“Why, we talked pretty fast,” stammered Bucks. “He spoke about the venison but never said a blamed word about my fixing his arm.”
Bob laughed as he struck his horse and galloped on to pass the news to Stanley. A detail was left to clear the cotton-woods across the creek and guard the railroad men against possible attack while clearing the wreck. The body of the unfortunate brakeman was brought across the bridge and laid in the baggage car and a tent was pitched to serve as a temporary station for Bucks.
While this was being done, Bob Scott, who had ridden farthest up the creek, appeared leading his horse and talking to a white man who was walking beside him. He had found the conductor of the wrecked train, Pat Francis, who, young though he was, had escaped the Indians long enough to reach a cave in the creek bank and whose rifle shots Bucks had heard, while Francis was holding the Sioux at bay during the fight. The plucky conductor, who was covered with dust, was greeted with acclamations.
“He claims,” volunteered Scott, speaking to 159 Stanley, “he could have stood them off all day.”
Francis’s eyes fell regretfully on the dead brakeman. “If that boy had minded what I said and come with me he would have been alive now.”
The wrecking train, with a gang of men from Medicine Bend, arrived late in the afternoon, and at supper-time a courier rode in from Stanley’s scouting party with despatches for General Park. Stanley reported the chase futile. As Bob Scott had predicted, the Brulés had burned the ranch and craftily scattered the moment they reached the sand-hills. Instead of a single trail to follow, Stanley found fifty. Only his determination to give the Indians a punishment that they would remember held the pursuing party together, and three days afterward he fought a battle with the wily raiders, surprised in a canyon on the Frenchman River, which, though indecisive, gave Iron Hand’s band a wholesome respect for the stubborn engineer.
The train service under the attacks of the Indians thus repeated, fell into serious demoralization, and an armed guard of regular soldiers rode all 160 trains for months after the Goose Creek attack. Bucks was given a guard for his own lonely and exposed position in the person of Bob Scott, the man of all men the young operator would have wished for. And at intervals he read from his favorite novel to the scout, who still questioned whether it was a true story.