CHAPTER XXXI.
THE ALARM.
Ambrose was pacing his log prison once more. The earth had been filled in, the hole in the floor roughly repaired, and now his jailers took turns in patrolling around the shack.
Imprisonment was doubly hard now. Day and night Nesis's strange cries of terror rang in his ears. He knew something about the Indians' ideas of punishing women. His imagination never ceased to suggest terrible things that might have befallen her.
"God! Every one that comes near me suffers!" he cried in his first despair.
The explanation of their surprise proved simple. Watusk and his crew, pursuing them in two dugouts, had seen the smoke of their fire from up the river.
They had landed above the point and, making a short detour inland, had fallen on Ambrose and Nesis from behind. Nesis had been carried back in one dugout, Ambrose in the other.
During the trip no ill-usage had been offered her, as far as he could see, but upon reaching the village she had been spirited away, and he had not seen her since.
His last glimpse had shown him her child's face almost dehumanized with terror.
Ambrose now for the first time received a visit from Watusk. Watusk had also traveled in the other dugout ascending the river, and they had exchanged no words.
He came to the shack attended by his four little familiars, and the door was closed behind them. These four were like supers in a theater. They had no lines to speak. Watusk's aspect was intended to be imposing.
In addition to the red sash he now wore three belts, the first full of cartridges, the second supporting an old cavalry saber, the third carrying two gigantic .45 Colts in holsters.
He carried the Winchester over his arm, and still wore the grimy pith helmet. Ambrose smiled with bitter amusement. It seemed like the very sport of fate that he should be placed in the power of such a poor creature as this.
"How!" said Watusk, offering his hand with an affable smile.
Ambrose, remembering the look of his face when it rose over the bank, was sharply taken aback. He lacked a clue to the course of reasoning pursued by Watusk's mongrel mind. However, he quickly reflected that it was only by exercising his wits that he could hope to help Nesis. He took the detestable hand and returned an offhand greeting.
"You mak' beeg mistak' you try run away," said Watusk. "You mos' safe here."
"How is that?" asked Ambrose warily.
"I your friend," said Watusk.
Ambrose suppressed the inclination to laugh.
"I keep you here so people won't hurt you," Watusk went on. "My people lak children. Pretty soon forget what they after. Pretty soon forget they mad at you. Then I let you out."
"Do you still mean to say that I killed one of your men?" demanded
Ambrose hotly.
Watusk shrugged. "Myengeen say so."
"It's a lie!" cried Ambrose scornfully. An expectant look in Watusk's eye arrested him from saying more. "He's trying to find out how much Nesis told me," he thought. Aloud he said, with a shrug like Watusk himself: "Well, I'll be glad when it blows over."
"Two three day I let you out," Watusk said soothingly. "You can have anything you want."
"How is Nesis?" demanded Ambrose abruptly.
There was a subtle change in Watusk's eyes; no muscle of his face altered.
"She all right," he said coolly.
"Where is she?"
"I send her to my big camp 'cross the river."
"You shouldn't blame Nesis for helping me out," Ambrose said earnestly—not that he expected to make any impression. "She's only a child. I made her do it."
Watusk spread out his palms blandly. "I not blame her," he said. "I not care not'ing only maybe you get drown in the rapids."
Ambrose studied the brown mask narrowly. Watusk gave nothing away.
Suddenly the Indian smiled.
"You t'ink I mad for cause she go wit' you?" he said. He laughed silently. "Wa! There are plenty women. When I let you out I give you Nesis."
This sounded a little too philanthropic.
"H-m!" said Ambrose.
"You lak little Nesis, hey?" inquired Watusk, leering.
Ambrose was warned by a crafty shadow in the other man's eye.
"Sure!" he said lightly. "Didn't she help me out of here?"
"You lak talk wit' her, I t'ink."
Ambrose thought fast. The only English words Nesis had spoken in Watusk's hearing were her cries of fright at his appearance. In the confusion of that moment it was possible Watusk had not remarked them.
"Talk to her?" said Ambrose, simulating surprise. "Only by signs."
"How she get you out, then?" Watusk quickly asked.
This was a poser. To hesitate was to confess all. Ambrose drew a quick breath and plunged ahead.
"Why, she and a lot of girls were picking berries that day. They came around the shack here and began to jolly me through the window. I fixed Nesis with my eye and scared her. I made a sign for her to bring me a knife. She brought it at night. I put my magic on her and made her help me dig out and get me an outfit. I was afraid she'd raise an alarm as soon as I left, so I made her come, too."
"Why you tak' two canoe?" asked Watusk.
"In case we should break one in the rapids."
"So!" said Watusk.
Ambrose lighted his pipe with great carelessness. He was unable to tell from Watusk's face if his story had made any impression. Thinking of the conjure-man, he hoped the suggestion of magic might have an effect.
"I let you out now," said Watusk suddenly. "You got promise me you not go way from here before I tell you go. Give me your hand and swear."
