“The Little Girl.”
Pioneer days in Texas, and the prairies unbroken by the smoke of a single cabin. To the south the Brazos, and to the west the buffalo lands, the herds crawling in the distance, like huge mud-waves on land, toward their fall feeding grounds.
There had been raids by the Comanches, then hot fighting with the troops and every settler west of the Brazos had run into the fort, each with his family, his man-servant and maid-servant, each with his cattle and his asses. For the Comanches are wily devils and born horsemen. One day they are here, and the next they are not. And they go on ponies that are as tough as their riders, and as fast and as fearless, and no man knows when and where they will strike.
Three full companies of troops had gone north on the track of the desperate band who, but a few days before, had surprised the settlers on the upper Brazos and, after killing and scalping and plundering, had fled, as the troops thought, northward. The stricken settlers had been coming in for two days, all plundered, tired, many wounded and some still sobbing with the grief that would never die.
There were little children—motherless, fatherless. There were mothers and fathers who but a day before held loving ones in their arms.
Troop H, 7th Regiment, was holding the fort while the other companies went north to avenge.
The First Lieutenant of Troop H was a beardless youth just from West Point. He had been shot out of West Point into the saddle and to the front. Two months of it had bronzed him and added two years to his looks; but sentiment was still in him and Romance claimed his for her own. He had had enough fighting for any ordinary trooper, but to-day he felt sad that three companies had gone north after the marauders and he—he held the peaceful fort.
The sun was setting across the great plains and shadows had lengthened to their uttermost when a man on a cow-pony galloped in, not from the north, but from the west.
His pony was reeling at the first gate. It was dead in the fort ten minutes later. The man himself carried two Comanche arrows sticking through a shoulder and an arm. A gash was in his head from a glancing arrow and blood ran from another that had cut across his forehead.
He was unconscious before the surgeon could extract the arrows from his body, but he said enough. The Comanches were not north, but west—they had attacked him in his little squatter cabin forty miles west—they had killed all his stock but one pony—he had no family but a little girl—he had escaped on the pony. “An’ the little gal—God knows—I seed her cut for a dug-out in the side of a hill—a kind of a cellar—where I kept pertatoes an’ sich—then—wal—”
He went to sleep.
“Let him sleep,” said the surgeon, “he is nearly gone as it is—forty miles and blood leakin’ out of him every jump of the pony.”
Ten minutes later the bugler called “boots and saddles,” and when Company H wheeled in the fort’s square, the Captain said:
“Well, men, the boys are on a cold trail. You have heard where the devils are; we can’t all go. Half of us must stay behind to hold the fort. I’ll be fair to all, for I know you all want to go, so count by twos.”
“One,”
“Two.”
“One,”
“Two.”
It went down the line, one hundred strong.
“Numbers Two, ten paces forward, march!”
There was a happy smile on Numbers Two as they spurred forward—they knew what it meant. They were lucky.
“Now, boys, you know I want to lead you,” went on the Captain, “but it isn’t fair. I must take my chances, too, and tote fair with the First Lieutenant. Lieutenant Troup will toss up with me,” he said with a laugh as he tossed a coin from his saddle into the air. It flashed high up in the sunlight.
“Heads for me, Lieutenant, and here’s wishing you—”
“Tails!” said the soldier who picked it up.
The Lieutenant flushed as he spurred forward saluting. Then men cheered again and the Captain wheeled, saying:
“Take them out, Lieutenant Troup—it’s your luck, and maybe—ah, well, you can’t tell how many there are, you know, and half a company is mighty few after sending out three troops. Leave your trinkets, men, and any message you may wish to send home. Yes, it’s a nasty bit of a fight you’ll be having, likely, and I wish it had been my luck to be in it. I have been in service a little longer, you know, perhaps the Lieutenant might—”
But the Lieutenant only smiled and saluted again.
“I’ll do my best, Captain—war is on and it’s my time, you know.”
The Captain pressed his hand as the Company filed out of the fort.
And all the time the Lieutenant kept thinking of the half-dead man who kept saying even in his delirium: “An’ my little gal—God knows—I seed her cut for a dug-out—”
The Lieutenant was young—very young—and he was romantic. He could see the little girl—of course she was about sixteen—all settlers called their grown girls little. Perhaps—well—if she hadn’t been killed—
The troup wanted to gallop, but the Lieutenant brought them to a steady trot:
“It’s all right, men, and ten miles an hour is fast enough. We may need our horses for all that’s in them. We’ll be there by midnight as it is.”
