Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

And still the gap grew less; the Indians looked back oftener and oftener, and their whips were plied mercilessly all the time. Only a bare hundred yards separated him from them now.

Stephens kept his eye glued to them, expecting them every instant to jump off and receive him with a volley. That certainly seemed to be the best game for them to play, as their horses were so nearly done. The question was, would they try it? If they did, he too must leap off and shoot as quick as they. The Winchester, he thought, would give the three of them shot for shot and something over.

But to stand up to it and give and take shot for shot was not the Indians' style of doing business. They had no spirit left in them to face this terrible man in the open; just here, however, the trail approached a spot more suitable to their methods of fighting. A bold and lofty butte, a landmark known far and wide as the Cerro Chato, rose abruptly a little to one side of the trail, and the Navajos suddenly swung off to the right and made for it, hoping to gain the shelter of the broken masses of rock that were strewn about its base, and from that vantage-ground defy their merciless pursuer.

Stephens divined their object the moment they turned for the butte; he also changed his course, and he now spurred freely and spoke to the mare and encouraged her with his voice. The staunch Morgan blood answered to the call; there was a spurt still left in her, and she fairly raced them for the rocks. But though she was doing all she knew, the Indians got there first. They sprang to earth, and as they did so Stephens did the same, scarce fifty yards behind them. They darted for hiding to the cleft of rocks; two got there, but one was too late; just as he reached his goal the leaden messenger outwent him, and he felt the crippling blow; it caught him in the thigh as he ran, and the broken limb gave way under him; still, on his hands and knees, he dragged himself desperately forward almost into the longed-for haven of refuge, but another bullet, pumped up from the magazine, followed all too swiftly on the first, and broke his spine, and a third gave the merciful coup-de-grâce and put him out of his pain.

"There's something mighty persuasive about a Winchester," jeered Stephens, hastily throwing in another cartridge as he rushed forward, and casting just one glance at the body as he passed. The persuasive repeating rifle had pumped lead to some purpose into White Antelope. Never again would he see the rich valleys of the Chusca Mountains where so often he had roamed with his tribe; no more would he tend his flock, like the patriarch of old, and lead from pasture to water, and from water to pasture the spotted and ringstreaked herd of many-horned sheep whose innocent faces he knew so well. Here, under the Cerro Chato, coyotes and eagle-hawks would pick his bones, and the little booth of boughs where his squaw and his papooses waited for him—the little booth that to each wandering son of the desert stands for home—would never see him more.

War is cruel work. The renegade Navajo band had brought this on themselves, and richly deserved what they got, yet, take it all round, retribution, however just, is a butcherly job.

"Two more left, and I'm bound to rub it in," said Stephens, plunging in amongst the rocks lest the pair who had already found cover should take advantage of his exposed position outside.

Above them the butte rose abruptly to a height of two or three hundred feet, but the face of it was so much broken down that the fallen fragments had made a slope half way up it, while the largest detached blocks had rolled in numbers to the very bottom and lay confusedly heaped together or loosely scattered around.

"It's pretty near as good a place for these sons of guns as the Lava Beds," he said; "only, thank my stars, there aren't so many of them now. Yet, I've got to go to work mighty cautious here, or else I'll give myself away for good and all." He wiped his streaming face as he crouched behind a rock for a minute or two to recover his breath and decide on the next move.