Wayne rode for the first mile or so in sulky dignity, as has been said. Ray was out in front with the scouts. He had gone without saying a word to the commander, and though that was a breach of etiquette, the captain well knew that there of all others was the place for Ray to be. None of his other subalterns came near him. There were only two,—Dana and Hunter,—and they were riding each at the head of the troop to which he was attached. A young assistant surgeon was with the party, and a civilian who had charge of the half-dozen pack-mules ambling alongside, but even these men seemed indisposed to chat with the commanding officer. The column was riding "at ease," but in silence. No whistling, joking, or singing was going on. To the right was the timber through which, well to the front, half a dozen skirmishers were pushing so as to secure the main body against surprise. To the left, full eight hundred yards away, rose the low line of bluffs, sweeping around the left front so as to approach the stream. Two or three men rode warily along their crest, keeping sharp lookout to the south, while scattered across the valley a like distance ahead were half a dozen active troopers, the two guides, and Ray. The latter, easily recognized at that distance by his riding and by "Dandy's" elastic stride, had discarded his coat, and was moving rapidly from point to point in his dark-blue scouting-shirt.
Nearing the bluffs that bent around their front, it could be seen that the guides were hanging back a little, so were the skirmishers in advance; but the men on the flanks pushed ahead. No Indians could be seen from their more elevated position.
"They're shy of that bluff," said Wayne between his teeth. "Here, Mr. Dana, send a sergeant and two sets of fours forward, and stir them up a little. Wait a moment! There goes Ray."
Sure enough, Ray and a couple of horsemen, opening out considerably, could be seen spurring diagonally across the bottom towards a point of bluffs that rose higher than the general line off to the left. Before they had gone two hundred yards, out from the very crest of the bluff there leaped half a dozen quick puffs of smoke; half a dozen little spirts of dust and sand flew up from the prairie near the three horsemen farthest to the front, two of whose steeds were seen to veer and shy violently, and then six sharp, spiteful, half-muffled reports were borne on the still air.
Even before the shots were heard Wayne was turning in his saddle.
"Deploy to the front, Dana; only your first platoon," he added, as the young officer was about throwing forward the whole troop. "Look out for the bluffs on your left. I'll have Hunter face them. Half front your line that way so as not to let them enfilade you. I'm going right out to the front." With that he rode back, said a few words to Hunter, and then, followed by his orderly trumpeter, went thumping off at ponderous gallop towards his distant advance.
Almost at the same instant the flankers on the bluffs to the left were seen waving their hats and spurring about in violent excitement, pointing towards the south. Then they fired two or three wild shots in that direction, and, ducking as though to avoid return fire, came sweeping down the slopes at full speed.
It was stirring to mark the bearing of the little command just then. Every man knew that the unseen foe was present in front and flank in heavy force. Every hand seemed nerved to sudden strength. The horses tossed their heads and pricked up their ears, looking eagerly in the direction of the firing. In obedience to his orders, Dana was rapidly deploying his leading platoon, and a sheaf of skirmishers went scattering out to the front in support of the advance, while Hunter, left for the moment alone, divined in an instant that the Indians were coming with a rush upon the southern flank. He wheeled his fours to the left, and, dismounting his skirmishers, sent them at the double-quick out across the prairie. Not an instant too soon! Almost simultaneously the ridge to the south, the bluffs out in front, and even the narrow level between them and the timber fairly bristled with daring, dashing horsemen,—the Cheyennes in all their glory.
