Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California

by G. A. Henty

"First place, he despised them. Now, you know, the redskins ain't to be despised. You may hate them, you may say they are a cussed lot of rascals and thieves, but there ain't no despising them, and any one as does that is sure to have cause to repent it, sooner or later. There was the less reason with the Dacotas, for they had cut up stronger bodies of troops than there was at Fort Charles without letting a soul escape. Then, partly because the captain despised them, I suppose, he was always hurting their feelings.

"Now, a chief is a chief, and a man who can bring three hundred horsemen into the field, whether he is redskin or white, is a man to whom a certain respect should be paid. But Captain White never seemed to see that, but just treated one redskin like another, just as if they war dirt beneath his feet. Well, as I told you, he had with him his wife and daughter. His wife was too fine a lady for a frontier fort, still, she was not badly liked: but as to the daughter, there warn't a man in the fort but would have died for her. She war about fifteen year old, and as pretty as a flower. She war always bright and merry, with a kind word to the soldiers as she rode past them on her pretty white mustang.

"Dick, here, he worshipped her like the rest of us. If he got a particular good skin, or anything else, if he thought she would like it he would put it by for her, and she used, in her merry way, to call him her scout. Well, one day Black Dog, one of the most powerful chiefs of the Dacotas, rode into the fort with twenty of his braves. Just as he came in, Queen May, as we all called her, came galloping up on her mustang, and leapt like a bird from her saddle at the door of the commander's house, where her father was standing. I war standing next to him, and so I saw Black Dog's eye fall on her, and as long as she stood talking there to her father he never took it off; then he said something to the brave as was sitting on his horse next to him.

"'Cuss him!' Dick said to me, and I could see his hold on his rifle tighten, 'what does he look at Queen May like that for? You mark my words, Abe, trouble will come of this.'

"It was not long before trouble did come, for half an hour later the Dacota rode out of the fort with his men in great wrath, complaining that Captain White had not received him as a chief, and that his dignity was insulted. It war like enough that Captain White was not as ceremonious as he should have been to a great chief—for, as I told you, he war short in his ways with the redskins—but I question if harm would have come of it if it hadn't been that Black Dog's eye fell on that gal.

"I believe that there and then he made up his mind to carry her off. We didn't see any redskins in camp for some time; and then rumours were brought in by the scouts that there war going to be trouble with them, that a council had been held, and that it war decided the hatchet should be dug up again. Captain White he made light of the affair; but he was a good soldier, and warn't to be caught napping, so extra sentries were put on.

"As Rube and me didn't belong to the fort, of course we war independent, and went away hunting, and would sometimes be away for weeks together. One day, when we war some forty miles from the fort, we came upon the trail of a large number of redskins going east. We guessed as there must be nigh two hundred of them. They might, in course, have been going hunting, but we didn't think as it were so; sartainly they had no women with them, and they had been travelling fast. We guessed the trail was three days old, and we thought we had best push on straight to the fort to let them know about it.

"When we got thar we found we were too late. On the morning of the day after we had started a scout had arrived with the news that a strong war-party of Dacotas were on their way to the settlements. Captain White at once mounted half his infantry on horses, and with them and the cavalry set out in pursuit, leaving the fort in charge of a young officer with twenty-four men. Just after nightfall there was a sound of horsemen approaching, and the officer, thinking it was the Captain returning, ordered the gate of the stockade to be left open. In a moment the place was full of redskins. The soldiers tried to fight, but it were no use; all war cut down, only one man making his escape in the darkness.

"At daybreak, the Captain, with his troops, rode into the fort. Dick, who had been with him, had, when the party was returning, gone out scouting on his own account, and had come across the back-track of the redskins. The moment he had brought in the news the horses were re-saddled again, and the party started back; but they had gone nearly sixty miles the day before, and it was not until morning that, utterly exhausted and weary, they got within sight of the fort. Then they saw as it war too late.

"Not a roof was to be seen above the stockade, and a light smoke rising everywhere showed as fire had done it. They rode into camp like madmen. There lay all their comrades, killed and scalped; there were the bodies of Mrs. White and her servants, and the nigger labourers, and the trader and his clerks, and of all who had been left behind in the camp, except the Captain's little daughter; of her there weren't no signs. Rube and me arrived half an hour later, just as the soldier who had escaped had come in and was telling how it all came about.