Elam Storm, the Wolfer; Or, The Lost Nugget

by Harry Castlemon

"Well, it is better so," said he sorrowfully. "The Indians have got you, and that's all there is of it. Now my furs have gone, and I shall have to go to Uncle Ezra's to get a grub-stake."

There were no signs of mutilation about them, as there would have been if the men had fallen into the hands of the Indians when alive. The Cheyennes had evidently been in a hurry, for all they had done was to see that the men were dead, after which they had stripped them of their clothes, stolen their guns and ammunition and furs, and gone off to hunt new booty. In this case it promised to be Elam, who made a desperate fight of it. The young hunter resolved that he would go into camp, and he did, too, hitching his horse near the stream that ran through the valley, just out of sight of the massacred men. He saw no ghosts, but slept as placidly as if the field on which the savages had vented their spite was a hundred miles away.

When he awoke, it was dark, and the peaceful moon was shining down upon him through the tree-tops. He watered his horse, ate what was left of the lunch, and began to work his way out of the valley, when he discovered that both his nag and himself were sore from the effects of their long run. He had gone a long distance out of his way to see what the Cheyennes had done, and he didn't feel like bracing up to face the eighty miles before him. His horse didn't feel like it either, for when he stopped and allowed him to have his own way, he hung his head down and went to sleep. The horse seemed to be rendered uneasy by the bandage he wore round his neck, and when it was taken off he was more at his ease.

It took Elam two days to make the journey to the camp where he had left Tom Mason, for he did all of his travelling during the daytime, and stopped over at some convenient place for the night. He was getting hungry, but his horse was growing stronger everyday. He dared not shoot at any of the numerous specimens of the jack-rabbit which constantly dodged across his path, for fear that he would betray himself to some marauding band of Indians, and not until he got within sight of Tom Mason standing in the edge of the willows did he feel comparatively safe. Tom gazed in astonishment while he told his story, and it was a long time before he could get dinner enough to satisfy him.

"Thank goodness they have left you all right," said Elam, settling back on his blanket with a hunk of corn bread and bacon in his uninjured hand and a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. "Do you know that I have worried about you more than I have about myself?"

"Well, how did those Indians look when they were following you?" asked Tom, who had not yet recovered himself. His hand trembled when he poured out the coffee so that one would think that he was the one who had had a narrow escape from the savages. "Did they yell?"

"Yell? Of course it came faintly to my ears because they were so far away, but if I had been close to them, I tell you I wouldn't have had any courage left," said Elam, with a laugh. "I've got my saddle and bridle, and that's something I did not expect to get."

"Was there no one in the sheep-herder's ranch to look for you?"

"If there had been, I wouldn't 'a' been here. There was nobody there at all. I just went in and got my saddle, and that's all there was to it. You see, I was on their trail, and they had passed over that ground once and thought they had got everybody."

"Well, I am beaten. I never heard a whisper of an Indian since you went away. It is lucky for me that they didn't know I was here. How did those men look that were killed?"