Ambrose smelled treachery. He shook his head. "I'll escape if I can!"
Watusk shrugged his shoulder and turned away.
"You foolish," he said. "I your friend. Good-by."
"Good-by," returned Ambrose ironically.
Ambrose walked his floor, studying Watusk's words from every angle. The result of his cogitations was nil. Watusk's mind was at the same time too devious and too inconsequential for a mind like Ambrose's to track it. Ambrose decided that he was like one of the childish, unreasonable liars one meets in the mentally defective of our own race. Such a one is clever to no purpose: he will blandly attempt to lie away the presence of truth.
In the middle of the afternoon Ambrose, making his endless tramp back and forth across the little shack, paused to take an observation from the window, and saw three horsemen come tearing down the trail into camp.
They flung themselves off their horses with excited gestures, and the camp was instantly thrown into confusion. The natives darted among the teepees like ants when their hill is broken into.
Watusk appeared, buckling on his belts. The women that were left in camp started to scuttle toward the river, dragging their children after them.
Ambrose's heart bounded at the prospect of a diversion. Whatever happened, his lot could be no worse. At the first alarm three of his jailers had run down to the teepees. They came back in a hurry.
The door of the shack was thrown open, and the whole six rushed in and seized him. Ambrose, seeking to delay them, struggled hard. They finally got his hands and feet tied, cursing him heartily in their own tongue. They hustled him down to the riverside.
All the people left on this side were already gathered there. They continually looked over their shoulders with faces ashen with terror. The men who had horses drove them into the river and swam across with a hand upon the saddle.
The women and children were ferried in the dugout. So great was their haste they came empty-handed. The teepees were left as they stood with fires burning and flaps up.
Watusk passed near Ambrose, his yellow face livid with agitation.
"What's the matter?" cried the white man.
The chief was afflicted with a sudden deafness. Ambrose was cast in a dugout. The indefatigable Job hopped in after and made himself small at his master's feet.
The mad excitement of the whole crowd inspired Ambrose with a strong desire to laugh. The water flew in cascades from the frantic paddles of the boat-men.
Arriving on the other side, Ambrose was secured on a horse, as on his first journey, and instantly despatched inland with his usual guard. As he was carried away they were dragging up the dugouts and concealing them under the willows. Watusk was sending men to watch from the cemetery on top of the bold hill.
Ambrose's guards led his horse at a smart lope around a spur of the hill and along beside a wasted stream almost lost in its stony bed. A dense forest bordered either bank. The trail was broken and spread by the recent passage of a large number of travelers; these would be the main body of the Kakisas a week before. Ambrose guessed that they were following the bed of a coulée.
Through the tree-tops on either hand he had occasional glimpses of steep, high banks.
After a dozen miles or so of this they suddenly debouched into a verdant little valley without a tree. The stream meandered through it with endless twists.
Except for two narrow breaks where it entered and issued forth, the hills pressed all around, steep, grassy hills, fantastically knobbed and hollowed.
The floor of the valley was about a third of a mile long and half as wide. It was flat and covered with a growth of blue-joint grass as high as a man's knee.
The whole place was like a large clean, green bowl flecked here and there with patches of bright crimson where the wild rose scrub grew in the hollows.
Ambrose, casting his eyes over the green panorama, was astonished to see at intervals around the sky-line little groups of men busily at work. They appeared to be digging; he could not be sure. One does not readily associate Indians with spades. His guards pointed out the workers to one another, jabbering excitedly in the uncouth Kakisa.
They rode on through the upper entrance of the valley and plunged into forest again. Another mile, and they came abruptly on the Indian village hidden in a glade just big enough to contain it.
It had grown; there were many more teepees in sight than Ambrose had counted before. They faced each other in two long double rows with a narrow green between. Down the middle of the green ran the stream, here no bigger than a man might step across.
Ambrose was unceremoniously thrust into one of the first teepees and, bound hand and foot, left to his own devices. He managed to drag himself to the door, where he could at least see something of what was going on. He looked eagerly for a sight of Nesis, or, failing her, one of the girls who had accompanied her on the berry-picking expedition, and who might be induced to give him some honest information about her. He was not rewarded.
All who entered the village from the east passed by him. Watusk and the rest of the people from the river arrived in an hour.
Here among safe numbers of their own people they recovered from their alarm. Ambrose suspected their present confidence to be as little founded on reason as their previous terror. Watusk, strutting like a turkey-cock in his military finery, issued endless orders.
At intervals the workers from the hills straggled into camp. Ambrose saw that they had been using their paddles as spades. A general and significant cleaning of rifles took place before the teepees.
At dusk two more men rode in, probably outposts Watusk had left at the river. One held up his two bands, opening out and closing the fingers twice. Ambrose guessed from this that the coming police party numbered twenty.
The last thing he saw as darkness infolded the camp was the boys driving in the horses from the hills.