CHAPTER VII. "Good-by Cyrus"
"And do you really believe that that bit of sage brush, which anyone could have picked up on the prairie, was the means of saving your life?" inquired Guy, when Cyrus ceased speaking.
"Or it may have been the water and food you gave him," said Arthur. "Almost anybody would have been grateful for that."
"No, it was the sage brush," said Cyrus earnestly. "The Indians carried it with them when they went to the wounded man and showed it to him before they told me that I could go. He exchanged a few words with them in tones so low that I could not overhear them, and after that they came to their decision regarding me. I say it was the sage brush and nothing else."
"Guy," said one of his roommates, "you must get that letter. Cyrus wants to see it."
"It is not that so much as I want it to help me in something I am going to do to-night," said Cyrus. "I don't want you boys to say anything about it, but I am going to try to get those dispatches to Fort Robinson as soon as it becomes dark."
The young officers were really surprised now. Here was a boy who was about to take the same chances that two of their most trusted scouts had attempted only a short time before, and he knew that he was going to fall into the hands of the Sioux before he got through. For a minute or two no one spoke. They looked at Cyrus and then at one another, and finally shook their heads as if the matter was too deep for them to understand.
"I am going to try it to-night," said Cyrus, and for the first time in their lives the boys saw him put on a determined look, which revealed more of the boy's character than they had ever dreamed of. Cyrus had pluck in him; there were no two ways about that. "If I fail, as a good many better men than I have, who have tried it, it will be the last you will ever see of me."
"But, Cyrus, how do you know that the letter will prove an advantage to you?" asked Guy. "You seem to be depending upon something that none of us ever supposed that a Sioux had; I mean gratitude."
"Oh, I know the way your speakers and writers of books have ventilated their opinions on that subject, but I will tell you that gratitude is a thing that Indians have as well as white men," said Cyrus, getting upon his feet and pacing the floor. "You call an Indian a savage, and say that everybody who falls into his hands is booked for Davy's locker sure enough; but some of them have hearts. If the Colonel would let me, I would not be afraid to take Guy's letter and go into the Sioux camp this very minute."
"Well, you have more faith in them than I have," said Guy, astonished by the proposition, "You go into the Sioux camp to-night and we will never hear any more stories from YOU; you can bet on that."
"Somebody has to take the risk, and since the Colonel has been to me, I can't well refuse. We shall all be massacred if we stay here, and if some one has got to die in order to save the rest, it might as well be myself as anybody. Guy, will you get the letter for me?"
"Certainly," said the officer, who had never heard Cyrus speak in such a tone of voice before. "It is my letter and I must have it."
"Don't say anything to him about what I have told you," said Cyrus. "I am disobeying orders by telling you, and you must keep my secret."
After the boys had all promised to be careful, Guy Preston came out and turned toward the Colonel's quarters. He heard the invitation in the commandant's voice, "Tell him to come in," and Guy entered and found the officer pacing up and down his narrow room as he had seen him twice before. Indeed he did not appear to have anything else to do. He wanted to find some way of getting out of the predicament he was in, and he hoped by walking the floor that something would occur to him.
"Sit down, Mr. Preston," said he.
"Thank you, sir, but I don't want to stop long," was the reply. "I gave you a letter which Winged Arrow gave to me, and you have not returned it. The young savage wanted me to keep that letter in my uniform wherever I went, thinking it might be of service to me if I were captured."
"Why, you don't expect to fall into the power of the Sioux, do you?" said the Colonel with a smile.
"No, sir, I don't expect to, but there is no telling what may happen."
"I thought I would send that in making out my report," said the officer. "If you don't mind, that is what I will do with it."
Guy was astonished and greatly alarmed when he heard this. Aside from the protection which the letter might afford him, there was Cyrus who was particularly anxious to have it, in view of the perilous undertaking which the passing of the hours was rapidly bringing toward him. Cyrus was a favorite with all the officers and men, and he must have the letter if there were any way to bring it about. He did not believe in such things, but Cyrus did, and he thought that the mention of his name would help matters a little.
"I have been talking to Cyrus about it, and he wants to see it," said he, at a venture.
"Oh, Cyrus," exclaimed the Colonel, rising to his feet and going to his desk, "That puts a different look on the affair. I suppose that when he is done with the letter that you will bring it back."
"Yes, sir; when he IS DONE with it," replied Guy, extending his hand for the document.
The Colonel evidently did not notice the emphasis he placed upon the verb, for if he had he would have asked him to explain. He handed out the letter, and, after thanking him for it, Guy put on his cap and left the room.
"I said when he was DONE with it I would return it," said he to himself, as he ran across the parade ground, "that will be after the letter has served his purpose. I hope it will assist him in getting out of the hands of those rascally Sioux, if he is unfortunate enough to fall into them; but I don't know. I would rather see our regiment drawn up with sabers in their hands than to believe in this thing."
Cyrus was in the quarters alone. The young officers having thought of various duties they had yet to perform, had gone away to attend to them. He received the letter with a smile and gave it a good looking-over. "It WAS drawn by an Indian," he remarked, as he folded up the letter and placed it in his pocket.
"Now when you are all through with that, you must give it back to the Colonel," said Guy, "I have promised him that. But it seems to me that you are relying on a poor prop."
