Golden Face: A Tale of the Wild West

“If these old walls could speak they’d tell a few queer yarns,” said her companion. “Look at these loop-holes. Many a leaden pill have they sent forth to carry ‘Mr Lo’ to the Happy Hunting-Grounds. I don’t know the exact history of this station, but it’s probably that of most others of the time. A surprise – a stiff fight – along siege in the ‘dug-out’ when the reds had set the building on fire – then either relief from outside, or the defenders, reduced by famine or failure of ammunition, shooting each other to avoid capture and the stake.”

“Horrible!” she answered, with a shiver. “But what is a ‘dug-out’?”

“Let’s get outside, and I’ll tell you all about it. Look – you see that mound of earth over there,” pointing to a round hump about a score of yards from the building, and rising three or four feet above the ground. “Well, that is a roof made of earth and stones, and therefore bullet and fire proof. It is loop-holed on a level with the ground, though it’s so overgrown with buffalo-grass that the holes’ll be choked up, I reckon. This roof covers a circular hole about ten or twelve feet in diameter, and just high enough for a man to stand up in. It is reached by a covered way from the main building, and its object was this: – When the reds were numerous and daring enough they had not much difficulty in setting the building on fire by throwing torches and blazing arrows on the roof, just as they threw them into our camp the other day. Then the stage people got into the ‘dug-out,’ and with plenty of rations and ammunition could hold their own indefinitely against all comers. The ‘dug-out’ was pretty nearly an essential adjunct to every stage-station, and a good many ranches had them as well. And now, if you feel so disposed, we will try and explore this one, and then it will be time to start camp-wards.”

She assented eagerly. First going to the mound, the removal of the overgrowth of grass revealed the loop-holes.

“It is like looking into the oubliettes of a mediaeval castle,” said Yseulte, striving to peer through the apertures into the blackness beneath.

“Now come this way,” said her companion, leading the way into the building once more.

A moment’s scrutiny – then advancing to a corner of the building he wrenched away great armfuls of the thick overgrowth. A hole stood revealed – a dark passage slanting down into the earth.

“Wait here a moment,” he said. “I’ll go in first and see that the way is clear.”

The tunnel was straight and smooth. Once inside there was not much difficulty in getting along. But it suddenly occurred to Vipan that he might be acting like a fool. What if he were to encounter a snake in this long-closed-up oubliette, or foul air? Well, for the latter, the matches that he lighted from time to time burnt brightly and clear. For the former – he was already within the “dug-out” when the thought struck him.

He glanced around in the subterranean gloom. It was not unlikely that the floor of the tomb-like retreat might be strewn with the remains of its former owners, who had perished miserably by their own hands rather than fall into the power of their savage foe. But no grim death’s-head glowered at him in the darkness. The place was empty. Quickly he returned to his companion.

“It’s pretty dark in there,” he said. “Think you’d care to undertake it? It may try your nerves.”

But Yseulte laughingly disclaimed the proprietorship of any such inconvenient attributes. She was resolved to see as much wild adventure as she could, she declared. Nevertheless, when she found herself buried in the earthy darkness as she crawled at her companion’s heels, she could not feel free from an inclination to turn back there and then.

But when she stood upright within the underground fortress, and her eyes became accustomed to the half-light, she forgot her misgivings.

“How ingenious!” she cried, looking first around the earthy cell and then out through the loop-holes. “Now, let’s imagine we are beleaguered here, and that the savages are wheeling and circling around us. We could ‘stand them off’ – isn’t that the expression? – till next week.”

“And then if nobody came to get us out of our fix next week?”

“Oh, then we could hold out until the week after.”

“You think that would be fun, eh?”

“Of course,” she answered, her eyes dancing with glee in response to his queer half-smile.

