CHAPTER XII
Before Bucks had time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay, determined not to be taken alive.
For an instant his mind worked clearly and with the rapidity of lightning. His life swept before him as if he were a drowning man. In that horrible moment he even heard his call clicking from the despatcher. Of the two Indians confronting him, half-naked and shining with war-paint, one appeared more ferocious than the other, and Bucks only wondered which would attack first.
He had not long to wait. The first brave raised a war club to brain him. As Bucks’s straining eye followed the movement, the second Indian struck the club down. Bucks understood nothing from 154 the action. The quick, guttural words that followed, the sharp dispute, the struggle of the first savage to evade the second and brain the white boy in spite of his antagonist––a lithe, active Indian of great strength who held the enraged warrior back––all of this, Bucks, bewildered, could understand nothing of. The utmost he could surmise was that the second warrior, from his dress and manner of authority perhaps a chief, meant to take him alive for torture. He watched the contest between the two Indians until with force and threats the chief had driven the warrior outside and turned again upon him.
It was then that Bucks, desperate, hurled himself knife in hand at the chief to engage him in final combat. The Indian, though surprised, met his onset skilfully and before Bucks could realize what had occurred he had been disarmed and tossed like a child half-way across the room.
Before he could move, the chief was standing over him. “Stop!” he exclaimed, catching Bucks’s arm in a grip of steel as the latter tried to drag down his antagonist. “I am Iron Hand. Does a 155 boy fight me?” he demanded with contempt in every word. “See your knife.” He pointed to the floor. “When I was wounded by the Cheyennes you gave me venison. You have forgotten; but the Sioux is not like the white man––Iron Hand does not forget.”
A fusillade of shots and a babel of yelling from outside interrupted his words. The chief paid no attention to the uproar. “Your soldiers are here. The building is on fire, but you are safe. I am Iron Hand.”
So saying, and before Bucks could find his tongue, the chief strode to the rear window, with one blow of his arm smashed out the whole sash, and springing lightly through the crashing glass, disappeared.
Bucks, panting with confusion, sprang to his feet. Smoke already poured in from the freight room, and the crackling of flames and the sounds of the fighting outside reminded Bucks of Iron Hand’s words. He ran to the door.
The train had pulled up within a hundred feet of the station and the railroad men in the coaches 156 were pouring a fire upon the Indians, under the cover of which scouts were unloading, down a hastily improvised chute, their horses, together with those of such troopers as had been gathered hurriedly.