Dead Shot; Or, The White Vulture: A Romance of the Yellowstone

by Albert W. Aiken

The two guides stood together by the foremost wagon, leaning on their rifles, surveying the scene before them with a listless air. They were known as Abraham Colt and David Reed—called Abe and Dave, commonly, by their friends. Abe was the elder of the two, a man of about forty-years of age. Tall and straight, he stood nearly six feet high; but weighed not more than a hundred and fifty pounds—all muscle, bone and sinew, no useless flesh about him. A professional prize-fighter would have looked at him in admiration. From his earliest boyhood he had been accustomed to the wild life and dangers of the prairie. His father had been a guide before him, and had reared his son to his calling. The father had died on the prairie, shot through the temple in a Crow attack on a wagon-train—had died in his son’s arms, almost instantly after receiving the ball. From that hour Abe had sworn an oath of vengeance against every red-skin in whose veins ran the blood of the Crow nation.

The story of the death of Abe’s father, and of the oath of vengeance of the son, was of course well known to all the frontier-men; and he was looked upon as a sort of a hero, for, since his father’s death, which occurred some twenty years before the time at which we write, Abe had encountered the braves of the Crow nation in many a desperate fight on the prairie trail by the Yellowstone; and in every contest the guide had been victorious; every time the Crows had attacked a train in which Abe acted as guide, they had been repulsed with great slaughter; his presence seemed to be fatal to them.

Abe would never have been taken by a stranger for the famous Indian-fighter; there was no sign of the desperado about him. His face was well browned by the prairie winds and the rays of the sun; his eyes were large, and gray in color; his chin was shaven as smooth as a young girl’s; his features were strongly marked and the deep wrinkles about the eyes and mouth told of hard service and troubles. He was dressed Indian fashion, in a hunting-shirt of deer-skin, trimmed with porcupine-quills; leggings of the same material, fitting tightly to the leg; moccasins, ornamented with little leaden tags, curiously shaped; upon his head he wore a cap, formed of a portion of a coyote’s skin, with the tail hanging down behind. His hair, black as an Indian’s, was worn short and curled in little ringlets tight to his head. He was a picture worthy the pencil of the artist as he stood leaning carelessly upon his rifle, gazing upon the little groups before him. One approaching him from the rear would have taken him from his dress to be an Indian chief.

His companion, the other guide, was a young man, probably not over twenty, called David Reed. His history was a strange one. A party of United States troops, some nineteen years before the time of which we write, had surprised a party of Blackfeet Indians encamped near the head-waters of the Missouri. The savages had been on a raid against the white frontier settlements on the upper Missouri, and the soldiers had followed in pursuit. They surprised the Indians and a bloody fight ensued; the Indians were outnumbered and nearly exterminated. After the fight, the soldiers found a baby boy snugly wrapped in a blanket near the Indian camp. From his dark complexion and from the outline of his features, they concluded that he was a half-breed, possibly the child of one of the Indian braves by a white wife, because it is a very common thing for the Indians to carry off white girls in their frontier raids and force them to become their wives. Why the child should have been carried with the war-party contrary to the usual custom of the savages puzzled the old Indian-fighter, who acted as guide to the soldiers. He carefully examined the encampment, and finally discovered the footprints of a woman. It was evident, then, that there had been a squaw with the party, and possibly that squaw was one of the white wives that the great chiefs sometimes have; though why the chief should carry her on a marauding expedition was a mystery.

The soldiers took the child back with them to their post; the infant was apparently a year old. The captain in command of the troops acted as sponsor to the child thus strangely found in the desert, and called it David Reed.

The infant grew apace. Years passed on: the child became a man and adopted the profession of prairie guide, and was noted on the upper Missouri as one of the surest shots and best guides in all the upper valley.

In appearance, he was a fine-looking fellow, standing about five feet nine, well proportioned and well built; his face was pleasing; there was something noble about it—an air of native dignity, akin to that of the red-skins; his eyes were large, jet-black and full of fire; his nose long and straight; the chin, square and well formed, firm-set lips, that showed resolution and strength of purpose; his bronzed face, the high cheek-bones and jet-black hair, that slightly curled at the ends, worn long and floating down over his shoulders, alone showed the Indian blood.

He was dressed roughly. A red shirt, thrown open carelessly at the neck and exposing his finely-formed throat; a pair of dark butternut homespun pantaloons that had been cut open at the side and fitted into the leg, Indian fashion; a pair of moccasins, which, from the peculiar trimming, an old Indian-fighter would have pronounced to be of Sioux manufacture; a belt of untanned deer-skin girded around his waist, supporting a broad-bladed hunting-knife and a serviceable-looking revolver, and we have the pen-picture of Dave Reed.

Reed had met the “Crow-Killer” in Montana, some three years before the time at which we commence our story. A singular friendship had sprung up between the two men, and from that time they never had separated. Lucky was the wagon-train that obtained the services of the “Crow-Killer” and young Dave Reed, as his friends called him, for a trip across the upper plains!

“Does that fellow there belong to our train?” asked Dave of the “Crow-Killer,” directing his attention to a man who stood apart from all the rest near the bank of the river.