“H’m. Well I’m very glad there’s no chance of your undergoing the actual experience,” he answered drily, turning away to gaze out on the surrounding country, but really that she should not see the expression that swept across his face. For it had come to this. Rupert Vipan – adventurer, renegade, freebooter – a stranger, for many a year, to any softening or tender feeling – a man, too, who had already attained middle age – thought, as he listened to her words, how willingly he would give the remainder of his life for just that experience. To be besieged here for days with this girl – only they two, all alone together – himself her sole protector, with a violent and horrible death at the end of it, he admitted at that moment would be to him Paradise. Yet a consciousness of the absurdity of the idea struck him even then. Who was he in her eyes, in the eyes of those around her, her friends and protectors? An unknown adventurer – a mere commonplace border ruffian. And – at his time of life, too!

“Were you ever besieged in one of these places?” asked Yseulte.

Her voice recalled him to himself.

“Once,” he answered. “In ’67, on the Smoky Hill route, four stagemen and myself. The reds burnt us out the first night, and we got into the dug-out. It was wearisome work, for they preserved a most respectful distance once we were down there. They wouldn’t haul off, though. So one man kept a look-out at the loop-holes, while the rest of us played poker or varied the tedium by swapping lies.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, exchanging ‘experiences.’ Tall twisters some of them were, too. Well, by the third night we got so sick of it that we made up our minds to try and quit. The reds were still hanging around. We needn’t have, for we had plenty of rations and ammunition, but the business was becoming so intolerably monotonous. Well, we started, and the upshot was that out of the five, three of us fell in with a cavalry patrol the next evening, having dodged the reds all day, each of us with an arrow or two stuck more or less badly into him, and the Cheyennes went home with a brace of new scalps. Otherwise the affair was tame enough.”

“Tame, indeed? But you tell it rather tamely. Now, how did the Indians first come to attack you? You left that out.”

“Did I? Oh, well, I happened to discover their propinquity, and concluded to warn the stage people. The red brother divined my intention afar off, and came for me – and them.”

“You ought to be called the Providence of the Plains,” she said, with a laugh that belied the seriousness of her face. “There, I christen you that on the spot.”

“That would be a good joke to tell them over in Henniker City! But to be serious, in these latter days I never go out of my way to spoil the red brother’s fun. None of my business, any way.”

“But you made an exception in favour of us. I don’t believe you are talking seriously at all.”

“You don’t?” he echoed, turning suddenly upon her, and there was that in his tones which awed her into wonder and silence. “You don’t? Well, let me tell you all about it. It was you, and you alone, who saved every soul in that outfit from the scalping-knife and the stake. I sighted your party straggling along just anyhow, and I’d already been watching the Sioux preparing to ambush it. Then while promising my self a good time lying up there on the butte, and looking on at the fun, I chanced to catch sight of – you. That decided the business. Instead of assisting at a grand pitched battle in the novel character of a spectator, I elected to warn your people. Otherwise – ambling along haphazard as they were – they’d have lost their head-coverings to a dead certainty. That is how you saved them.”

“What! You would have done nothing to warn them? I cannot believe it.”

“Wouldn’t have lifted a finger. Why should I?” he broke off, almost angrily. “What interest had I in a few ranchmen and bullwhackers more or less? They were no more to me than the painted savages lying in wait to scalp them. Stop, you were going to say something about colour, religion, and all that sort of thing. But a white skin as often as not covers as vile a nature as a red one, and for the other consideration look at its accredited teachers. About as good Christians as the average Sioux medicine-man, neither better nor worse. It was a blessed good thing, though, that I had a first rate field-glass on that occasion.”

She raised her eyes to his as if expecting him to continue, and they seemed to grow soft and velvety. But he did not continue. Instead, he had taken a rigid attitude, and appeared to be listening intently.

“What can you hear?” she began, wonderingly.

But the words died away on her lips, and she grew ashy pale as her dilated glance read her companion’s face in the gloomy half-light of the “dug-out.” No need to pursue her enquiry now.

For, audible to both, came a dull muffled roar, distant, faint, but of unmistakable import. Even Yseulte did not require her companion to explain the sound. Even she recognised in the long, dropping roll the heavy discharge of firearms.

Chapter Twenty Eight

A Terrible Drama

The waggon train had just pulled out.

