost difficulty that the man reached the breastwork of thehut, and when he had succeeded in clambering over it, he lay down andfainted.

  After Softswan had glanced anxiously in the direction of the forest, andplaced one of the guns in a handy position, she proceeded to examine thewounded stranger. Being expert in such matters, she opened his vest,and quickly found a wound near the region of the heart. It was bleedingsteadily though not profusely. To stanch this and bind it up was thework of a few minutes. Then she reclosed the vest. In doing so shefound something hard in a pocket near the wound. It was a little book,which she gently removed as it might interfere with the bandage. Indoing so she observed that the book had been struck by the bullet whichit deflected, so as to cause a more deadly wound than might otherwisehave been inflicted.

  She was thus engaged when the patient recovered consciousness, and,seizing her wrist, exclaimed, "Take not the Word from me. It has beenmy joy and comfort in all my--"

  He stopped on observing who it was that touched his treasure.

  "Nay, then," he continued, with a faint smile, as he released his hold;"it can come to no harm in thy keeping, child. For an instant I thoughtthat rougher hands had seized it. But why remove it?"

  Softswan explained, but, seeing how eager the man was to keep it, she atonce returned the little Bible to the inner pocket in which it wascarried when not in use. Then running into the hut she quickly returnedwith a rib of venison and a tin mug of water.

  The man declined the food, but drained the mug with an air ofsatisfaction, which showed how much he stood in need of water.

  Much refreshed, he pulled out the Bible again, and looked earnestly atit.

  "Strange," he said, in the Indian tongue, turning his eyes on hissurgeon-nurse; "often have I heard of men saved from death by bulletsbeing stopped by Bibles, but in my case it would seem as if God had madeit a key to unlock the gates of the better land."

  "Does my white father think he is going to die?" asked the girl in herown tongue, with a look of anxiety.

  "It may be so," replied the man gently, "for I feel very, _very_ weak.But feelings are deceptive; one cannot trust them. It matters little,however. If I live, it is to work for Jesus. If I die, it is to bewith Jesus. But tell me, little one, who art thou whom the Lord hassent to succour me?"

  "Me is Softswan, daughter of the great chief Bounding Bull," replied thegirl, with a look of pride when she mentioned her father, which drew aslight smile from the stranger.

  "But Softswan has white blood in her veins," he said; "and why does shesometimes speak in the language of the pale-face?"

  "My mother," returned the girl in a low, sad tone, "was pale-face womansfrom the Saskatchewan. Me speaks English, for my husban' likes it."

  "Your husband--what is his name!"

  "Big Tim."

  "What!" exclaimed the wounded man with sudden energy, as a flushoverspread his pale face; "is he the son of Little Tim, thebrother-in-law of Whitewing the prairie chief?"

  "He is the son of Leetil Tim, an' this be hims house."

  "Then," exclaimed the stranger, with a pleased look, "I have reached, ifnot the end of my journey, at least a most important point in it, for Ihad appointed to meet Whitewing at this very spot, and did not know,when the Blackfoot Indian shot me, that I was so near the hut. Itlooked like a mere accident my finding the track which leads to it nearthe spot where I fell, but it is the Lord's doing. Tell me, Softswan,have you never heard Whitewing and Little Tim speak of the pale-facemissionary--the Preacher, they used to call me?"

  "Yes, yes, oftin," answered the girl eagerly. "Me tinks it bees you.Me _very_ glad, an' Leetil Tim he--"

  Her speech was cut short at this point by a repetition of the appallingwar-whoop which had already disturbed the echoes of the gorge more thanonce that day.

  Naturally the attention of Softswan had been somewhat distracted by theforegoing conversation, and she had allowed the Indians to burst fromthe thicket and rush up the track a few paces before she was able tobring the big-bore gun to bear on them.

  "Slay them not, Softswan," cried the preacher anxiously, as he tried torise and prevent her firing. "We cannot escape them."