"You probably get your notions of Indians from some books that you have read," replied Cyrus. "I never have heard of a war yet in which some prisoner, either white man or savage, did not owe his life to some such thing as this. You never see anything about it in print, because the majority of people they capture are not high enough up to believe in such foolish ideas. They don't believe that because a thing is senseless and can't speak, that it will be of any benefit to them; but you ask some men, who have been out here on the prairie all their lives and have associated with Indians more than they have with the whites, what they think of these things. They will tell you that there is more faith to be put in them than in a regiment of soldiers."
Guy was amazed to hear Cyrus talk in this way. He grew animated and talked like some one who had been through all the books at school, and, furthermore, his words carried weight with them. Guy was encouraged. He hoped that Cyrus would get through in safety with his dispatches, or, failing that, the letter would take him through the hostile ranks of the Sioux and bring him unharmed back to them.
"You talk as though you were not going through," said he, not knowing what else to say.
"Well, those two men who tried it the other night were well up in all that relates to the Indians and the prairie on which they live, and if they did not get through there is a small chance for me. Now I want to lie down and take a little sleep, and when the Orderly comes he will know where to find me."
"I may not see you again and so I will bid you good-by," said Guy, who felt that he was parting from an older brother. He thrust out his hand, and Cyrus took it and clasped it warmly. Not another word was said. The officer put on his hat and left the quarters.
"Don't I wish that I had half the pluck that that man has?" said he to himself. "If that were all, he would hoodwink the savages in some way; but they are too many for him. Good-by Cyrus. I will never see you again."
It was a long night to Guy Preston and his two companions who were with him—two of them were on duty and they did not see much of them—and when the next day came it was harder than ever, for they were obliged to pretend ignorance of Cyrus's whereabouts. When he got up Guy passed the time until breakfast in attending to such duties as were before him, and then he drew a bee line for the guide's headquarters. He wanted to see if anybody there knew anything of Cyrus.
"You tell where Cyrus is," said Tony, who was taking his after-breakfast smoke. "When I went to bed he lay right there; but when I got up this morning his bunk was empty."
"It is my opinion that he has gone off with the dispatches that we failed to get through with the night we tried it," said Mike, who was Tony's partner on that unsuccessful expedition.
"Good land! He can't get through," exclaimed Tony. "I tell you, Lieutenant, the Sioux are thicker than blackberries in a New England pasture out there. Whichever way we turned we saw something to drive us back. The Kurn knows mighty well that we would have gone on if we had seen the ghost of a chance to get through, because all the men here are in the same fix that we are; but what are you going to do when every tuft of grass you look at turns out to be an enemy?"
"Could you see the Sioux?" asked Guy.
"No; but our horses smelled them, and that was enough for us. Whenever they stopped and looked before them with cocked ears and snorted, we went back and tried some other way; but it was the same all around the camp. But I am mighty sorry to lose Cyrus. He was the best fellow in camp."
"Certain. If he isn't captured, the Sioux will drive him back. There's one thing that I have got against him," said the other scout. "He has left his horse behind him. If I had had anything to do with his going away, I should have told him to be sure and take that pony."
Until very recently Guy did not believe that a white man's horse could scent an Indian further than he could see him, but he did believe it now. His experience with his excited horse the morning before had confirmed the story.
"A white man's horse won't go up to an Indian that is lying in the grass," continued the scout. "He will turn out and go some other way; and an Indian's pony acts just the same way with a white man. The horses enter into the spirit of the matter and hate a foe as heartily as their riders do."
Guy had heard all he wanted to hear about Cyrus's disappearance, and returned to his room to get ready for guard mount, for he was to go on duty then. Not one of his roommates could tell him a single thing he had not learned already. No one knew when Cyrus went away, and the only thing for them to do was to wait patiently for two or three days, or until they could hear from Cyrus direct. Guy was glad to have some duties to perform, because they kept him on the move and he did not have as much time to think as he did when left to himself.
At twelve o'clock his relief came on and, after eating his dinner, Guy went into his room and laid down to get a wink of sleep to prepare him for the mid-watch which came on at six o'clock; but it seemed to him that he had scarcely closed his eyes when he was aroused by the long roll and the hurrying of feet outside his quarters. To get up, pull on his boots, seize his coat with one hand and his sword with the other was done in less time than we take to write it, and Guy rushed out to find his company rapidly falling in on the parade ground. Perkins came up at the same instant, and met Guy with some encouraging words.
"The massacre has come and in much less time than Winged Arrow thought it would," said he. "Now where is your letter?"
Guy did not have time to answer, for the sharp voice of the Colonel was heard ordering them to their stations. When Guy got up on the palisade and took his position in readiness to defend the gun which was pointed toward a distant swell, he had opportunity to look about him.
"All ready with that gun?" asked the officer in command.
"All ready, sir," replied the Captain of the piece, squinting along the gun to make sure that it covered the hill. "I can knock the last one of that group if I can get orders to fire now, sir."
Guy looked toward the swell and saw a party of half a dozen warriors there, all of whom were mounted save one. He had just time to note this fact when he saw the dismounted man start down the swell toward the Fort, while the others of the group disappeared behind the hill. The man was plainly a prisoner and had been liberated. Guy's heart seemed to beat loudly as he drew nearer to the officer who commanded the gun and said, in a scarcely audible whisper:—
"Is that Cyrus, sir?"
The man who had a glass removed it from his eyes long enough to stare blankly at Guy, and then, as if getting something through his head, he leveled the glass once more and said, while he caught a momentary glimpse of the figure:—
"By George! I believe you are right."