Winding along over the wide prairie came the string of great cumbrous vehicles, their white tilts gleaming in the morning sunshine, the monotonous creaking of their axles mingling with the cheery shout of the “bullwhackers” and the crack of whips. Here and there along the line rode horsemen in twos and threes, some leading spare horses, others giving a general eye to the progress of the train. Squads of children chattered and squabbled in the waggons, a shrill feminine voice now and again rising high in remonstration. Women sat placidly sewing or knitting – indulging too in gossip – of which perhaps Yseulte Santorex was the subject more frequently than she would have guessed or approved. All were in good spirits, for their journey was nearing its end. No room was there for apprehension either, for they had now reached the extreme limits of the Sioux range. So far from all minds was any thought of danger that even scouting precautions had been of late very much relaxed.

Thus they journeyed.

“There’s something moving away there on the bluff, Dave,” said Winthrop, suddenly, shading his eyes.

“D’you say so, Colonel?” answered the cowboy, who with his employer and mate was riding some little way ahead of the train. “Likely enough it’s Smokestack Bill coming back. He started off in that direction before daybreak to hunt.”

They were skirting a range of low round-topped bluffs, on one of which had appeared the object which attracted Winthrop’s attention.

“It’s gone now,” said the latter, still gazing intently. “I could have sworn it was somebody’s head.”

“Oh, thunder! Look!” said the cowboy, quickly reining in his horse with a jerk.

Well might even his stout heart – the heart of every soul in that company – die away. For the crest of the bluff was by magic alive with mounted figures. A great sheet of flame burst forth, and amid the deafening crash of the volley a storm of leaden missiles whizzed and hummed around the ears of the party. Oregon Dave had uttered his last words. He threw up his arms with a stiffening jerk, and toppled heavily from his saddle.

Then followed a scene of indescribable terror and confusion. Rending the air with their shrill, vibrating war-whoop, a vast crowd of painted horsemen swooped down in full charge upon the doomed and demoralised whites. Flinging themselves behind their trained steeds, the Sioux delivered their fire with deadly effect, then, recovering themselves in the saddle with cat-like agility, they rode in among their writhing, shrieking victims, spearing and tomahawking right and left. Perfectly mad with terror, the draught animals stampeded. Waggons were overturned, and their inmates flung screaming to the ground, or crushed and mangled beneath the wreckage.

The surprise was complete; the demoralisation perfect. Utterly panic-stricken, helpless with dismay, men allowed themselves to be cut down without offering a shadow of resistance. Apart from the terror inspired by the suddenness of the onslaught, there was literally not a minute of time wherein to mass together and strike a blow in defence. Even the privilege of selling their lives dearly was denied these doomed ones.

The waggon train, pulled out at its full length, offered an easy prey, and along this line, after the first and fatal charge, the warriors, breaking up into groups, urged their fleet ponies; shooting down the wretched emigrants with their revolvers, and ruthlessly spearing such few who, being wounded, instinctively tried to crawl away. Whooping, yelling, whistling, brandishing their weapons, they strove to increase the terror of the maddened teams, who, unable to break loose, upset the vehicles wholesale. They goaded the frenzied animals with their lance-points, laughing like fiends if the wheels passed over the bodies of any of the inmates thrown out or trying to escape; and once when a whole family, driven wild with terror, instinctively flung themselves from the creaking, swaying vehicle, which, upsetting at that moment, crushed mother and children alike in a horrible mangled heap beneath the splintering wreckage, the glee of the savages knew no bounds.

It was all over in a moment. Not a man was left standing – not a man with power in him to strike another blow. All had been slain or were lying wounded unto death. All? Stay! All save one.

Winthrop, alone out of all that outfit, was untouched. But he had better have been dead. His wife! Oh, good God! For her to fall into the power of these fiends!

There was the light horse waggon; but between himself and it already surged a crowd of skimming warriors. Many a piece was aimed at him – many a bullet sang about his ears, but still he went unscathed.

