“Very good, sir,” replied the captain. “What did they do in the big tent, Perkins?” he asked of his lieutenant, as soon as the officer of the day had retired; “and who are they, any way?”
“Why, they are Mount Pleasant Indians,” answered the lieutenant, who, during his absence, had had opportunity to talk with some of the boys in the first class who knew all about the matter. “They are principally farmers and mechanics; but there are one or two professional men among them—school teachers and the like.”
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed the captain. “They haven’t forgotten how to give the war-whoop if they are civilized, have they? Of course this night’s work was a put-up job?”
“Certainly it was. The superintendent wanted to do something to amuse us, so he went out to their reservation, which is about twenty miles from here, and easily induced the head-chief to promise to bring in three hundred of his young men on a certain night and make an attack on us. Then he wrote to our parents; and that’s what brought this crowd here to-day.”
“Ah! That explains it. But they didn’t know anything about it, for I noticed that some of them were as frightened as we were. Didn’t you hear the women scream? I thought the girl I was dancing with was going to faint, she turned so white. What did they do in the big tent?”
“O, they held a pow-wow there in the presence of all our guests, smoking a pipe and going through all the motions of a regular Indian peace commission. The chief made a speech (I tell you it was a good one and astonished everybody), during which he said that his young men had taken some prisoners whom he would be happy to surrender——”
“Prisoners!” repeated the captain, incredulously.
“Yes. Eight of the first-class boys are missing. You see this company was thrown into confusion when they fell back from the bridge, and as soon as they became separated, the Indians jumped in and dragged some of them off.”
“Well, they didn’t serve me that way,” said Captain Pomeroy, with an air of triumph. “They had the impudence to try to steal my boys’ tents; but when we turned butts to the front, didn’t they dig out in a hurry?”
Lieutenant Perkins, who had borne his full part in that gallant charge, said he thought they did.