CHAPTER XIV—THE WARNING
As fast as the catfish were caught they were skinned and dressed. Chet had sliced all the bacon they had brought with them; he told Dig that the way they were feasting now pointed to a fast for the rest of their trip to Grub Stake.
“Don’t worry,” advised his chum. “Let’s give these Indians a good meal for once. They’re good fellows.”
Chet, as chief cook, was hampered by the size of his skillet; Poke had kicked a hole in the largest one the day before. But John Peep cooked the fish for the most part, while Chet fried flapjacks.
And no old cook with a trail outfit could toss a flapjack better than Chet Havens. One of the Indian lads brought clean pieces of bark—one for each person—and Chet slid the cakes on to these make-shift dishes. The fish were handed about on the same platters. There was plenty of seasoning besides the general good appetite.
“Don’t talk!” grumbled Dig. “By this time I don’t know whether I had any breakfast early or not. Don’t be stingy with the cakes, Chet.”
But his chum got tired of tossing flapjacks after a while; to tell the truth, his arm got lame. Then John Peep tried it. The chums discovered that these Indian lads did not call each other by the outlandish names that white people had bestowed upon them. They all spoke of John Peep as “Amoshee,” and Chet quickly began to address him by his Indian name, too.
There was a lot of fun at that breakfast. Indian boys are not like whites in all things, it is true; but they are not lacking in a sense of humour, and as these sat about the campfire in the glade, jokes and quips passed to and fro as they might have at a gathering of white boys.
Chet “counted noses” and said to Amoshee:
“Say, they froze you out of our ball club, but why don’t you have one of your own? Here’s enough of you boys to make up a good nine.”
The Indian lad’s eyes brightened, and he looked proudly around the circle of faces. Their racial features were pronounced; there wasn’t a redskin boy there that could not trace his line back to some big chief of the olden time when the Indian was master of these plains and hills.
“Heap good boys,” Amoshee grunted, but smiled, too, for he only used English in that barbarous way in fun, or when he was excited. Out in the open like this, having thrown off all the shackles of civilisation, his natural thoughts and instincts rose to the surface. “Heap good boys,” he said again, and with pride.
“I should say they were!” exclaimed Chet, with enthusiasm. “Look at that tall fellow yonder. Couldn’t he reach the high ones out in centrefield? My! And that little, squatty fellow—what a shortstop he’d make! Say! don’t they know anything about baseball?”
Amoshee smiled rather pityingly upon his white friend.
“They all play baseball at school—and football, and ev’rything else. I want to go away to Government school if my grandfather will let me.”
“Say! then you’ve got a nine ready-made to your hand. Practise a little,” said Chet. “Get to working together well, and then challenge our high school nine. It would serve them right if you licked them. You’ve a delivery that would puzzle most of them, I tell you.”
Amoshee, otherwise John Peep, thought well of the scheme, it was plain. But meanwhile Digby Fordham and the other Indians had been hatching out something entirely different.
It was already nine o’clock, but Dig was not ready for the trail yet. He had been bragging with the Indians about ponies and riding. Now they had to prove out each other’s prowess.
“Oh, Dig!” complained Chet. “We’ll never get away.”
“Be still!” grinned his chum, knowing what was really troubling Chet. “That old bull buffalo will wait for you, don’t fear.”
“Hush!” warned Chet again.
He had learned from Amoshee that the party of Indian lads was going north on this hunting trip. He did not believe they had heard anything about the herd of buffaloes, and he did not propose to tell them.
Few hunters crossed these valleys and hills at this time of year, and only two men whom he knew of had chanced upon the buffaloes. Neither had been prepared to stalk the beasts, and Chet hoped that nobody else had been along the Grub Stake trail beside which the buffaloes seemed to be feeding.
Meanwhile the Indians were catching their ponies. They did not hobble them as the white boys did, but picketed them out at the end of their lariats. The scrubby little beasts did not look either fast or trustworthy; but Chet and Dig knew what they could do.
They had seen Indians perform on horseback before. With but one line twisted about the pony’s lower jaw, and without even a cloth on its back, an Indian can ride and perform evolutions that are really remarkable.
On the great lawn outside the grove in which they had camped, the Indian youths performed all manner of tricks. Amoshee was one of the best, for on the back of a pony he was the equal of any of his mates. His shortened leg did not count against him there.
They hung by their heels while the ponies scoured the plains, running in a circle. Two rode swiftly, side by side, and picked up a third who lay as though dead on the prairie, and bore him off at full gallop. Two rode from opposite sides and actually changed ponies as they passed!