The moon arose and drifted higher and higher and still the troopers struck grimly across the plain. The wind brought the howl of wolves—big greys—and the yelp of coyotes, but the troopers turned neither to the right nor left, and the Lieutenant rode at their head, and all the time he was wondering what had become of the pretty girl—helpless—alone. “An’ my little gal—God knows—I seed her cut for a dug-out!”
It was the first streak of day. The men and horses had been resting for four hours—those not on picket, and some had even slept and were fresh. But the young officer could think of nothing but the little girl, and wonder at her fate.
They had lined in behind a few willows that skirted a small stream and were concealed from the view of the Indians. Then they looked well to rifles and Colts. The light came slowly and as they peered through the mist where the cabin stood only a burnt place blurred the dry grass of the prairie. There were no Indians in sight.
“Thar—look!”
It was an old Indian fighter whose keen eyes saw it first—a thing which looked like a potato-house butting out of a clay bank.
“Thar’s life in thar—see—it’s the little gal, an’ she’s alive yit—see!”
From the protection of small rises on the right three Comanches galloped out encircling the dug-out in a very generous circle. They had slipped on the off-side of their ponies and clung to mane and neck, with one leg and heel thrust over the flank.
The old fighter snarled: “The cowardly coyotes! They seem ter be mighty skeered of a little gal. Say, but they’ve got a whole lot o’ respect for her; she must have a weep’n o’ some sort in thar an’ tort ’em a crackin’ less’n with it, or them dogs ’ud et her up befo’ now; why—thar, by gad—”
He gripped the Lieutenant’s shoulder as a puff of smoke leaped out of the clay bank and the foremost pony stopped so quickly that it went down, Comanche under.
“She’s killed that Indian sho’,” cried the old hunter in a whisper. “No live Comanche was ever cocht under a fallin’ pony. See.”
The pony sprang quickly up—the bullet had creased him; but marvelous the shot!—it had gone to the exact spot where it would bring down a pony creased and a rider with a hole through his head.
“That’s shootin’ some,” cried the old hunter as the young officer gave the quick commands:
“Ready!”
“Mount!”
“Charge!”
“An’ remember the little gal!” they shouted as they broke across the plains.
It was a running fight and the Indians taken by surprise, for they were after the thing in the dug-out. And they paid for it—sixteen dead ones in the first half mile. The others—they had enough to get away from the forty troopers who shot as they rode and shot to kill.
Then the Lieutenant and ten men rode back to the dug-out. They approached it slowly—reverently, and all the time the young officer was thinking of dark eyes and auburn curls and the beauty and bravery of the little girl.
“Hello!” he shouted, his voice trembled in spite of himself. “Hello!—we’re your friends.”
“Hello, yo’self—mighty glad to see you.”
“It’s the little girl, men,” shouted the Lieutenant, boyishly, as he rushed up. “She’s safe! hurrah!” and they gave it with a ring.
At the door he stopped short and looked into the hole under the potato-house.
Then his romance went out as the tide to the sea.
A woman at least thirty-five stood there. Her hair was red, her features hard, her face burned by the sun. Grim, square jaws set off her face. There was a line only to show where her lips met in deadly determination. She wore moccasins and leggins, a short skirt of deer skin and she held in her hand a rifle that had sent a dozen Indians to death in the twelve long hours she had held the little fort. Stuck in her belt were two good pistols. A thousand Comanches with arrows and antiquated guns could not have taken her.
“Oh!” she said, “but I’m glad to see you. Say, but I stood ’em off all right, didn’t I? It was awful—’specially last night, but the moon riz an’ saved me, for a Comanche with an arrow or a old gun is kinder techus ’bout a rifle. Is Pap safe?”
They told her he was.
“I tried to git the old fool to stay. I told him all hell couldn’t git us out o’ this hole, armed as we wus, lessen they come with bilin’ water,” she laughed, “but he got panicky an’ vamoosed on the only pony left. Dad allers was a gal.”
“Good gad,” cried the old hunter bluntly at last, “an’ is you the little gal he kip talkin’ ’bout?”
“Oh, he allers called me that,” she smiled.
“Well, you’re the gamest little gal I ever seed,” and he wrung her hand while the others followed suit. “An’ you’re our little gal now,” went on the old hunter, proudly, “an’ as I ain’t seed one like you since mine died years ago, I’d—I’d—I’d lak to kiss you jes onct for her,” he stammered.
“Oh, you shet up,” she said hotly. “D’ye think I stood off a lot o’ Comanches all night to be rewarded by kissin’ a old grizzly like you? But say,” she added, hesitating, and with a laugh, “I wouldn’t mind kissin’ that pretty little boy thar!”
There was a wild shout from the men, but the young Lieutenant had turned to mount his horse.
“Any way you belong to Company H,” said the old hunter.