Chapter Thirteen.
The Pursuit—Conscientious Scruples of the Artist—Strategic Movements—Surprised in the Wild-Cat Pass—March shows Coolness and Pluck in the Hour of Danger—A Terrific Onslaught by a wonderful Warrior—The Battle—Hard Knocks and Mysterious Differences of Opinion.
Crossing the open ground in front of the Mountain Fort, Bounce and Bertram entered the wood beyond, and traversed it with comparative ease, by means of a bridle-path which had been cut there by the fur-traders. A few minutes’ gallop brought them to the other side of the wood, which was one of those narrow strips or clumps of forest which grow, more or less thickly, on the skirts of the Rocky Mountains, forming that fine picturesque region where the prairie and the forest meet and seem to contend for the mastery.
The plain beyond this belt of wood was open and level—at least, sufficiently so to enable the two horsemen to see for a considerable distance around them. Here, in the far distance, they descried their companions, sweeping over the turf at their utmost speed, and making towards a low hill or ridge that intercepted the view of the more distant country.
“They’ll have to draw in a bit,” said Bounce, turning to his comrade. “Horses no more nor men can’t go helter-skelter up a hill without takin’ breath; so rouse up your beast, Mr Bertram, an’ we’ll overtake ’em afore they gits to the t’other side.”
Bertram obeyed his friend’s command, but made no rejoinder, his thoughts being too deeply engaged at that moment in a controversy with his conscience as to the propriety of the business he had then in hand.
The young artist had a deep veneration for abstract truth—truth pure and simple, not only in reference to morals, but to all things terrestrial and celestial; and he was deeply impressed with the belief that what was right was right, and what was wrong was wrong, and could not, by any possibility, be otherwise. He felt, also, that the man who recognised truth and acted upon it must go right, and he who saw and did otherwise must go wrong!
Holding this simple creed very tenaciously, and, as we think, very properly, Bertram nevertheless found that his attempts to act up to it frequently involved him in a maze of perplexities.
On the present occasion, as he and Bounce thundered over the green turf of the flowering plains, scattering the terrified grasshoppers right and left, and causing the beautifully striped ground-squirrels to plunge with astonishing precipitancy into their holes, he argued with himself, that the mere fact of a murderous deed having been done was not a sufficient reason, perhaps, to justify his sallying forth with a reckless band of desperate fur-traders, bent on indiscriminate revenge. It was quite true, in his opinion, that a murderer should be punished with death, and that the pursuit and capture of a murderer was not only a legitimate act in itself but, in the circumstances, a bounden duty on his part. Yet it was equally true that most of the men with whom he was associated were thirsting for vengeance, and from past experience he knew full well that there would be no attempt to find out the murderer, but a simple and general massacre of all the Indians whom they could overtake.
Then it suddenly occurred to him that the murderer had already been shot by Redhand, so that his mission was one of simple revenge; but, a moment after, it flashed across his troubled mind that Lincoln had been left in the fort wounded—might possibly be dead by that time; so that there were probably among the flying savages other murderers to be dealt with. This idea was strengthened by another thought, namely, that the savage who stabbed and scalped Dupont might not have been the savage who shot him. The complication and aggregate of improbability amounted, in Bertram’s mind, so nearly to a certainty, that he dismissed the digressive question as to whether there might or might not be a murderer among the Indians, and returned to the original proposition, as to whether it was right in him to take part in a pursuit of vengeance that would very likely terminate murderously. But before he could come to any satisfactory conclusion on that point he and Bounce found themselves suddenly in the midst of the cavalcade, which had halted on the summit of the ridge, in order to allow them to come up.