Oh, what a brilliant sight they made with plume and pennon, floating war-bonnet, lance and shield; the sunlight dancing on their barbaric ornaments of glistening brass or silver, on brightly-painted, naked forms, on the trappings of their nimble ponies, on rifle and spear! All at full speed, all ayell, brandishing their weapons, firing wildly into the valley, leaping, some of them, for an instant to the ground to take better aim, then, like a flash, to saddle and top speed again; through every little swale, over every ridge they popped like so many savage Jacks-in-the-box, and came swooping, circling down on the little column at the old-time tactics of the stampede. Warily though, with all their clamor, for though they whoop and yell and shoot and challenge, they veer off to right or left long before they get within dangerous range of those silent skirmishers of Hunter's, now sprawling in long blue line out on the dusty prairie, ventre à terre, and every fellow with his carbine at the front just praying the painted scamps will come a little closer. Warily in front, too, where Ray is skilfully retiring, face to the foe, but keeping them back while Wayne has time to return to the column and move his horses into the sheltering timber and prepare for vigorous defence.
It is the only course now open to him. This is not civilized warfare, remember, and far different rules must govern. It would be no difficult matter against ordinary troops to lead a dashing charge, cut through the opposing line, and so make his way back to the regiment. Of course many men might be unhorsed and wounded, and so left behind, but they would be cared for as prisoners until exchanged or the war was at an end. But war with the Indian means, on his side, war à outrance,—war to the cruellest death he can devise. When he is cornered, all he has to do is surrender and become the recipient of more attention and the victim of higher living than he ever dreamed of until he tried it, and found it so pleasant that it paid him to go on the war-path every spring, to have a royal old revel in blood and bestiality until fall, and then yield to the blandishments of civilization for the winter. But to officer or soldier capture means death, and death by fiendish torture as a rule. The Indian fights for the glory and distinction it gives him. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose. The soldier of the United States fights the red man only because he is ordered to. He has nothing to gain—even glory, for the Senate has fixed a bar sinister on gallantry in Indian warfare. He has everything to lose. However, no words of mine will ever effect a change of political heart in such matters. The fact remains that the one thing left for Wayne to do—finding himself cut off by some two hundred Cheyennes—was to take to the timber and stand them off.
By this time the fray was spirited and picturesque in the extreme. The whole line of bluffs was alive with Indians dashing to and fro, occasionally swooping down as though to burst through or over the slender skirmish line. Others had swung clear around to the left, and were circling about in the valley below them. From all but the north side, therefore, the bullets came whistling in, and occasionally some stricken horse would plunge and snort madly, and one or two men were being assisted to the bank of the stream, where the young doctor had already gone to work. Hunter's dismounted men, sturdily fronting the south and southeast, were holding five times their force in check, while Ray's and Dana's mounted skirmishers, fronting southwest and west, were slowly falling back fighting. The Cheyennes encircled them on every side but the north.
Busy in getting his horses into shelter under the bank, which was a few feet high, and directing where the provisions and pack-mules should be placed, Wayne was suddenly accosted by Ray.
"If twenty men can be spared, sir, I'll put them on that island," pointing to a clump of willows and cottonwoods that stood along the opposite shore. "The Indians are crossing above and below, and we'll soon have their fire on our backs."
Wayne was soldier enough to see the force of the suggestion. He was man enough, too, to want to ask Ray's pardon for his language of the morning, but there was only time to accede to the request. The Kentuckian, still mounted on Dandy, was darting across the sandy space with a dozen or more of his men at his heels. The island was a Godsend. In less than five minutes the warriors who ha
d ventured across, and were now seeking for a shot at the safety-roost along under the bank, were met by a score of well-aimed bullets that drove them to cover, dragging with them the lifeless body of one of their number.
"Spread out there, men!" shouted Wayne. "Seize every point you can get on t'other shore. Run up-stream fifty yards or so and scoop holes for yourselves in the sand." And then he rode out to the front again to superintend the retirement of his slender lines.
But all this time the firing had been rapid and almost incessant. As the troopers came slowly in towards the timber and the Cheyennes realized that it was impossible to drive them into panic or stampede, they seemed to give far more attention to the accuracy of their aim, and for this purpose the best shots had thrown themselves from their ponies and were striving to pick off the officers and prominent sergeants. Still, the greater number remained in saddle whooping and yelling and darting to and fro at a comparatively safe distance, banging away at anything or anybody within the soldier lines, and offering tempting though difficult marks for the sorely-tried skirmishers. Until he noted the distant war-parties crossing to the north side of the stream, Ray had been riding up and down the lines checking the useless waste of ammunition. Everywhere his voice could be heard, placid, almost laughing at times, as he rebuked the senseless long-range shooting of the men.
