Under Fire

by Charles King

CHAPTER XXXI.

It was barely sunrise when Chrome's battalion struck the hostile camp this hot June day, and two hours later the situation was comfortless enough—for the strikers. Hampered with their wounded and having lost a dozen horses killed, the two troops of the Eleventh on whom had devolved the harsher share of the work had been compelled to halt in the timber and stand off the now exultant Indians. With a hundred mounted warriors at his back and as many more afoot in the village, Red Dog promptly took the offensive, sent his yelling braves in big circle all around the clump of timber in which Truman and Cranston had posted their men, cut off communication with Chrome's party, now "doing herd guard duty half a dozen miles up the Ska," as some of Cranston's men derisively said, and then, little by little, established the dismounted braves in every hollow, behind every little ridge or mound, and soon had a complete circle of fire all about the wearied little force. As senior officer, Captain Truman was now in command of the detachment, but between him and Cranston there was a bond of cordial esteem and comradeship, and the command was purely a matter of form. Each had had long years of experience in frontier warfare, each knew just what had to be done, and neither regarded the situation as either desperate or particularly dangerous. It would have been an easy matter to cut their way out anywhere but for the helpless wounded, who would be butchered to a man if left behind. Here in the timber, with water in abundance, and comparative shelter for the disabled men and for the horses under the banks, they could remain until relief should reach them. This with Chrome's two troops not very far away and their own old colonel, with half the regiment, somewhere over in the hills to the southwest, they felt very well assured ought to be only a matter of a few hours. "It was big luck," said Truman, "that our little pack-train got in when it did. Ten minutes later and they'd have been cut off and massacred."

But the further advantage lay with the Indians that they just knew exactly where Chrome was and Tintop, too, and knew that neither one was making the first effort to relieve his surrounded comrades, Tintop because he was twenty miles away and had no knowledge of what was going on at the mouth of the Spirit River, and Chrome because he was utterly rattled by the mounted warriors now beginning to appear in increasing numbers around him. He had sustained no loss to speak of. None of his men had been hit. Only two horses had been struck by their long-range fire. He was, to use his own words, "Really provoked at Truman and Cranston. They might know he needed them in holding such a big herd of ponies." Poor Sanders was in a miserable state of anxiety. He begged the major to let him take ten men and go back to find them, or even to let him go back alone. He pointed out that they must have had a fierce fight. He had found Sergeant Grant dead, and heard the fierce battling in the villages where both troops were engaged, and then he had galloped through the dust-cloud to Chrome, narrowly escaping death as he did so, and told him the situation, confidently expecting that Chrome would turn the ponies loose, rally his men and dash back to the village; but Chrome did nothing of the kind. "They should have come to me," he said. "We're the ones in need," then sent him with an order to Canker, who, out on the right flank, was making the morning blue with blasphemy, and Sanders poured his tale into Canker's ears, and begged him to come and make Chrome understand the situation, and Canker replied that nothing short of a pile-driver could hammer an idea into a skull as thick as Chrome's, and nothing short of a blast get anything out of it. The man was a born idiot and had no more idea how to command cavalry in the field than he, Canker, had of teaching Sunday-school. Oddly enough, many of Canker's contemporaries said the same of him, but one never knows and rarely suspects half what one's brethren say or think of him. The valley was black with ponies, the troopers were black with dust, and a pall as of night hung over the herd, so dense that the sun rays were swallowed up in its depths and gave but little light below, and tears of rage and misery that started from Sanders's eyes trickled down through a sandy desert on each sun-blistered cheek. He rode back to his temporary chief just as an Indian bullet had whizzed in front of the major's nose and made his eyes almost pop from his head. "Don't you see," he urged, reproachfully, "how very much more they are around us? If Truman or Cranston needed help they would have let us know long ago."

After a brisk gallop of three or four miles up the valley of the Ska, the troopers of the —th had permitted the stampeded ponies to take things more leisurely, and so it resulted that by six o'clock many of their number were stopping occasionally to nibble at the grass which grew here luxuriantly, but there was, all the same, a steady, persistent movement of the living mass,—an enforced migration at the rate of at least three miles an hour. Well out on the foot-hills Canker's troop had thrown its flankers, while the other in long skirmish line, with appropriate reserves, interposed between the herd and possible Indian attack from the north. The eastern banks of the Ska along here were high and steep, and the stream flowed deep and rapid at their base, so attack from that quarter was not to be dreaded. All the same, occasional warriors could be seen along the bluff, scampering from point to point, firing long-range chance shots at the officers or men distinguishable through the edge of the dust-cloud, but venturing no closer. It was Chrome's idea, as he frankly said, to keep moving southwestward until Tintop's scouts should see the huge column of dust, and send forth to meet and guide him with his prizes to the colonel's camp. Every quarter-hour, therefore, was taking him farther and father away from his corralled comrades down-stream, but he refused to see it. "Oh, they'll come along all right, Sanders," he declared, as he saw how his adjutant's eyes constantly gazed back beyond the dispersed line of skirmishers, "and we'll have a regular jubilee when we meet your colonel this evening. Some day, perhaps, you'll get a brevet for this."

"Damn the brevet!" groaned the youngster. "Give me a sight of 'C' and 'F' Troops safe and sound, and I'd rather have it than any brevet in creation." Then a brilliant idea struck him. "By the way, major, suppose they don't come along, what will you do for breakfast and dinner? They've got the pack-train—unless the Indians have."

