“Now, boyees!” said ’Lije, gliding to both sides of the gorge, and addressing the trappers in a cautious undertone, “ef ye’ll jest keep yerselves purfectly cool for about ten minutes longer, an’ wait till ye git the word from Black Harry or myself, ye’ll have a chance o’ wipin’ out any scores ye may hev run up ’twixt yur-selves an’ Yellow Chief. Don’t neer a one o’ ye touch trigger till the last of the cussed varmints hev got clar past the mouth o’ this hyur gully. An’ then wait till ye hear the signal from me. It’ll be the crack o’ my rifle. Arter thet, the Injuns aint like to hev any chief; an’ ye kin go in, an’ gie ’em eturnal darnation.”
In ten seconds after he had ceased speaking not a trapper was to be seen near the Indian encampment; only the captives with their sentinels standing over them, surrounded by a stillness as of death. It was like the ominous calm that comes between two gusts of a storm, all the more awful from the contrasting silence.
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Stampeders Captured.
In starting in chase of the straying cavallada, the Cheyennes did not go on at full speed. The spectacle of over twenty horses saddled and bridled, wandering about without riders on their backs, or the sign of an owner following after them, was one so novel, that, while causing astonishment to the savages, it also aroused their instincts of caution. It looked like what the Indians had first taken it for—a stampede. And still it might be the ruse of an enemy, with the design of drawing them into an ambuscade. Partly for this reason, and partly that the ownerless animals might not be scared into a second stampede, and so become difficult of capture, the Cheyennes rode toward them slowly and deliberately.
As they drew near, however, and still no white men appeared in sight, they quickened their pace, and at length broke into a gallop—charging at full speed upon the sauntering drove. This had become necessary, as the white men’s horses had “smelt Indian,” and with crests erect, and snorting nostrils, showed signs of making off.
For a period of ten minutes there was a confused movement upon the plain—a sort of irregular tournament, in which horses ridden by dusky riders, and others without any, were mingled together and galloping towards every point of the compass; long slender ropes, like snakes, suddenly uncoiled, were seen circling through the air; wild cries were heard, sent forth from a score of savage throats—the clamour increased by the shrill neighing of horses and the shriller hinneying of the mules—while the firm prairie turf echoed the tread of over a hundred hoofs.
And soon this tableau underwent a change. The dark moving mass became scattered over a wider surface, and here and there could be seen, at intervals apart, the oft-described spectacle of a horseman using the lazo: two horses at opposite ends of a long rope stretched taut between them, tails toward each other, one of them standing with feet firmly planted, the lazo fast to a stapled ring in the tree of his saddle; the other prostrate upon the ground, with the rope wound around his neck, no longer struggling to free himself, but convulsively to get breath.