  He was too late. She had already pressed the trigger, and the roar ofthe huge gun was reverberating from cliff to cliff like miniaturethunder; but his cry had not been too late to produce wavering in thegirl's wind, inducing her to take bad aim, so that the handful of slugswith which the piece had been charged went hissing over the assailants'heads instead of killing them. The stupendous hissing and noise,however, had the effect of momentarily arresting the savages, andinducing each man to seek the shelter of the nearest shrub.

  "Com queek," cried Softswan, seizing the preacher's hand. "You bedeaded soon if you not com queek."

  Feeling the full force of this remark, the wounded man, exerting all hisstrength, arose, and suffered himself to be led into the hut. Passingquickly out by a door at the back, the preacher and the bride foundthemselves on a narrow ledge of rock, from one side of which was theprecipice down which Big Tim had made his perilous descent. Close totheir feet lay a great flat rock or natural slab, two yards beyond whichthe ledge terminated in a sheer precipice.

  "No escape here," remarked the preacher sadly, as he looked round. "Inmy present state I could not venture down such a path even to save mylife. But care not for me, Softswan. If you think you can escape, goand--"

  He stopped, for to his amazement the girl stooped, and with apparentease raised the ponderous mass of rock above referred to as though ithad been a slight wooden trap-door, and disclosed a hole large enoughfor a man to pass through. The preacher observed that the stone washinged on a strong iron bar, which was fixed considerably nearer to oneside of it than the other. Still, this hinge did not account for theease with which a mere girl lifted a ponderous mass which two or threemen could not have moved without the aid of levers.

  But there was no time to investigate the mystery of the matter, foranother ringing war-whoop told that the Blackfeet, having recovered fromtheir consternation, had summoned courage to renew the assault.

  "Down queek!" said the girl, looking earnestly into her companion'sface, and pointing to the dark hole, where the head of a rude ladder,dimly visible, showed what had to be done.

  "It does not require much faith to trust and obey such a leader,"thought the preacher, as he got upon the ladder, and quickly disappearedin the hole. Softswan lightly followed. As her head was about todisappear, she raised her hand, seiz
ed hold of a rough projection on theunder surface of the mass of rock, and drew it gently down so as toeffectually close the hole, leaving no trace whatever of its existence.

  While this was going on the Blackfeet were advancing up the narrowpathway with superlative though needless caution, and no small amount oftimidity. Each man took advantage of every scrap of cover he could findon the way up, but as the owner of the hut had taken care to remove allcover that was removable, they did not find much, and if the defendershad been there, that little would have been found to be painfullyinsufficient, for it consisted only of rugged masses and projections ofrock, none of which could altogether conceal the figure of a full-grownman. Indeed, it seemed inexplicable that these Indians should have madethis assault in broad day, considering that Indians in general are notedfor their care of "number one," are particularly unwilling to meet theirfoes in fair open fight, and seldom if ever venture to storm a place ofstrength except by surprise and under the cover of night.

  The explanation lay partly in the fact that they were aware of theadvance of friends towards the place, but much more in this, that theparty was led by the great chief Rushing River, a man possessed of thatdaring bulldog courage and reckless contempt of death which is usuallymore characteristic of white than of red men.

  When the band had by galvanic darts and rushes gained the last scrap ofcover that lay between them and the little fortress, Rushing River gavevent to a whoop which was meant to thrill the defenders withconsternation to the very centre of their being, and made a gallantrush, worthy of his name, for the breastwork. Reaching it in gaspinghaste, he and his braves crouched for one moment at the foot of it,presumably to recover wind and allow the first fire of the defenders topass over their heads.

  But no first fire came, and Rushing River rolled his great black eyesupward in astonishment, perhaps thinking that his whoop had thrilled thedefenders off the face of the earth altogether!

