Story 1—Chapter XXII.
A Fight for Life!
In the excitement of starting the stamps, the usual precautions which had been previously practised, of posting sentinels and keeping their arms ready, were for the moment forgotten; but after the first startle of surprise at being so unexpectedly attacked passed over, there was a general rush to cover of all the members of the party, behind the breastwork of earth that the young engineer had caused to be thrown up round the spot facing the river all along its right bank, the men catching up their rifles and cartridge-pouches—which lay here and there about as they had dropped them in their expectancy while waiting the result of the weighing—as they ran to shelter themselves and prepared to return the fire of their foes.
All the miners rushed to the breastwork save one, and that was Seth.
At the instant he turned, like his comrades, to seek the protection of the rampart, towards which the others hastened, an arrow struck Sailor Bill slanting-wise across his forehead, and, tossing up his hands, the poor boy, who was standing on the timber which led to the wheel, tumbled over into the foaming water below that was seething like a whirlpool.
Uttering a frenzied ejaculation of anguish and grief, Seth plunged into the flood, and an instant after dragged forth Sailor Bill’s body, heedless of the arrows and bullets of the Indians, the former of which darkened the air in their passage around him, while the latter whistled through his garments.
The intrepid fellow seemed to bear a charmed life, for not a shot nor a barbed head of the savages’ feathered missiles reached him as he pulled the poor boy’s apparently lifeless body from the water, Seth not being content until he had hauled it up beneath the breastwork; when with a shout of vengeance he seized his rifle and set to work to aid the others in dealing death on those who had, as he thought, killed his protégé.
It was a terrific fight whilst it lasted.
Mingled with the war-whoop of the Sioux, which was repeated ever and anon, as if to excite them anew to the carnage, came the fierce exclamations of the miners, and the calm word of command from Mr Rawlings occasionally, to restrain the men from getting too flurried.—He certainly showed himself worthy of the post of leader then!
“Steady, boys! Don’t waste your fire. Aim low; and don’t shoot too quickly!”
“Ping! ping!” flew the bullets through the smoky medium with which they were surrounded, while an occasional “thud” evinced the fact that one of their assailants had fallen:—“ping, ping, ping!” it was a regular fusillade;—and the miners delivered their fire like trained soldiers from behind the breastwork that had so providentially been erected in time!
Presently there was a rush of the redskins, and the besieged party could hear the voice of Rising Cloud encouraging his warriors, and taunting those he attacked.
“Dogs of palefaces!” cried the chief, “your bones shall whiten the prairie, and your blood colour the buffalo grass, for your treatment of Rising Cloud in the morn of the melting of the snow! I said I would come before the scarlet sumach should spring again on the plains; and Rising Cloud and his warriors are here!”
Then came the fearful war-whoop again, with that terrible iteration at its end “Who—ah—ah—ah—ah—oop!” like the howl of a laughing hyaena.
The river alone interposed between the whites and their enemy, and gave them a spell of breathing time, but in spite of this protection, the odds were heavy against them; for what could even sixteen resolute men, as the party now numbered—for one had been mortally wounded by a chance shot, and although Josh the negro cook could tight bravely and did, Jasper was not of much use—do in a hand-to-hand struggle with hundreds of red-skinned human devils thirsting for their blood?
The river, however, was a great help, especially now that it had been converted into a mill-race, and flooded beyond its usual proportions; for, when the Indians rushed into the water to wade across and assault the camp at close quarters, as the shallowness of the stream at that season of the year would previously have easily enabled them to have done, they found, to their astonishment, first that the current, which they did not expect to be more than a foot deep, rose above their waist-belts, then above their armpits, and finally above their heads, as, pushed onwards by their companions behind, they were submerged in the flood; while the miners, still sheltered by Ernest Wilton’s trenched rampart above, rained down a pitiless hail of bullets into the half-drowned mob, whose very strength now proved their principal weakness.
“Give it ’em, b’ys: remember poor Sailor Bill!” shouted Seth, his blood up to fever heat with passion, and the murderous spirit of revenge strong in his heart. “Give ’em goss, an’ let nary a one go back to tell the story!”
“Steady, men, and fire low!” repeated Mr Rawlings.
And the miners mowed the redskins down by the score with regular volleys from their repeating rifles, although twenty fresh Indians seemed to spring up in the place of every one killed.
The fight was too severe to last long, and soon a diversion came.
As Rising Cloud, raising his tomahawk on high, and, leading the van of his warriors, was bringing them on for a decisive charge, several sharp discharges, as if from platoon firing, were heard in the rear of the Indians.
Just then, a bullet from Ernest Wilton’s rifle penetrated the chief’s brain, and he fell dead right across the earth rampart in front of the young engineer. The platoon firing in the rear of the savages was again repeated; the United States troops had evidently arrived to the rescue; and, taken now between two fires, and disheartened by the fall of Rising Cloud, the Sioux broke, and fled in a tumultuous mass towards the gorge by which they had entered the valley of Minturne Creek.
The struggle over, the miners had time to count casualties, and see who amongst their number had fallen in the fray.
Thanks to Ernest Wilton’s breastwork, their losses had not been very heavy.
Noah Webster was slightly wounded, and Black Harry badly; while the only one killed outright was Tom Cannon, the whilom keen-sighted topman of the Susan Jane, who would never sight wreck or sail more, for Sailor Bill was only wounded, and not dead, after all.
Jasper, who had been hiding beneath the embankment beside the boy’s supposed lifeless body, had perceived signs of returning animation in it, to which he immediately called the attention of Seth and also Mr Rawlings, and the three were bending over the figure in a moment. Just almost a year before they were bending over Sailor Bill in precisely the same way in the cabin of the Susan Jane. The Indian’s arrow had ploughed under the skin of the boy’s forehead nearly at the same place that bore the scar of his former wound when he had been picked up at sea, and could not have inflicted any dangerous injury; it was evidently the shock of falling into the foaming torrent from the tunnel, as it rushed into the river, that had rendered Sailor Bill senseless for the time being.
He was now coming back to himself, for his limbs twitched convulsively, and there was a faint tremor about the eyelids.
Just then Ernest Wilton came up and stood by the side of Mr Rawlings, while Seth was rubbing the boy’s bared chest vigorously with his brawny hand to hasten the restoration of the circulation; and at that moment Sailor Bill opened his eyes—eyes that were expressionless no longer, but with the light of reason in their hidden intelligence—and fixed his gaze on the young engineer as if he recognised him at once.
“Ernest!” the boy exclaimed wonderingly, “what brings you here? Why, where am I?”
And he looked from one to the other of the group around him in a half-puzzled way, “Jerusalem!” ejaculated Seth, jumping to his feet and turning to the young engineer. “He knows you, mister. Ken you rec’lect him?”
“By Jove!” said Ernest, “I do believe it’s my cousin, Frank Lester, now I hear his voice. Frank!”
“Yes, Ernest,” answered the boy, heaving a sigh of relief. “Then it is you after all. I thought I was dreaming.”
And he sank back into a calm sleep as if he were in bed.