Spurring his horse, straight for the waggon he went – straight into the thick of the yelling, whirling crowd. Already, searing his ears like molten lead, rose the piercing shrieks of miserable women writhing beneath the scalping-knife, or struggling in the outraging grasp of the victorious barbarians. He sees a number of small bodies flung high into the air – even marks the piteous terror in the faces of the wretched little infants as they fall, to be caught dexterously on the bright lance-points extended to receive them, and the laughing yells of the painted fiends as the warm blood spurts forth and falls in jets upon their hands and persons. All this passes before his eyes and ears as a vision of hell, and more than one of those fierce and ruthless assailants deftly turns his horse away rather than face the awful fury of despair blazing from his livid countenance. One after another falls before his revolver. A moment more and he will reach his wife. Then they will both die together by his own hand.

The crowd of whirling centaurs seems to give way before him, and with his eye upon his goal he spurs between their ranks. But a roar of mocking laughter greets his ears.

The canvas curtains of the waggon-tilt part, and a great savage, hideously painted, springs forth, uttering an exultant whoop as he brandishes something in the air. It is a scalp – the blood trickling freely down the long, shining, silky tress.

The whoop dies in the Indian’s throat. Winthrop’s ball has sped true. His wife’s slayer falls heavily, still grasping in the locked grip of death the relic of the murdered victim. Yet, grim as it may seem, the murderer really deserves the gratitude of both. Then a thumping blow on the arm sends his pistol flying out of his hand.

“How! white Colonel,” says a gruff voice at his side. “How! Crow-Scalper big chief. White scalp damn better nor ‘chuck.’ How?”

Grinning with delight, the gigantic warrior extended his hand in the most friendly fashion; with difficulty curbing the plunges of his excited steed. He felt sure of his prey now.

Not yet.

Quick as thought, Winthrop had whipped out another pistol – a Derringer.

But for a timely swerve, Crow-Scalper would have been sent straight to his fathers. Then thinking things had gone far enough, the chief pointed his revolver and shot the unfortunate Englishman dead.

It was all over in a moment – the firing and the din, the shrieks of tortured women, the dying groans of mortally-wounded men – over in an infinitely shorter time than it takes to narrate. Not a man was left alive; and already many a corpse lay where it had fallen, stripped and gory, a hideous mangled object in the barbarous mutilation which it had undergone. Some of the Indians were busy looting the waggons. Others, scattered far and wide over the plain, were in pursuit of the fleeing animals, which had stampeded in every direction. All were in the wildest degree of excitement and exultation. They had mastered the outfit at a stroke, with the loss of only three warriors. They had wiped out their former defeat, and had reaped a rich harvest of scalps. They accordingly set to work to make merry over their plunder.

Over the worst of what followed we will draw a veil. There were females in that doomed waggon train. Where these are concerned the red man, in his hour of victory, is the most brutal, the most ungovernable fiend in the world.

Singing, dancing, feasting, whooping, the barbarians kept up their hideous orgie. Then in furtherance of a new amusement a number of them began to pile together the beams and planks of the wrecked waggons until a huge heap was formed, in shape something like a rough kiln. Up to this structure were dragged about a dozen bodies.

Dead bodies? No; living.

Men wounded unto helplessness and death, yet still with just the spark of life in them. Women, two or three, too elderly or unattractive to fulfil the terrible fate invariably befalling the female captive of the ruthless red man. Some of the elder children who had not been speared were also there. All these, bound and helpless, were first deliberately scalped, then flung inside the improvised kiln. Fire was applied.

Drowning the appalling shrieks of their miserable victims in shrill peals of laughter, the whole array of painted and feathered fiends danced and circled around the blazing pyre in an ecstasy of glee. For upwards of an hour this frightful scene continued. Then when the anguish of the tortured victims had sunk in death, the savages gathered up their spoils and departed, refraining from setting fire to any more of the wreckage lest the too conspicuous sign of their bloody work should by its volume be visible at a greater distance than they desired.

One more tragedy of the wild and blood-stained West. A pack of coyotes, snapping and snarling over their meal of mangled and defaced corpses, whose scalpless skulls shone red and clotted in the sunlight. A cloud of wheeling, soaring vultures, a few piles of charred and shattered wreckage, and many an oozy, shining pool of gore. One more frightful massacre. One more complete and ruthless holocaust to the unquenchable vendetta ever burning between the unsparing red man and his hated and despised foe, the invading white.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Thermopylae

“The camp is attacked,” said Yseulte, not even pausing to brush off the dust which had gathered upon her clothing during her passage into and out of the “dug-out.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Both stood eagerly listening. Again came the long, crackling roll, this time more dropping and desultory, also more distinct than when they first heard it underground.