  Suspense, they say, is less endurable than actual collision with danger.Probably Rushing River thought it so, for next moment he raised hisblack head quickly. Finding a hole in the defences, he applied one ofhis black eyes to it and peeped through. Seeing nothing, he utteredanother whoop, and vaulted over like a squirrel, tomahawk in hand, readyto brain anybody or anything. Seeing nobody and nothing in particular,except an open door, he suspected an ambush in that quarter, dartedround the corner of the hut to get out of the doorway line of fire, andpeeped back.

  Animated by a similar spirit, his men followed suit. When it becameevident that no one meant to come out of the hut Rushing River resolvedto go in, and did so with another yell and a flourish of his deadlyweapon, but again was he doomed to expend his courage and violence onair, for he possessed too much of natural dignity to expend his wrath oninanimate furniture.

  Of course one glance sufficed to show that the defenders had flown, andit needed not the practised wit of a savage to perceive that they hadretreated through the back door. In his eagerness to catch the foe, theIndian chief sprang after them with such a rush that nothing but a stoutwillow, which he grasped convulsively, prevented him from going over theprecipice headlong--changing, as it were, from a River into a Fall--andending his career appropriately in the torrent below.

  When the chief had assembled his followers on the limited surface of theledge, they all gazed around them for a few seconds in silence. On oneside was a sheer precipice. On another side was, if we may so expressit, a sheerer precipice rising upward. On the third side was the steepand rugged path, which looked sufficiently dangerous to arrest all savethe mad or the desperate. On the fourth side was the hut.

  Seeing all this at a glance, Rushing River looked mysterious and said,"Ho!"

  To which his men returned, "How!" "Hi!" and "Hee!" or some otherexclamation indicative of bafflement and surprise.

  Standing on the trap-door rock as on a sort of pulpit, the chief pointedwith his finger to the precipitous path, and said solemnly--

  "Big Tim has gone down _there_. He has net the wings of the hawk, buthe has the spirit of the squirrel, or the legs of the goat."

  "Or the brains of the fool," suggested a follower, with a few drops ofwhite blood in his veins, which made him what boys call "cheeky."

  "Of course," continued Rushing River, still more solemnly, and scorningto notice the remark, "of course Rushing River and his braves couldfollow if they chose. They could do anything. But of what use would itbe? As well might we follow the moose-deer when it has got a longstart."

  "Big Tim has got the start, as Rushing River wisely says," remarked thecheeky comrade, "but he is hampered with his squaw, and cannot go fast."

  "Many pale-faces are hampered by their squaws, and cannot go fast,"retorted the chief, by which reply he meant to insinuate that the fewdrops of white blood in the veins of the cheeky one might yet comethrough an experience to which a pure Indian would scorn to submit."But," continued the chief, after a pause to let the stab take fulleffect, "but Softswan is well known. She is strong as the mountainsheep and fleet as the mustang. She will not hamper Big Tim. Enough!We will let them go, and take possession of their goods."

  Whatever the chief's followers might have thought about the first partof his speech, there was evidently no difference of opinion as to thelatter part. With a series of assenting "Ho's," "How's," "Hi's," and"Hee's," they returned with him into the hut, and began to appropriatethe property, commencing with a cold haunch of venison which theydiscovered in the larder, and to which they did ample justice, sittingin a circle on the floor in the middle of the little room.

  Leaving them there, we will return to Softswan and her new friend.

  "The place is very dark," remarked the preacher, groping cautiouslyabout after the trap-door was closed as above described.

  "Stan' still; I vill strik light," said Softswan.

  In a few moments sparks were seen flying from flint and steel, and afterone or two unsuccessful efforts a piece of tinder was kindled. Then thegirl's pretty little nose and lips were seen of a fiery red colour asshe blew some dry grass and chips into a flame, and kindled a torchtherewith.

