“Boys,” he began, impressively, “we got to get out o’ here as soon as darkness covers us. We’re sixty miles from the fort, and only fifteen all told, and not half-armed. Old Lone Wolf holds over us, and we might as well quit and get help.”
This verdict carried the camp, and the party precipitately returned to Darlington to confer with the managers of the company.
Pierce, the chief man, had reasons for not calling on the military authorities. His lease was as yet merely a semi-private arrangement between the Secretary of the Interior and himself, and he feared the consequences of a fight with Lone Wolf—publicity, friction, might cause the withdrawal of his lease; therefore he called in John Seger, and said:
“Jack, can you put that line through?”
“I could, but I don’t want to. Lone Wolf is a good friend of mine, and I don’t want to be mixed up in a mean job.”
“Oh, come now—you mustn’t show the white flag. I need you. I want you to pick out five or six men of grit and go along and see that this line is run. I can’t be fooling around here all summer. Here’s my lease, signed by the Secretary, as you see. It’s all straight, and this old fool of an Indian must move.”
Jack reluctantly consented, and set to work to hire a half dozen men of whose courage he had personal knowledge. Among these was a man by the name of Tom Speed, a border man of great hardihood and experience. To him he said:
“Tom, I don’t like to go into this thing; but I’m hard up, and Pierce has given me the contract to build the fence if we run the line, and it looks like we got to do it. Now I wish you’d saddle up and help me stave off trouble. How does it strike you?”
“It’s nasty business, Jack; but I reckon we might better do it than let some tenderfoot go in and start a killin’. I’m busted flat, and if the pay is good, I jest about feel obliged to take it.”
So it happened that two avowed friends of the red man led this second expedition against Lone Wolf’s camp. Pierce sent his brother as boss, and with him went the son of one of the principal owners, a Boston man, by the name of Ross. Speed always called him “the Dude,” though he dressed quite simply, as dress goes in Roxbury. He wore a light suit of gray wool, “low-quartered shoes,” and a “grape box hat.” He was armed with a pistol, which wouldn’t kill a turtledove at fifteen feet. Henry Pierce, on the contrary, was a reckless and determined man.