ONE OF THE FAIR SEX COMES TO HIS RESCUE.
Before I comprehended that the indomitable female stood beside me, the train was puffing pitilessly away.
"Oh, stop! stop! stop! stop!" I called and yelled in an agony of apprehension; but I might as well have appealed to the wind that went whistling by.
"Perhaps the locomotive will hear you, and down brakes of its own accord," said Miss Spitfire, scornfully. "I told ma I was gwine to get a husband 'fore I got to Californy, an' I have got one. You jest set down on that bowlder, an' don't you try to make a move till the train from 'Frisco comes along. Then you git aboard along with me, an' if there ain't no minister to be found in them cars, I'll haul you off at Columbus, where there's two to my certain knowledge."
She had her revolver in her hand, directed point blank at my quivering, quaking heart. Though I am bashful, I am no coward, and I thought for full two minutes that I'd let her fire away, if such was her intention.
"Better be dead than live in a land so full of women that I can never hope for any comfort!" I thought, bitterly; and so confronted the enemy in the growing calmness of despair.
"Ain't you a-going fur to set down on that bowlder?"
"No, madam, I am not! I would rather be shot than married, at any time. Why! I was going to fight the Indians with Buffalo Bill, on purpose to get rid of the girls."
Sally looked at me curiously; her outstretched arm settled a little until the revolver pointed at my knee instead of my heart.
"P'raps you've been disappointed in love?" she queried.
"Not that entirely," I answered, honestly.
"P'raps you've run away from a breach of promise?"
"Oh, no! no, indeed!"
"What on airth do you want to get rid o' the girls fur, then?"
"Miss Spitfire," said I, scraping the gravel with the toe of my boot, "I'm afraid of them. I'm bashful."
"Bashful!" Miss Spitfire cried, and then she began to laugh.
She laughed and laughed until I believed and hoped she would laugh herself into pieces. The idea struck this creature in so ludicrous a light that she nearly went into convulsions. She, alas, had never been troubled by such a weakness. I watched my opportunity, when she was doubled up with mirth, to snatch the revolver from her hand.
The tables were now turned, but not for long. She sprang at me like a wildcat; I defended myself as well as I could without really hurting her, maintaining my hold on the revolver, but not attempting to use it on my scratching, clawing antagonist. The station-master came out of Lone Tree station, a mile away, and walked up the track to see what was going on. Of course he had no notion of what it was, but it amused him to see the fight, and he kept cheering and urging on Miss Sally, probably with the idea that she was my wife and we were indulging in a domestic squabble. At the same time it chanced that a boat load of six or eight of the roughest fellows it had ever been my lot to meet, and all with their belts stuck full of knives and revolvers, came rowing across the river, not far away, and landed just in time to "see the fun." When Miss Spitfire saw these ruffians she ceased clawing and biting me, and appealed to them.
I was dumbfounded by the falsehood ready on her lips.
"Will you, gentlemen," said she, "stand by and see a young lady deserted by this sneak?"
"What's up?" asked a brawny fellow, seven feet high, glaring at me as if he thought I had committed seventeen murders.
"I'll tell you," responded Spitfire, panting for breath. "We was engaged to be married, we was, all fair an' square. He pretended to be goin' through the train to look fur a minister fur to tie the knot, an' just sneaked off the train, when it stopped yere; but I see him in time, an' I jumped off, too, an' I nabbed him."
"Shall we hang the little skunk up to yonder tree? or shall we set him up fur a target an' practice firing at a mark fur about five minutes? Will do whatever you say, young lady. We're a rough set; but we don't lay out to see no wimmen treated scurvy."
I'm no coward, as I said, but I dare say my face was not very smiling as I met the flashing eyes and saw the scowling brows of those giant ruffians, whose hands were already drawing the bowie-knives and pistols from their belts. But I steadied my voice and spoke up:
"Boys," said I, very friendly, "what's the use of a pair hitching together who do not like each other, and who will always be uneasy in harness? If I married her, she would be sorry. Come, let us go up to the station and have something to drink. Choose your own refreshments, and don't be backward."
There was a good deal of growling and muttering; but the temptation was irresistible. The result was that in half an hour not a drop of liquor remained to the poor fellow who kept the station—that I paid up the score "like a man," as my drunken companions assured me, who now clapped me familiarly on the shoulder, and called me "Little Grit," as a pet name—that Miss Spitfire, minus her revolver, sat biting her nails about two rods away—and that she waited anxiously for the expected arrival of the 'Frisco train, bound eastward.
"Come, now, Little Grit," said the leader of the band, when the whisky had all disappeared, "you was gwine with Buffalo Bill; better come along with me—I'm a better fellow, an' hev killed more Injuns than ever Bill did. We're arter them pesky redskins now. A lot of 'em crossed the stream a couple o' nights ago, and stole our best horses. We're bound to hev 'em back. Some o' them red thieves will miss their skalps afore to-morrow night. A feller as kin fight a woman is jist the chap for us. You come along; we'll show you how to tree your first Injun."
The long and the short of it was I had to go. I did not want to. I thought of my mother, of Belle, of Blue-Eyes, and I hung back. But I was taken along. These giants, with their bristling belts, did not understand a person who said "no" to them. And as the secondary effect of the liquor was to make them quarrelsome, I had to pretend that I liked the expedition.
Not to weary the reader, we tracked the marauders, and came across them at earliest dawn the following morning, cooking their dog-stew under the shelter of a high bluff, with the stolen horses picketed near, in a cluster of young cottonwoods.
I have no talent for depicting skirmishes with the redskins; I leave all that to Buffalo Bill. I will here simply explain that the Indians were surprised, but savage; that the whites were resolved to get back their horses, and that they did get them, and rode off victorious, leaving six dead and nine wounded red warriors on the battle-ground, with only one mishap to their own numbers.
The mishap was a trifling one to the border ruffians. It was not so trifling to me.
It consisted of their leaving me a prisoner in the hands of the Indians.
I was bound to a tree, while the wretches jabbered around me, as to what they should do for me. Then, while I was reflecting whether I would not prefer marriage with Miss Spitfire to this horrible predicament, they drove a stake into the ground, untied me, led me to the stake, re-tied me to that, and piled branches of dry cottonwood about me up to my neck.
Then one of them ran, howling, to bring a brand from the fire under the upset breakfast pot.
I raised my eyes to the bright sun, which had risen over the plain, and was smiling at my despair. The hideous wretch came running with the fire-brand. The braves leaped, danced, and whooped.
I closed my eyes. Then a sharp, shrill yell pierced the air, and in another moment something touched my neck. It was not the scorching flames I dreaded. I opened my eyes. A hideous face, copper-colored, distorted by a loving grin, was close to mine; a pair of arms were about my neck—a pair of woman's arms! They were those of a ferocious and ugly squaw, old enough to be my mother. The warrior with the fire-brand was replacing it, with a disappointed expression, under the stewed dog. I was saved!
All in a flash I comprehended the truth. Here was I, John Flutter, enacting the historical part of the John Smith, of Virginia, who was rescued by the lovely Pocahontas.
This hideous creature smirking in my face was my Pocahontas. It was not leap-year, but she had chosen me for her brave. The charms of civilized life could no longer trouble me. She would lovingly paint my face, hang the wampum about my waist, and lead me to her wigwam in the wilderness, where she would faithfully grind my corn and fricassee my puppy. It was for this I had escaped Sally Spitfire—for this that my unhappy bashfulness had driven me far from home and friends.
She unfastened the rope from the stake, and led me proudly away. My very soul blushed with shame. Oh, fatal, fatal blunder!