"By heavens, I never thought of the packs. They were way behind when we struck the village," said the major, whipping out his watch. "It's 6.30 now. Sanders, I reckon you'll have to go back and see what's become of them. Take six or eight men from the reserves here and try to rejoin us by eight." And glad enough to slip out from the shadows of that overhanging pall, Sanders went, half a dozen Arizona "jayhawkers" riding silently with him.

And that was the last Major Chrome saw of his battalion adjutant, of the "Eleventh" half of his battalion, and of all but one of the six jayhawkers referred to, in many a long week. One of the latter made his way back afoot in the course of half an hour, saying his horse was shot under him in the valley, which was thick with Indians, and Chrome looked yellow-white and a trifle undecided. But again the big herd of ponies from some unseen cause was in rapid motion, loping away southwestward. All the guards and flankers were on the run, and it was half an hour before things quieted down again, and when eight o'clock came Canker sent in word that there were dozens of Indians on the bluffs ahead where the valley narrowed, and it would be well to halt and round up the herd right there and wait for Cranston and Truman, and Chrome so ordered. Presently the dust-cloud began to settle, and by and by, when it floated slowly to earth again, half a dozen at a time, under cover of their comrades' carbines, the troopers ventured to the stream to fill their canteens and souse their grimy heads. There, peacefully grazing again, were the Indian ponies by the hundreds and their dusty guardians by the score; but, far as eye could see down the beautiful valley, not a sign of Sanders, his party, his comrades of the Eleventh, or, worse than all, of the pack-train, and Chrome and his people were getting hungry.

There were still with him the sergeant and trumpeter who had brought the despatch from Colonel Winthrop, and to them again did Chrome appeal for an estimate of the probable distance and direction of the colonel's camp. With an officer and twenty troopers as an escort they rode to the summit of the nearest bluff on the western shore, and with their field-glasses studied the landscape for miles. Far to the southwest lay the placid valley, unvexed now by sign of hostile force of any kind, and the sergeant indicated, some fifteen miles away, the butte near which they made their crossing of the stream the previous day. Far to the west and northwest rolled a wild, tumbling sea of prairie upland, wave after wave of gray-green earth, spanned at the horizon by the black, pine-covered range of the Medicine Hills, pierced nearly due west from them by the deep slit the sergeant said was Slaughter Cove. To the northwest they could trace the general course of the Wakon valley, though the stream itself was nowhere in view, even among the broader levels toward its mouth, for everything down the Ska beyond a point three miles away was hidden from their sight by the bold cliffs that jutted out almost into the foaming waters. "Somewhere off there, fifteen or twenty miles," said the sergeant, pointing towards Slaughter Cove, "the colonel is probably marching." He had pursued the warriors into the hills after their heavy fight, and wouldn't let up on them till he ran them back to the agency, but the camp where he had left his wounded, his wagons, and supplies and their guard couldn't be more than twenty miles farther up the valley. Of the Indian village they had attacked at sunrise nothing could be seen. Eastward and south westward the opposite bluffs cut off the view, and such Indians as watched them did so from the concealment of the ridges and ravines. Chrome's triumphant rejoicing of the early day was rapidly giving place to uneasiness. In the absence of rations even martial fame is an empty thing. It was a bitter pill to have to go down and consult with Canker, but he did not know what else to do. Noon found him, watched by the lurking Indians among the bluffs, still guarding his captured herd and waiting for Sanders to come along with the pack-train. But there was no dinner for Chrome's command that day, and, by nightfall, even the ponies were gone.

Barely two hours after the triumphant appearance of Red Dog and his reinforcements on the scene of the morning's fight, Truman and Cranston, making the rounds together, came upon Davies among the rifle-pits on the north front, instead of resting with the wounded under the banks. He was still pallid and ill, but, having dressed and bandaged his wound and had a refreshing dip in the stream, he had made his way out among the men. He shook his head gravely in answer to Truman's suggestion that he ought to be lying down. "We are lying down all around here, sir," he said, "and I can get more rest out here than under the banks."

But Truman did not know that, weak as he was, the Parson was dividing his time between the wounded and the effectives, ministering to the one and cautioning the other, for the latter could not always resist the temptation to fire at such Indians as appeared in view within five or six hundred yards, and ammunition might be scarce before the siege was ended. Grimly, but without uneasiness, the command watched Red Dog's scientific manœuvres in his "surround," the mounted warriors being gradually replaced, except on the open prairie, by the bereaved villagers. "Oh, we can stand off double their force easily," was the confident saying of the old hands. "We have food, water, ammunition, and a smart chance for more fighting," so what more could soldier ask? There was even jollity in the little command, despite the losses of the early morning. There was keen and lively interest in Red Dog's movements when, by nine o'clock, it was seen that he was calling most of the mounted warriors around him and could be heard haranguing them at the farther end of the village. None of the lodges had been taken down,—there were no ponies to haul them away,—but those nearest the southern end were now deserted of women and children and used only as shelter for a few lurking braves. Presently on every side the Indian prowlers opened sharp fire on the troops, a long-range and hap-hazard fusillade, for what with logs and earth, sand, trees, and river-banks and little wooded isles, the defence was well covered, only some of the horses being where they could be plainly seen. The bullets came zipping overhead or spitting vengefully into the sand, doing little harm, yet teaching the troopers to lie low; and then in the midst of it all Red Dog rode magnificently away from the north end of the village, across the open prairie, heading for some point far up the valley of the Wakon, and sixty braves rode valiantly at his back. He was a good half-mile away from the defence, but the troopers let drive a few shots, "for old acquaintance' sake," as one of them expressed it, but without disturbing the pomp and dignity of the procession. It was soon out of sight, and then the encircling fire slackened. "Now, what on earth are they up to?" was the question.