This evening volunteers were called for, to steal through the deadly circle and carry messages to Fort Wallace, one hundred miles south. There was no lack of men eager to try; Scouts "Pet" Trudeau and "Mack" Stillwell were chosen.
Scout Trudeau was a grown man, but Jack Stillwell was only nineteen, and boyish looking. Nevertheless, he, too, was a man. He knew Indians and he knew the plains; he was able to give a good account of himself. Scout Trudeau asked no better comrade on the danger trail.
They prepared to leave in the dark. At midnight they shook hands with their officer and their nearest fellows. With a piece of horse-flesh for food, with revolvers at belts and carbines in hand, and their boots slung from their necks, in their stockinged feet they quietly vanished, wrapped in their blankets so as to look as much like Indians as possible.
At first Trudeau led, because he was the older; toward the end Jack Stillwell led, because he proved to be the stronger. As they crossed from the little island to the dry bottom of the river-bed, they turned and walked backward. On the sand their stockinged feet made tracks like moccasin tracks, all pointing for the island. The Indians would not know that anybody had escaped.
Quiet reigned all around, except for the yapping of the coyotes. But they two were well aware that the camps of six hundred warriors were scattered everywhere, resting only until daylight.
Having entered the dry channel of the river, they did another wise thing. They crossed it, instead of keeping on down; and crawling, they stuck to the high ground, even the tops of the bare ridges, instead of taking to the ravines and washes.
"Never do what the enemy expects you to do," is a military maxim, although rather hard to follow in modern fighting. The natural trail for scouts through the lines would be by the river bottom, and by other low ground out of sight. The Indians, Scout Stillwell learned afterward from chiefs themselves, were watching all the river channel and all the ravines, this night. The two scouts fooled them, and found the ridge trails thinly guarded. Those Indians not on guard were sleeping out of the breeze.
Through every yard of their crawl the hearts of the two scouts were in their throats. To creep amidst the dark, this way, with Indians before, behind, on right, on left—who knew where?—was nerve-racking. When the stars began to pale only two miles had been covered. Slow work, careful work, fearful work! Now for a hiding-place. They would be seen instantly by daylight.
They cautiously slipped on, for a little arroyo or dried wash, bordered by brittle weeds. Even this might be occupied ahead of them. If it was, then that meant death or capture—and capture meant death also, by torture in revenge for warriors slain. They had agreed to fight to the last cartridge, and then to use their last cartridge on themselves after destroying their message.
Cautiously, cautiously they harked and peered; they gently parted the weeds and wormed in, closing the weeds behind them again. The arroyo was empty. In the first tinge of gray they crouched under the high bank overhung by the weeds, to wait.