LO, THE POOR INDIAN!
Dave King, editor of the Morris County Press, Morristown, New Jersey, was reared a lariat man in the Wild and Woolly, in the days before civilization, rum and guns had subdued the Cheyennes, the Comanches and the Sioux to extinction or to the more uncongenial fate of enforced good behavior.
In all of Dave’s hair-ruffling experiences—corralling stampeding long-horns, lassoing and riding a bull-buffalo bare-back, hunting, with Rex Beach, the great Kadiak bear in Alaska, whose enormous bulk and Ivan-the-Terrible disposition would by comparison make the grizzly of the Rocky Mountains a gentle companion—his most intimately interesting, close-to-nature adventure was when he was ten years old, and dwelt upon the upper waters of the Arkansas.
Dave’s father, a husky pioneer, accompanied by his ten-year-old son, his brother, “Uncle Joe,” an assortment of dogs, guns and ammunition, embracing a dozen kegs of gunpowder, had gone there to stake a squatter’s claim, hunt buffalo and grow up with the country.
Timber was scarce, so, after the manner of the troglodyte, they burrowed out a room in the side of a hill, which constituted at once cook-room, dining-room and parlor, and also museum of rare weapons, dog-kennel and powder-magazine. The cook-stove was placed in the middle of the room, and the flue was run up through the ground for ventilation and the escape of products of combustion.
One day, Dave’s father and Uncle Joe went on a buffalo hunt, much to the disconsolation of Dave, who wanted to go along. Toward the end of the afternoon following the departure of the hunters, Dave built a roaring fire in the stove to keep himself company, and incidentally to prepare supper for himself and the hunters, who were expected to return before sundown.
His eyes regarded longingly a double-barreled shotgun hung on the wall. He had many times been warned by his father to exercise caution in handling the guns during his absence, but Dave had the dare-devil spirit of his parent, with the added impulses of the small boy, and he took down the shotgun and fondled it lovingly, examining its firing mechanism. Then he proceeded to return it to its hanging, not noticing that he had left one of the hammers cocked. He did not know that the gun was loaded, and he would not have been deterred had he known. In putting up the weapon he accidentally touched the trigger of the cocked hammer and the charge in that barrel exploded, sending shot and burning wads under the sleeping-bunks, just missing one of the kegs of gunpowder.
Dave proceeded with his cooking, but soon he smelled smoke, and looking under the bunks discovered, to his horror, that a fire had started. Under the bunks he went, pawed at the fire with his hands, and smothered it with his hat, until he thought that he had extinguished the last spark. Then he started for a water-hole an eighth of a mile distant, to get a pail of water, accompanied by his favorite dog.
When he got out into the open, he saw a dozen horsemen just coming into view over a rising ground between him and the sinking sun. He thought at first that his father was bringing company home to dinner, and he waited and watched. But he soon saw by the feathered and blanketed make-up and demeanor of the horsemen that they were savages on the warpath.
Dave was not long getting himself and his dog out of sight in a badger-hole which he had, during many days of hard labor, enlarged for a playhouse.
The Indians were a party of Cheyennes who had been forcibly located in the Indian Territory by the Government. On this occasion, half a thousand of those fierce warriors decided to go on the warpath and return to their former hunting grounds in Wyoming. On their way they burned houses and slew and scalped everybody that fell in their path. Among many other outrages they, for a little diversion, killed and scalped a young woman school-teacher and forty pupils. United States troops then rounded them up and corralled them in Fort Robinson, Nebraska. One night they made a break to escape and the soldiers, now out of patience, killed the whole bunch.
But to return to Dave: When the Indians saw the smoke coming out of the top of the ground, their curiosity was excited, and discovering that it was a dwelling they rode round it, red-man fashion, in a constantly narrowing circle, firing guns and war-whooping.
The dog began to bark and struggle to free himself to get after those Indians, but Dave thrust his hand into the animal’s mouth, and grasping his lower jaw managed to keep him from barking. It took all of Dave’s strength to hold that dog, but he knew that it meant life or death, for if the dog should escape he would betray their hiding-place.
The Indians, finding no sign of life in the dugout except the barking dogs that Dave had shut in, came closer and closer. Half a dozen of them got up on the top of the dugout, and the others bunched themselves in close to the entrance, preparatory to rushing the place.
But Dave had not succeeded in extinguishing the last spark of the fire that he had started under the bunks, so, coincidentally with the Indians arranging themselves about the cavern, the twelve kegs of gunpowder went into action.
Dave could not imagine what had happened. He thought that possibly the Indians had captured the gunpowder and exploded it purposely, but he did not dare to emerge from his hiding.
There was an interval of silence. There were no more war-whoops, and he concluded that the Indians had departed. They had, but not exactly in the manner that Dave imagined.
The parent and Uncle Joe, returning on the edge of evening, were dumbfounded at finding only a great hole in the ground where the dwelling had been. Dave’s father wrung his hands and bemoaned the loss of his boy, while Uncle Joe consoled him with the usual I-told-you-so that he ought not to have kept the gunpowder in the place.
They began a diligent search for any souvenirs of Dave that might have happened to return to Mother Earth. After they had gathered up about a wagon-load of the disintegrated Indians, Uncle Joe suggested that they must be on the wrong scent.
At this puzzling juncture, Dave, hearing the voices of his father and Uncle Joe, cautiously emerged from his hiding. When he came in sight, Uncle Joe said, “There’s Dave now! There’s your boy!” His father looked blankly at him for a moment. Though the vision looked like Dave he could not trust it. He said, “No, it can’t be my boy! It can’t be my boy!”
But it was; and Dave is still with us.
Transcriber’s Notes
Printer inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.