"Hold your fire, men. You can't hit those skipping jack-rabbits half a mile away. What on earth are you shooting at, Mulligan? You couldn't hit a whole barn at that distance."
But all the same he was seriously worried. He knew well that at the utmost there were no more than fifty rounds per man with the troopers, and that rapid firing would soon reduce this to next to nothing. The indications were that once hemmed in to the timber they would need every shot to stand off the Cheyennes until relief could come, and before galloping off to secure the timbered island in rear of their position and so form a partially protected "corral" for the horses, he had cautioned Dana and Hunter to be most sparing in their fire,—to allow no shot unless the Indians charged.
The foe, on the contrary, were flush with ammunition. Mr. ——'s cartridges were abundant among them, and from east, south, and west the bullets were whizzing overhead, ripping up little grass tufts from the prairie and raising a dust wherever they struck. The mounted skirmishers sheered off into the timber quite early, as they were being shot at from three sides, sprang from their horses and took to the trees, but before they could do so several casualties had occurred. Six horses were lying dead out on the prairie, others were wounded and bleeding, but worse than that, two old Arizona sergeants, veterans of a dozen fights, and five of the men were severely wounded. Ray's efforts to keep down the return fire were futile. As long as the men had cartridges and he was not about, they would fire. Just as Wayne the second time rode out to the front he found Dana slowly dismounting.
"Are you hit?" he asked.
Dana nodded, pressed his hand to his side, and saying nothing, walked up to a neighboring cottonwood and leaned against it, looking rather pale.
"Damn the luck!" growled Wayne. "This won't do. I must get the whole crowd under cover."
"You get under yourself," grinned Dana. "That hat of yours looks like a sieve now. Yi-ip! There goes your horse." And forgetting his own pain, he strove to aid the captain, whose horse had suddenly plunged forward, and was now rolling and kicking in the agony of death.
"I'm all right, Dana. Poor old Ned! he's carried me many a mile. Here, sergeant, help the lieutenant back to the doctor. Go, Dana! I'll get the men where they belong. We're all right, once we get in the timber."
And so, little by little, slowly and steadily the skirmishers fell back to the shelter of the trees. There in big semicircle they were distributed, each in a little, hastily constructed rifle-pit or shelter of his own, and by nine o'clock this bright July morning the first phase of the combat was at an end, and there was time to "take account of stock."
Dana was shot through the side by a Henry or Winchester bullet, and was lying under the bank faint, thirsty, but plucky. Sergeant Gwinn and two of the men were dead, and eight men now needed the care of the surgeon; three of them were senseless, probably mortally hurt. At least fifteen horses were killed or rendered useless; the others were "corralled" under the bank, where, in a deep bend, they were safe except from long-range fire. Ray's men on the island had improved their advantage by seizing defensible positions on the north bank, and, as against two hundred and fifty Indians, with two days' rations left, with abundant water to be had by digging in the sand, with pluck and spirit left for anything, they were not badly off, provided the Indians were not heavily reinforced and provided their ammunition held out.
The Cheyennes now resorted to other tactics. Leaving but few warriors scurrying about on the open prairie, both north and south, they gathered in force in the timber up- and down-stream and began their stealthy approaches, keeping up all the time a sharp fire upon Wayne's position. Every now and then would come a frantic cry from some stricken horse as a random bullet took effect, but few struck among the men. The surgeon and the wounded were well sheltered in a concave hollow of the bank.
