Buffalo Bill, the Border King; Or, Redskin and Cowboy

by Prentiss Ingraham

Later, and afoot, two of the party came again to the summit of the ridge and reconnoitered. The freighters’ camp lay calmly under the starry sky, the fires burning briskly, the mules champing the grass of the plain contentedly, occasionally a laugh or a sharp word echoing across the valley between the calls of the night-birds.

The wind wandered down from the heights and shook the canvas covers of the wagons as though trying to arouse the men to the danger that threatened them. Coyotes whined in the distance, sniffing the herd, but too cowardly to advance until on the morrow the freight-train should have passed on. Then they would come boldly in and fight over the scraps remaining. And, perhaps, there would be greater booty for the scavengers of the plains to fight over!

The men scouting about the freighters’ camp numbered the unconscious men and noted their arms and how the camp was arranged. There was a high river-bank. The captain of the train had ordered the arrangement of the wagons partly because he was eager to obtain water; but there was a high bank to the river here, and a narrow beach below it. Men afoot could creep down this bank and, sheltered from the camp, approach it and attack from the riverside. Even a sentinel stationed on the very verge of the bank would be little likely to apprehend the coming of such an attacking force, unless he chanced to be expecting it.

The captain of the train set one of his watchmen on the bank above the river, however, and to keep warm the rifleman walked back and forth, pacing a beat some twenty yards long. This would have been all very well had the crew believed there was a particle of danger threatening the camp. But so confident were they of peace that they did not even drive the mules down from the higher ground where they were feeding. A party of a dozen reds—if they could have loosed the gray mare—might have made off with the entire herd.

There was a shelter tent for each six men, while the cook and the captain shared the fourth canvas. At ten o’clock, under a black-velvet sky pricked out with the brilliant but distant stars, the camp was as quiet as the grave—that is, providing one could imagine some of the occupants of the grave sleeping their long sleep “loudly.” Aside from these snores, however, and the champing of the horses and mules, there was little sound to break the silence. There was a sentinel pacing a short beat on the inland side of the camp; but, it being cold when the wind swooped down and flapped the loose canvas, he got in behind the chain of wagons and was not so much use as a guard. Along the river-bank paced the other sentinel, whistling under his breath, and staring off across the black, smoothly flowing water, in which the stars were mirrored.

Wide-awake as he was, this second guard heard nothing when a single figure slipped down the river-bank beyond the camp and toward the cañon’s entrance, and in a stooping posture sneaked along toward him. This figure lay low upon the shore when the guard walked that way. When the guard turned the prowler arose again and kept just behind him, but below the bank, until both reached about the middle of the beat the sentinel was following.

Then, softly as a cat, without as much as scratching a button or rattling the rifle in his hand or the guns in his belt, the stranger darted up the bank, and, stooping low, hurried to the smaller tent in which slept the captain of the train and the cook. Evidently the stranger had picked this tent out before dark, and shrewdly guessed who occupied it. Lifting the flap softly, he crept in and lowered it before the guard on the river-bank turned. The other guard was standing facing the opposite way and saw nothing.

Once in the darkness of the tent, the stranger coolly squatted on his haunches, laid down his rifle, and drawing out a match-safe, scratched a lucifer and held it up so that the sputtering flame might cast some radiance over the interior of the tent.

The pungent odor of the sulfur got in the nose of one of the sleepers, and he sneezed. He sneezed a second time and sat up suddenly, blinking his eyes in surprise at the figure squatting inside the tent. This was an utter stranger to him—a man with long hair, a military hat, buckskin coat, and riding breeches and boots. And he was armed like a pirate—belt stuck full of guns and with a big bowie. He smiled cheerfully at the amazed and sleepy individual, however.

“Hello!” he said. “Which one of you is the captain?”