The Mountain Divide - Frank H. Spearman (english reading book .txt) 📗

Before Bucks had time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay, determined not to be taken alive.

For an instant his mind worked clearly and with the rapidity of lightning. His life swept before him as if he were a drowning man. In that horrible moment he even heard his call clicking from the despatcher. Of the two Indians confronting him, half-naked and shining with war-paint, one appeared more ferocious than the other, and Bucks only wondered which would attack first.

He had not long to wait. The first brave raised a war club to brain him. As Bucks’s straining eye followed the movement, the second Indian struck the club down. Bucks understood nothing from 154 the action. The quick, guttural words that followed, the sharp dispute, the struggle of the first savage to evade the second and brain the white boy in spite of his antagonist––a lithe, active Indian of great strength who held the enraged warrior back––all of this, Bucks, bewildered, could understand nothing of. The utmost he could surmise was that the second warrior, from his dress and manner of authority perhaps a chief, meant to take him alive for torture. He watched the contest between the two Indians until with force and threats the chief had driven the warrior outside and turned again upon him.

It was then that Bucks, desperate, hurled himself knife in hand at the chief to engage him in final combat. The Indian, though surprised, met his onset skilfully and before Bucks could realize what had occurred he had been disarmed and tossed like a child half-way across the room.

Before he could move, the chief was standing over him. “Stop!” he exclaimed, catching Bucks’s arm in a grip of steel as the latter tried to drag down his antagonist. “I am Iron Hand. Does a 155 boy fight me?” he demanded with contempt in every word. “See your knife.” He pointed to the floor. “When I was wounded by the Cheyennes you gave me venison. You have forgotten; but the Sioux is not like the white man––Iron Hand does not forget.”

A fusillade of shots and a babel of yelling from outside interrupted his words. The chief paid no attention to the uproar. “Your soldiers are here. The building is on fire, but you are safe. I am Iron Hand.”

So saying, and before Bucks could find his tongue, the chief strode to the rear window, with one blow of his arm smashed out the whole sash, and springing lightly through the crashing glass, disappeared.

Bucks, panting with confusion, sprang to his feet. Smoke already poured in from the freight room, and the crackling of flames and the sounds of the fighting outside reminded Bucks of Iron Hand’s words. He ran to the door.

The train had pulled up within a hundred feet of the station and the railroad men in the coaches 156 were pouring a fire upon the Indians, under the cover of which scouts were unloading, down a hastily improvised chute, their horses, together with those of such troopers as had been gathered hurriedly.

Bucks ran back into the office and opening his wooden chest threw into it what he could of his effects and tried to drag it from the burning building out upon the platform. As he struggled with the unwieldy box, two men ran up from the train toward him, staring at him as if he had been a ghost. He recognized Stanley and Dancing.

“Are you hurt?” cried Stanley hastening to his side.

“No,” exclaimed Bucks, his head still swimming, “but everything will be burned.”

“How in the name of God, boy, have you escaped?” demanded Stanley, as he clenched Bucks’s shoulder in his hand. Dancing seized the cumbersome chest and dragged it out of danger. The Indians, jeering, as they retreated, at the railroad men, made no attempt to continue 157 the attack, but rode away content with the destruction of the train and the station.

Stanley, assured of Bucks’s safety, though he wasted no time in waiting for an explanation of it, directed the men to save what they could out of the station––it was too late to save the building––and hurried away to see to the unloading of the horses.

Bill Dancing succeeded in rescuing the telegraph instruments and with Bucks’s help he got the wires rigged upon a cracker-box outside where the operator could report the story to the now desperate despatcher. The scouts and troopers were already in the saddle and, leading the way for the men, gave chase across the bottoms to the Indians.

Bob Scott, riding past Bucks reined up for a moment. “Got pretty warm for you, Bucks––eh? How did you get through?”

Bucks jumped toward him. “Bob!” he exclaimed, grasping his arm. “It was Iron Hand.”

“Iron Hand!” echoed Bob, lifting his eyebrows. “Brulés, then. It will be a long chase. What did he say?”

“Why, we talked pretty fast,” stammered Bucks. “He spoke about the venison but never said a blamed word about my fixing his arm.”

Bob laughed as he struck his horse and galloped on to pass the news to Stanley. A detail was left to clear the cotton-woods across the creek and guard the railroad men against possible attack while clearing the wreck. The body of the unfortunate brakeman was brought across the bridge and laid in the baggage car and a tent was pitched to serve as a temporary station for Bucks.

While this was being done, Bob Scott, who had ridden farthest up the creek, appeared leading his horse and talking to a white man who was walking beside him. He had found the conductor of the wrecked train, Pat Francis, who, young though he was, had escaped the Indians long enough to reach a cave in the creek bank and whose rifle shots Bucks had heard, while Francis was holding the Sioux at bay during the fight. The plucky conductor, who was covered with dust, was greeted with acclamations.

“He claims,” volunteered Scott, speaking to 159 Stanley, “he could have stood them off all day.”

Francis’s eyes fell regretfully on the dead brakeman. “If that boy had minded what I said and come with me he would have been alive now.”

The wrecking train, with a gang of men from Medicine Bend, arrived late in the afternoon, and at supper-time a courier rode in from Stanley’s scouting party with despatches for General Park. Stanley reported the chase futile. As Bob Scott had predicted, the Brulés had burned the ranch and craftily scattered the moment they reached the sand-hills. Instead of a single trail to follow, Stanley found fifty. Only his determination to give the Indians a punishment that they would remember held the pursuing party together, and three days afterward he fought a battle with the wily raiders, surprised in a canyon on the Frenchman River, which, though indecisive, gave Iron Hand’s band a wholesome respect for the stubborn engineer.

The train service under the attacks of the Indians thus repeated, fell into serious demoralization, and an armed guard of regular soldiers rode all 160 trains for months after the Goose Creek attack. Bucks was given a guard for his own lonely and exposed position in the person of Bob Scott, the man of all men