“There they go, General!” cried a young fellow, Captain Dixon, who rode behind the leader.
“Ay; making for the hills. I know; the same old plant. We must pretend to be taken in.—Go on, Dixon; after ’em with twenty men.”
The General knew well enough, from bygone experience, that the spot from which the score or so of redskins were fleeing was probably that at which the bulk of their army lay perdu, and that they were merely trying their old trick of getting a pursuing force between the two halves of their own. He rode steadily on, and, before he reached the hills, saw that he had not been mistaken. The fleeing Indians had suddenly wheeled and were bearing down furiously on Captain Dixon’s few men.
“Forward!” shouted Atkinson. “He can take good care of himself. We want Black Hawk.... And here he is, by the living Jingo!”
As he spoke, sixty or seventy Indians appeared at the top of the hill, four of them beautifully mounted; 117 the rest on wrecks of animals that could scarcely be matched in a Belfast job-yard.
“Fire! A hundred dollars to the man who gets Black Hawk—alive or dead,” shouted Atkinson as he drew his horse to one side.
Without drawing bridle, the troop fired and reloaded, as only men born, reared, and nourished in the saddle as these were could have done. Three of the well-mounted Indians, ignoring the volley, rode straight at the white men, and were followed more hesitatingly by the rest, with the exception of those killed, and of the fourth man, evidently—from his fantastic garb—the aged Shawnee prophet.
“Black Hawk! Black Hawk! Over with him!” roared the excited Yankees, as a splendid-looking old man, six feet four inches in height, rode fearlessly at them. Pistol-bullets whizzed round his head, but he appeared to ignore them and, swinging his war-hatchet, began to cut a way through the cowboys. His two well-horsed companions—his sons—followed closely, and in a couple of minutes six of Atkinson’s men were dead. But one glance behind him showed the chief that he was playing a losing game. General Atkinson seemed to have surrounded all the rest of the Indians with his troop, who were hewing them down right and left. Captain Dixon’s men, too, had put to flight or killed those who had turned on them, and were now coming to reinforce their comrades.
With a passionate yell of disappointment and hatred, the chief turned his horse’s head in the direction whither the prophet was already fleeing; and, with his sons, rode for some distant bluffs. It was all very 118 well for Atkinson to spur in pursuit, shouting, “After him!” The white men’s horses had been almost dead-beat before the flight began, and now could scarcely move at all; and the General was obliged to await his baggage-vans for the pitching of his camp, for at least a few hours.
But, before those few hours were ended, another party of Indians came riding into view, and, as the men sprang to their arms, one of Atkinson’s Sioux guides cried jubilantly: “They are our brothers! They are the white chief’s brothers also.”