  The light revealed a small natural cavern of rock, not much more thansix feet high and ten or twelve wide, but of irregular shape, andextending into obscurity in one direction. The only objects in the cavebesides the ladder by which they entered it were a few barrels partiallycovered with deerskin, an unusually small table, rudely but stronglymade, and an enormous mass of rock enclosed in a net of strong ropewhich hung from an iron hook in the roof.

  The last object at once revealed the mystery of the trap-door. Itformed a ponderous counterpoise attached to the smaller section of thestone slab, and so nearly equalised the weight on the hinge that, as wehave seen, Softswan's weak arm was sufficient to turn the scale.

  The instant the torch flared up the girl stuck it into a crevice in thewall, and quickly grasping the little table, pushed it under the pendentrock. It reached to within half an inch of the mass. Picking up twobroad wooden wedges that lay on the floor, she thrust them between therock and the table, one on either side, so as to cause it to restentirely on the table, and thus by removing its weight from the ironhook, the slab was rendered nearly immovable. She was anxiously activein these various operations, for already the Indians had entered the hutand their voices could be distinctly heard overhead.

  "Now," she whispered, with a sigh of relief, "six mans not abil to movethe stone, even if he knowed the hole is b'low it."

  "It is an ingenious device," said the preacher, throwing his exhaustedform on a heap of pine branches which lay in a corner. "Who inventedit--your husband?"

  "No; it was Leetil Tim," returned the girl, with a low musical laugh."Big Tim says hims fadder be great at 'ventions. He 'vent many t'ings.Some's good, some's bad, an' some's funny."

  The preacher could not forbear smiling at this account of his oldfriend, in spite of his anxiety lest the Indians who were regalingthemselves overhead should discover their retreat. He ha
d begun to putsome questions to Softswan in a low voice when he was rendered dumb andhis blood seemed to curdle as he heard stumbling footsteps approachingfrom the dark end of the cavern. Then was heard the sound of some onepanting vehemently. Next moment a man leaped into the circle of light,and seized the Indian girl in his arms.

  "Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently; "not too late! I had thought thereptiles had been too much for thee, soft one. Ah me! I fear that somepoor pale-face has--" He stopped abruptly, for at that moment Big Tim'seye fell upon the wounded man. "What!" he exclaimed, hastening to thepreacher's side; "you _have_ got here after all?"

  "Ay, young man, through the goodness of God I have reached this haven ofrest. Your words seem to imply that you had half expected to find me,though how you came to know of my case at all is to me a mystery."

  "My white father," returned Big Tim, referring as much to the preacher'sage and pure white hair as to his connection with the white men, "findsmystery where the hunter and the red man see none. I went out a-purposeto see that it was not my daddy the Blackfoot reptiles had shot and sooncame across your tracks, which showed me as plain as a book that you wasbadly wounded. I followed the tracks for a bit, expectin' to find youlyin' dead somewheres, when the whoops of the reptiles turned me back.But tell me, white father, are you not the preacher that my daddy andWhitewing used to know some twenty years agone?"

  "I am, and fain would I meet with my former friends once more before Idie."

  "You shall meet with them, I doubt not," replied the young hunter,arranging the couch of the wounded man more comfortably. "I see that mysoft one has bandaged you up, and she's better than the best o' sawbonesat such work. I'll be able to make you more comfortable when we drivethe reptiles out o'--"

  "Call them not reptiles," interrupted the preacher gently. "They arethe creatures of God, like ourselves."

  "It may be so, white father; nevertheless, they are uncommon low, mean,sneakin', savage critters, an' that's all that I've got to do with."

  "You say truth, Big Tim," returned the preacher, "and that is also allthat I have got to do with; but you and I take different methods ofcorrecting the evil."

  "Every man must walk in the ways to which he was nat'rally born,"rejoined the young hunter, with a dark frown, as the sound of revelry inthe hut overhead became at the moment much louder; "my way wi' them maynot be the best in the world, but you shall see in a few minutes that itis a way which will cause the very marrow of the rep--of the _dear_critters--to frizzle in their bones."