His sole answer to their jeering, as he rode along side, was "Go! go! go!" repeated with savage emphasis and a flourish of his arm to southward.
The footmen were plodding a dozen rods in the rear of their freight wagon, and still laughing frostily at this queer specimen of "Injun," when the savage spurred his pony forward. A few quick leaps carried him up to the toiling eight-mule team. His blanket dropped around his hips, and a repeating carbine rose to his face. Both wheelers dropped at the first shot, killed by a single ounce slug. A rapid fusillade of shots was distributed among the struggling mules, and then the Sioux was off, shaking his gun and yelling defiance, his pony going in zigzag leaps and like the wind.
Men ran tumbling over each other to get into the wagon and at their guns. The teamster and two or three others, who, despite the cold, carried revolvers under their great coats, jerked their mittens and fumbled with stiff fingers for their weapons. They had not been nerved up with excitement, like the Sioux, and before they could bring their guns to bear, the savage was well out upon the prairie.
And when these men tried, with rifle or revolver, to shoot at the swiftly moving erratic mark presented by the cunning Sioux and his rabbit-like pony, the cutting wind numbed their fingers and filled their eyes with water, the glistening snow obscured their front sights, and they pelted a white waste harmlessly with bullets.
The anger which raged in them when they knew the Sioux had escaped Scot-free was something frightful. Six mules of the splendid eight lay weltering in blood; another was disabled, and only one had come off without hurt. Half the counties of northwestern Iowa had been scoured to get together "Gordon's Pride," as this fine freight-team had been named before the party left Sioux City.
The blight of their hopeful expedition, the frightful peril of their situation, were lost sight of in the absorbing desire for revenge which burned in every man of them as they gazed upon the stricken, stiffening heap of animals. All were for giving chase immediately. They believed they could easily overtake the Sioux among the drifts of the lower lands, where creeks and snow-filled ravines must cause him to shift his course continually.
"Boys," said Gordon, when some of them had hastily begun to strip for the chase, "boys, this is my particular affair. You make camp and fix it for fightin'. I'll either get that Sioux, or he'll fetch his tribe back an' get us."
Cy Gordon was their captain. He had been a hay and wood contractor for many years in the Sioux country, and his word was law to this little band.
There was no need to argue that no man could have even guessed at the daring and disaster they had looked upon. The performance had been too appallingly simple and easy. It had come as unexpectedly as the flood of a cloudburst or the bursting of a gun.
While his men stood vengefully watching the flying Sioux, Gordon stripped himself of superfluous wrappings, stocked his pockets with frozen bread and cartridges, slipped on a pair of snowshoes kept for emergency, tightened his belt, and launched himself in pursuit.