After grazing Tatonka for half an hour, feeding him some corn, and eating his own dinner, the thought suddenly struck Jack to ask permission to go over to the ranch at the foot of the Twin Mounds, whose dual peaks were plainly visible only fifteen miles away to the southeast as the crow flies. The colonel cordially granted Jack's request. He promised to join the column on the trail early in the morning before it had marched any great distance; then, at the commanding officer's suggestion, Jack drew in the sand with his finger a rough map of the route to Fort Harker, supplementing it by pointing out certain divides and ledges of rock that could plainly be seen on the trail from where the colonel and the scout stood.
When Jack had finished he left the camp for the spot where he had given his heart more than two months before, his soul filled with rapture at the prospect of soon meeting again the gentle girl he loved.
His horse was a medium-sized broncho, full of power and endurance, which he knew could easily make Réaume's ranch in three hours. That would bring him there about seven o'clock, in time for supper, and more than an hour and a half before dark. So he struck a bee-line for the Mounds, his feelings better imagined than described; an ecstasy indefinable except to those whose experience has been similar to that of the overhappy scout.
The sun was just sinking below the horizon when Jack arrived at the Elkhorn, in the immediate vicinity of the ranch. A flood of golden light poured into the beautiful little valley as he crossed the ford and entered the circular grove, in the middle of which Réaume had built his log cabin and corrals. As he rode toward the place where the cluster of rude huts should be, his eyes, which were ordinarily as keen and as bright as an eagle's, suddenly filled, for he looked upon a scene that caused his bronzed cheeks to blanch and an exclamation of horror to escape his lips. The cabin was roofless, and the green timber composing its sides and ends was still slowly burning.
"Cheyennes!" he muttered with set teeth, as he unslung his carbine, spurred his horse forward, while a prayer for the safety of the girl he loved was formulated in his brain. When he reached the opening where the once happy home was so picturesquely located he drew up on the reins, and as Tatonka stopped a deep groan escaped Jack. Lying under the mighty trees, close to the ruins of the cabin, were the scalped and mutilated remains of Réaume and his four youngest children.
But where was Susie, the woman he loved? Dazed and stupefied for a moment, Jack began to search for her body. She was not with the rest of the murdered family. "Oh, my God!" he cried in his agony, "has she been saved for a fate worse than death! Carried off a miserable captive among the soulless savages? Great God, no! I cannot think of it. Sooner would I see her here dead with the others!"
Although almost overcome with grief, and furious with passion as these thoughts, so terrible in their contemplation, crowded thick upon his brain, he was determined not to lose his self-control. Pausing for a moment, cautiously looking around to assure himself that none of the paint-bedaubed fiends were lurking in the timber, he dismounted, tied his horse to an oak sapling, walked to where his dead friends lay, and silently contemplated the horrid butchery. He dared not think of the probable fate of the faithful young girl who had promised to be his wife, but he uttered bitter curses against the demons who had so wantonly, and without the slightest provocation, annihilated the peaceful little family. He swore to himself that he would have ten lives for one, in his determined revenge. He turned away, sick at heart, from these victims of Indian hatred, and walked slowly toward the spring to quench his feverish thirst and to collect his dazed ideas.
It was six or seven rods from where the cabin had stood to the wall of rock in the hillside out of which the water gushed, and it was completely hidden by a dense growth of cottonwoods, willows and elders, covering more than an acre. As he approached the edge of this tangled thicket, a low moan reached his ear; whether animal or human, so faint was it, he could not distinguish.
Stopping for an instant, every sense on the alert, he cocked his carbine, and listened attentively. The strange sound was repeated. He moved cautiously on the narrow trail. Then suddenly as he arrived at the spring, which made quite a pool as it fell from a shelf of sandstone, with a cry of horror from his lips he saw prone on the ground, her pale mouth just touching the water's edge as it flowed in a diminutive rivulet, the apparently lifeless body of Susie Réaume.
"Susie, my darling!" cried he, as he knelt reverently by her side and kissed her forehead, for he believed her certainly dead. But the girl's eyes opened as she felt the warm impress of his lips, and she looked up into his anxious face with an unmistakable glance of recognition, vainly essaying to speak.