There was fortunately little wind. With a gale blowing either up- or down-stream, the Indians could have fired the timber and soon driven them out. This was well understood on both sides. But the besieged knew as well that other methods would be resorted to, and speedily they were developed. The rattling fire that had been kept up ever since the first assault had died away to an occasional shot, when suddenly from the down-stream side there came a volley, a chorus of frantic yells, and then a pandemonium of shots, shouts, howls, and screeches, answered by the soldiers with their carbines and the billingsgate of some irrepressible humorist. A savage attack had begun on Hunter's men. Even as Wayne and Ray, bending low to avoid the storm, went scurrying through the trees to his assistance, followed by some half a dozen of the "old hands," there came from up-stream just such another assault, and in ten seconds every able man in the command was hotly engaged.
"For God's sake, captain, don't let them waste their fire!" shouted Ray. "I'll go back to the other front and hold them there."
"All right! I understand, Ray. You watch the same thing over there," answered Wayne, who at another time would have resented any suggestions, but had seen the value of Ray's words a dozen times that day. "Damn it! men. Fire slow. Don't throw away a shot. Let them come closer; that's what we want," he shouted to the soldiers, who, lying behind logs or kneeling among the trees, were driving their missiles through the timber, where the smoke-wreaths told of the otherwise invisible foe. Out on the prairie, too, the mounted warriors went careering about, dashing at full speed towards the woods, as though determined to charge, but invariably veering off to right or left as they came within three hundred yards. Of course, there was no direction from which the bullets did not come whizzing into the timber, and men were more likely to be hit in the back than elsewhere,—one of the many disheartening features of such warfare. Almost every moment somebody was hit, though at the time it could not be seen or known, as all were too busy with what was in their front to look around. Once in a while, too, some lucky shot would send an Indian pony to his knees out on the prairie, or a warrior would drop and be borne off by a ducking, dodging trio of his fellows. Then there would be a shout of triumph from the timber, answering yells of rage and defiance from the foe; but finally, after nearly an hour of such savage work, the Cheyennes seemed to give it up. Then came another respite, another "taking of stock."
One of the scouts, one who had refused to try and ride through to the regiment, was shot dead, and lay on his face among the trees. So, too, were two more of the men, while six were wounded, and Wayne himself had a flesh wound in the thigh. The hot sun of noonday was pouring down, and matters looked ugly.
"Do you know how much ammunition we have left?" asked Mr. Ray, in a low tone, of the commanding officer about an hour later.
"No," said Wayne, looking anxiously in his face.
<
br /> "Not twelve rounds to the man."
* * *
CHAPTER XIV.
RAY'S RIDE FOR LIFE
Darkness has settled down in the shadowy Wyoming valley. By the light of a tiny fire under the bank some twenty forms can be seen stretched upon the sand,—they are wounded soldiers. A little distance away are nine others, shrouded in blankets: they are the dead. Huddled in confused and cowering group are a few score horses, many of them sprawled upon the sand motionless; others occasionally struggle to rise or plunge about in their misery. Crouching among the timber, vigilant but weary, dispersed in big, irregular circle around the beleaguered bivouac, some sixty soldiers are still on the active list. All around them, vigilant and vengeful, lurk the Cheyennes. Every now and then the bark as of a coyote is heard,—a yelping, querulous cry,—and it is answered far across the valley or down the stream. There is no moon; the darkness is intense, though the starlight is clear, and the air so still that the galloping hoofs of the Cheyenne ponies far out on the prairie sound close at hand.
"That's what makes it hard," says Ray, who is bending over the prostrate form of Captain Wayne. "If it were storming or blowing, or something to deaden the hoof-beats, I could make it easier; but it's the only chance."
The only chance of what?
When the sun went down upon Wayne's timber citadel, and the final account of stock was taken for the day, it was found that with one-fourth of the command, men and horses, killed and wounded there were left not more than three hundred cartridges, all told, to enable some sixty men to hold out until relief could come against an enemy encircling them on every side, and who had only to send over to the neighboring reservation—forty miles away—and get all the cartridges they wanted. Mr. —— would let their friends have them to kill buffalo, though Mr. —— and their friends knew there wasn't a buffalo left within four hundred miles.
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