Starlight Ranch Part 9

CHAPTER VI.

A NIGHT OF PERIL.

For one moment the telegraph operator was stunned and inert. Then his native pluck and the never-say-die spirit of the young American came to his aid. He rose to his feet, seized his rifle, and ran out to join Phillips and the few men who were busily at work barricading the corral and throwing open the loop-holes in the log walls.

Ralph had disappeared, and no one knew whither he had gone until, just as the men were about to shut the heavy door of the stable, they heard his young voice ring cheerily out through the darkness,--

"Hold on there! Wait till Buford and I get out!"

"Where on earth are you going?" gasped Phillips, in great astonishment, as the boy appeared in the door-way, leading his pet, which was bridled and saddled.

"Going? Back to Lodge Pole, quick as I can, to bring up the cavalry."

"Ralph," said the soldier, "it will never do. Now that Wells is gone I feel responsible for you, and your father would never forgive me if anything befell you. We can't let you go?"

Ralph's eyes were snapping with excitement and his cheeks were flushed.

It was a daring, it was a gallant, thought,--the idea of riding back all alone through a country that might be infested by savage foes; but it was the one chance.

Farron and Wells and the men might be able to hold out a few hours at the ranch up the valley, and keep the Indians far enough away to prevent their burning them out. Of course the ranch could not stand a long siege against Indian ingenuity, but six hours, or eight at the utmost, would be sufficient time in which to bring rescue to the inmates. By that time he could have an overwhelming force of cavalry in the valley, and all would be safe.

If word were not sent to them it would be noon to-morrow before the advance of the Fifth would reach the Chug. By that time all would be over with Farron.

Ralph's brave young heart almost stopped beating as he thought of the hideous fate that awaited the occupants of the ranch unless help came to them. He felt that nothing but a light rider and a fast horse could carry the news in time. He knew that he was the lightest rider in the valley; that Buford was the fastest horse; that no man at the station knew all the "breaks" and ravines, the ridges and "swales" of the country better than he did.

Farron's lay to the southwest, and thither probably all the Indians were now riding. He could gallop off to the southeast, make a long _detour_, and so reach Lodge Pole unseen. If he could get there in two hours and a half, the cavalry could be up and away in fifteen minutes more, and in that case might reach the Chug at daybreak or soon afterwards.

One thing was certain, that to succeed he must go instantly, before the Indians could come down and put a watch around Phillips's.

Of course it was a plan full of fearful risk. He took his life in his hands. Death by the cruelest of tortures awaited him if captured, and it was a prospect before which any boy and many a man might shrink in dismay.

But he had thought of little Jessie; the plan and the estimation of the difficulties and dangers attending its execution had flashed through his mind in less than five seconds, and his resolution was instantly made.

He was a soldier's son, was Ralph, and saying no word to any one he had run to the stable, saddled and bridled Buford, and with his revolver at his hip was ready for his ride.

"It's no use of talking; I'm going," was all he said. "I know how to dodge them just as well as any man here, and, as for father, he'd be ashamed of me if I didn't go."

Waiting for no reply,--before they could fully realize what he meant,--the boy had chirruped to his pawing horse and away they darted round the corner of the station, across the moonlit road, and then eastward down the valley.

"Phillips," exclaimed the soldier, "I never should have let him go. I ought to have gone myself; but he's away before a man can stop him."

"You're too heavy to ride that horse, and there's none other here to match him. That boy's got the sense of a plainsman any day, I tell you, and he'll make it all right. The Indians are all up the valley and we'll hear 'em presently at Farron's. He's keeping off so as to get round east of the bluffs, and then he'll strike across country southward and not try for the road until he's eight or ten miles away. Good for Ralph!

It's a big thing he's doing, and his father will be proud of him for it."

But the telegraph operator was heavy-hearted. The men were all anxious, and cl.u.s.tered again at the rear of the station. All this had taken place in the s.p.a.ce of three minutes, and they were eagerly watching for the next demonstration from the marauders.

Of the fate of poor Warner there could be little doubt. It was evident that the Indians had overwhelmed and killed him. There was a short struggle and the rapidly concentrating fire of rifles and revolvers for a minute or two; then the yells had changed to triumphant whoops, and then came silence.

"They've got his scalp, poor fellow, and no man could lend a hand to help him. G.o.d grant they're all safe inside up there at Farron's," said one of the party; it was the only comment made on the tragedy that had been enacted before them.

"Hullo! What's that?"

"It's the flash of rifles again. They've sighted Ralph!" cried the soldier.

"Not a bit of it. Ralph's off here to the eastward. They're firing and chasing up the valley. Perhaps Warner got away after all. _Look_ at 'em!

See! The flashes are getting farther south all the time! They've headed him off from Farron's, whoever it is, and he's making for the road. The cowardly hounds! There's a hundred of 'em, I reckon, on one poor hunted white man, and here we are with our hands tied!"

