The sheriff looked up at the thoughtful face above him. He grinned, and others grinned with him. But their amusement was quite lost on Seth. He was trying to estimate the possible result of putting the “kettle,” as he called the locomotive, at full steam ahead, disregarding every other tap and gauge on the driving plate, and devoting himself to heaping up the furnace. These things interested him, not as a source of danger, but only in the matter of speed.
“Good for you, Seth,” cried Dan Somers. “Now, boys, all aboard!”
And Seth turned to the driving plate and sounded a preliminary whistle.
CHAPTER IV
ROSEBUD
It is nearly midday, and the Indians round the blazing woods on the southern spur of the Black Hills are in full retreat. Another desperate battle, such as crowd the unwritten history of the United States, has been fought and won. The history of the frontiersman’s life would fill a record which any soldier might envy. It is to the devotion of such men that colonial empires owe their being, for without their aid, no military force could bring peace and prosperity to a land. The power of the sword may conquer and hold, but there its mission ends. It is left to the frontiersman to do the rest.
The battle-field is strewn with dead and dying; but there are no white faces staring blankly up at the heavens, only the painted, seared features of the red man. Their opponents are under cover. If they have any dead or dying they are with the living. These men fight in the manner of the Indian, but with a superior intelligence.
But though the white men have won the battle their end is defeated. For the blazing woods have swept across the homestead of “old man” Jason, for years a landmark in the country, and now it is no 42 more. A mere charred skeleton remains; smoking, smouldering, a witness to the white man’s daring in a savage country.