“I and my servant have come with gifts for the chief and warriors,” he said smoothly, as if he had not heard the objections of Iron Bow. “Here are bottles of the white man’s fire-water, which my brothers like so well.”
He tried to pass them around; but the eager Indians, forgetting their angry growls, clutched and crowded so that it was soon a case of “first come, first served.”
Iron Bow, deeming a scramble beneath his dignity, raised the bottle given him to his lips, after which sounded a hollow “gurgle-gurgle,” as the tempting liquor slipped down his throat. He was almost the only Indian there permitted by others to drink his bottle empty in peace.
“My servant has more,” said Benson airily, having passed out all that he had. “But you must not fight for it, and you must not make such a squabble over it that you may break the bottles. It is very good fire-water, as the chief knows.”
He turned to his “servant,” and Gorilla Jake’s pockets and shirt began to yield up “doctored” bottles.
As many as thirty warriors, and the chief, got enough of the powerful and poisonous stuff to fit them for murder within half an hour.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MATT SHEPARD AND THE MASSACRE.
Instead of driving the stage through to Calumet Wells, Hank Elmore had turned his horses about in the trail, and, with viciously cracking whip and jumping horses, he took it at a bouncing gait back toward Blossom Range.