“Perhaps it is just as well for me that I didn’t,” said Parker to himself. “There must have been five hundred Indians in that camp, if they were all in their tepees, and of course I couldn’t hold my own with them. If I ever reach the fort, which is extremely doubtful, Randolph will make no end of fun of me.”
By casting his eyes a little in advance of him Parker could see that his horse was following the old trail that he had made some hours before. He could easily tell it, for there were two trails, the grass all pressed down and leaning in the opposite direction, and it had been made while the dew was on. He came along there in the night, but how would it be when they reached the trail over which they had passed in the daytime? He could only wait and see.
CHAPTER IX.
Still in the Saddle.
The long ride which followed was something that Lieut. Parker often thought of with a shudder. It is true that there were no wild animals to bother him—nothing but the coyotes, which gathered around him and kept pace with him almost to the fort; but the thought that he was alone on the plains and the uncertainty of what the Sioux intended to do with his guide troubled him more than anything else. As darkness came on apace, and the wolves began to howl all about him, Parker drew rein on the opposite bank of a small stream and allowed his horse to graze and recover his “second wind,” for he had been riding rather rapidly of late, being anxious to get over as much of the trail as he could before the gloom came to shut it out from his view, and now he began to think of that envelope he had in his pocket.
“Isn’t it lucky that the squawman did not say anything to me about that dispatch?” said the lieutenant to himself. “Suppose he had asked me to give it up to him? Would I have done it? I guess not. Nobody sees the inside of that envelope unless he takes it off my dead body.”
After passing half an hour in this way, Parker watered his horse and again set out for the fort. The animal went along as lively as ever, and during the whole of that night Parker rode with his hands in his pockets, and never touched the reins at all. The way seemed to have no end; but just as he was forgetting his troubles and his head began to bend forward, as if he were almost asleep, his horse broke into a gallop and began to neigh. Almost at the same instant a voice close in front challenged him.
“I declare, I am pretty close to the fort,” said Parker; and it was all he could do to keep from yelling. “An officer without the countersign,” he said, in reply to the sentinel.
The lieutenant was so anxious to see the colonel, and tell him of what had happened back there in the Sioux camp, that it seemed as though the corporal never would come; but he made his appearance at last, and the first thing he did was to recognize his own officer.
“Why, lieutenant, I am glad to see you again, sir,” said he, extending his hand, “but I don’t see Carl, the Trailer, with you.”