For a few minutes more the sound of shots and yells and thundering hoofs came vividly through the still night air. All the time it was drifting away southward, and gradually approached the road. One of the ranchmen begged Phillips to let him have a horse and go out in the direction of the firing to reconnoitre and see what had happened, but it would have been madness to make the attempt, and the request was met with a prompt refusal.

"We shall need every man here soon enough at the rate things are going,"

was the answer. "That may have been Warner escaping, or it may have been one of Farron's men trying to get through to us or else riding off southward to find the cavalry. Perhaps it was Sergeant Wells. Whoever it was, they've had a two- or three-mile chase and have probably got him by this time. The firing in that direction is all over. Now the fun will begin up at the ranch. Then they'll come for us."

"It's my fault!" groaned the operator. "What a night,--and all my fault!

I ought to have told them at Lodge Pole when I could."

"Tell them what?" said Phillips. "You didn't know a thing about their movements until Warner got here! What could you have said if you'd had the chance? The cavalry can't move on mere rumors or ideas that any chance man has who comes to the station in a panic. It has just come all of a sudden, in a way we couldn't foresee.

"All I'm worrying about now is little Jessie, up there at Farron's. I'm afraid Warner's gone, and possibly some one else; but if Farron can only hold out against these fellows until daylight I think he and his little one will be safe. Watch here, two of you, now, while I go back to the house a moment."

And so, arms at hand and in breathless silence, the little group watched and waited. All was quiet at the upper ranch. Farron's light had been extinguished soon after it had replied to the signal from below, but his roofs and walls were dimly visible in the moonlight. The distance was too great for the besiegers to be discerned if any were investing his place.

The quiet lasted only a few moments. Then suddenly there came from up the valley and close around those distant roofs the faint sound of rapid firing. Paled by the moonlight into tiny, ruddy flashes, the flame of each report could be seen by the sharper eyes among the few watchers at Phillips's. The attack had indeed begun at Farron's.

One of the men ran in to tell the news to Phillips, who presently came out and joined the party. No sign of Indians had yet been seen around them, but as they crouched there by the corral, eagerly watching the flashes that told of the distant struggle, and listening to the sounds of combat, there rose upon the air, over to the northward and apparently just at the base of the line of bluffs, the yelps and prolonged bark of the coyote. It died away, and then, far on to the southward, somewhere about the slopes where the road climbed the divide, there came an answering yelp, shrill, querulous, and prolonged.

"Know what that is, boys?" queried Phillips.

"Coyotes, I s'pose," answered one of the men,--a comparatively new hand.

"Coyotes are scarce in this neighborhood nowadays. Those are Sioux signals, and we are surrounded. No man in this crowd could get out now.

Ralph ain't out a moment too soon. G.o.d speed him! If Farron don't owe his life and little Jessie's to that boy's bravery, it'll be because n.o.body could get to them in time to save them. Why _didn't_ he send her here?"

Bad as was the outlook, anxious as were all their hearts, what was their distress to what it would have been had they known the truth,--that Warner lay only a mile up the trail, stripped, scalped, gashed, and mutilated! Still warm, yet stone dead! And that all alone, with little Jessie in his arms, Sergeant Wells had ridden down that trail into the very midst of the thronging foe! Let us follow him, for he is a soldier who deserves the faith that Farron placed in him.

For a few moments after leaving the ranch the sergeant rides along at rapid lope, glancing keenly over the broad, open valley for any sign that might reveal the presence of hostile Indians, and then hopefully at the distant light at the station. He holds little Jessie in firm but gentle clasp, and speaks in fond encouragement every moment or two. She is bundled like a pappoose in the blanket, but her big, dark eyes look up trustfully into his, and once or twice she faintly smiles. All seems so quiet; all so secure in the soldier's strong clasp.

"That's my brave little girl!" says the sergeant. "Papa was right when he told us down at Russell that he had the pluckiest little daughter in all Wyoming. It isn't every baby that would take a night ride with an old dragoon so quietly."

He bends down and softly kisses the thick, curling hair that hangs over her forehead. Then his keen eye again sweeps over the valley, and he touches his charger's flank with the spur.

"_Looks_ all clear," he mutters, "but I've seen a hundred Indians spring up out of a flatter plain than that. They'll skulk behind the smallest kind of a ridge, and not show a feather until one runs right in among them. There might be dozens of them off there beyond the Chug at this moment, and I not be able to see hair or hide of 'em."

Almost half way to Phillips's, and still all is quiet. Then he notes that far ahead the low ridge, a few hundred yards to his left, sweeps round nearly to the trail, and dips into the general level of the prairie within short pistol-shot of the path along which he is riding.

He is yet fully three-quarters of a mile from the place where the ridge so nearly meets the trail, but it is plainly visible now in the silvery moonlight.

"If they should have come down, and should be all ranged behind that ridge now, 'twould be a fearful sc.r.a.pe for this poor little mite," he thinks, and then, soldier-like, sets himself to considering what his course should be if the enemy were suddenly to burst upon him from behind that very curtain.