“Now, white boy,” said the big fellow whom Chet wanted to see in centrefield. “Show what him do.”
Dig was nothing loath. He stripped Poke and brought him out with neither saddle nor bridle. Meanly as the black horse sometimes acted, this was not an occasion when he was likely to play the runaway.
He seemed to understand that there was a contest, and he liked to show off just as well as did his master. The presence of the ponies made him snort and toss his mane; and in the corral he would doubtless have tried to bite them. But he obeyed his master’s voice and hand—even his whistle—now, with most exemplary promptness.
Dig did not try to equal the Indian boys’ tricks; but he had others of his own. He mounted and dismounted while Poke was on the run. He made the mustang lie down under him and roll over, Dig standing on the horse all the time and never once touching the ground.
He rode both kneeling and standing on the mustang’s bare back. Then he cinched on the saddle, dropped his kerchief on the sod and picked it up with his teeth, Poke running like a wolf meanwhile. Amoshee and his friends hailed this last feat as the greatest and they all shook Dig by the hand.
“Guess they think I’m some pumpkins,” Dig said to his chum. “I reckon there isn’t anything a redskin can do that a white man can’t beat him at.”
Of course, he said this when none of the visitors could hear him. Now the Indian lads wanted to see Chet shoot. Probably Amoshee had told them that young Havens excelled in that.
The Indian boys themselves had only the cheapest kind of rifles, and no pistols at all. The chums had their revolvers, and the heavy rifle that Chet had brought with him was almost the equal of a cannon for distance. And the accuracy of its shooting was far superior to that of the Indians’ guns.
So Chet pitted himself with his pistol against the rifles of Amoshee and his friends. At distance marks the Indian boys thought they had Chet beat; but after they had all plugged away at the target, none of them hitting very near the centre, Chet paced ten paces back of the line from which they had shot and came within half an inch of the bull’s-eye at his first shot. With his remaining five bullets he riddled the target.
Then he leaped aboard Hero and showed them some fancy shots with his horse on the run. He and Dig had practised so much in the corral at home that Chet had really become wonderfully expert. Pistol shooting is a matter of eye and practice. Ordinarily one must have a big target to hit with a six-shooter.
The morning was growing old. Even the Indians began to wish to get on. Amoshee drew Chet Havens aside and said:
“I took your advice and went to see Mr. Havens.”
“Bully for you!” exclaimed Chet. “I know my father will be glad to do something for you, if you’ll let him.”
“But I didn’t see him, Chet,” the Indian lad said calmly.
“You didn’t see him?”
“No. He had a visitor. I stayed hidden. I knew that man.”
“Who—the man with father?”
“Yes.”
“Who was he? What did he want?” queried Chet, in wonder.
“I not know what he wanted of Mr. Havens; but I know he is a bad man,” declared the Indian lad with conviction.
“Hel-lo!” exclaimed Chet. “Not that man who—who burned your shack?”
“He’s the man,” grunted Amoshee. “I shall get square with him.”
“But what did he want of father?”
“I not know. He has been around that old mine I showed you. He dug hole into old tunnel. He want something,” said Amoshee shortly.
“Say! can he be the fellow who is after the old Crayton diggings?”
“He after you,” said the Indian.
“What do you mean, John?” cried Chet. “He’s not following us?”
“He’s on this trail before now. Going to Grub Stake. I heard him talk to big man that work in mine—get kicked out—quick! You know?” Amoshee said excitedly.
Chet seemed preternaturally sharp at the moment.
“You don’t mean Tony Traddles? The man who was discharged for the trouble in our mine?”
“That’s he—Tony,” Amoshee assured him. “I heard him spoken to. I followed that man from Mr. Havens’ house. I heard them say they take this trail. You better look out for them. That man mad as he can be.”
“My goodness! what can they want of Dig and me?” queried Chet wonderingly.
“Don’t know. They not friendly. That’s all I can tell you. Me—I go hunting with these boys. I get ’em start last night instead of this morning, so we can catch you and say this. Good-bye!”
He wrung Chet’s hand and leaped astride his impatient pony. The other Indians were already mounted. They all turned at a little distance and gave the Indian yell and threw up their rifles. Then they struck heels to their ponies’ sides and darted away into the north.
“There goes a good bunch of fellows,” Digby Fordham said, with a sigh. “I hadn’t any idea Indians were such good sports.”