“How will it end?” she asked.

Their glances met. In the grave and serious expression of her companion’s face Yseulte read the worst.

“We must hope for the best. Meanwhile, my first care must be for your safety, so we must leave this spot at once. See what comes of allowing oneself to get careless. As a matter of fact, we are off the Sioux range, and reckoning on that we haven’t been scouting so carefully as we ought.”

“When can we return to the camp?”

“Not a moment before dark,” he replied, wondering if she knew that the chances were a hundred to one against there being any camp to return to. For to his experienced mind the situation was patent. That sudden and heavy fusillade meant a numerous war-party. It also meant a surprise. Further, and worst of all, he realised that at the time it took place the waggon train would have pulled out, in which event the Indians would not allow it time to corral. Again, the firing had completely ceased, which meant that one of two things had happened. Either the assailants had been beaten off; which was hardly likely within such a short space of time. Or they had carried the whole outfit at the first surprise; and this he decided was almost certain. But there was no need to break the terrible news to his companion.

“Can we not wait here?” said the latter. “We could retire into the ‘dug-out’ if they discovered us.”

“How very near your ideal of fun has come to being realised!” was the reply, with a shadow of a smile. “No, we should stand no chance.”

It did not escape Yseulte that, previous to starting, her escort gave a quick, careful look to her saddlery and girths, pausing to tighten the latter, and her heart sank with a chill and direful foreboding.

“You see, it’s this way,” continued Vipan. “It is almost certain that the war-party is a Sioux one, probably our old friends Crow-Scalper and Mountain Cat. This is the extreme western edge of the Sioux range, consequently when the reds quit the scrimmage they are bound to travel north or north-east. So we must put as much space as we can between us and them in the contrary direction. For the same reason, if your friends have whipped them – ”

He paused abruptly, but it was too late. She turned to him, her eyes dilating with horror.

“If! Oh, tell me the truth. You think they have no chance?”

“One can but hope for the best.” She turned her face away, and the tears fell thick and fast. She could hardly realise it. Her dear friends, under whose protection she had travelled many and many a day, in whose companionship she had been initiated into the delights of this wild new land, and also its perils, now massacred; even at that moment, perhaps, falling beneath the merciless blows of these bloodthirsty savages. She could hardly realise it. Her mind felt numb. Even the sense of her own peril failed to come home to her.

But her companion realised it to the full. This was no time to think of anything but how to neglect no possible means of effecting her safety, yet he could not banish the thrill of triumph which the thought inspired in him that her fate, her very life, was absolutely in his hands. Suddenly she turned to him. The black drop of suspicion was corroding her mind.

“Why did you bring me away from them all this morning?” she said, speaking quickly and in a hard tone. “Did you know what was going to happen?”

The adventurer’s face went ashy white. Even she could entertain such suspicions!

“You forget, Miss Santorex. My tried and trusted friend of years is in that outfit. Should I be likely to sell his scalp, even if I sold those of your friends?”

There was a savour of contempt in the cold incisiveness of his tone that went to her heart. What is baser than the sin of ingratitude? Did she not owe her life – and more than her life – to this man already, and now to be flinging her pitiable and unworthy suspicions at him! Would she ever recover his good opinion again?

“Forgive me!” she cried. “Forgive me! I hardly knew what I was saying.” And she burst into tears. Even yet she would hardly believe but that her fellow-travellers would succeed in holding their own.

Young though the day was, the torrid rays of the sun blazed fiercely down upon the great plains. Some distance in front rose a rugged ridge, almost precipitous. The only passage through this for many miles was a narrow cañon – a mere cleft. Beyond lay miles and miles of heavily-timbered ravines, and for this welcome shelter Vipan was making. This plan he explained to his companion.

“Look! What are those?” she cried, growing suddenly eager. “Indians? No. Wild horses? I didn’t know there were any wild horses in these parts.”