Chapter Twenty Five
Poor Geoffry Again
True to Vipan’s prediction, the first person they met on their return to camp was Smokestack Bill.
Leaning against a waggon-wheel, lazily puffing at his pipe, his faithful Winchester ever ready to hand, the scout watched their approach as imperturbably as though he had parted with his friend but half-an-hour back, instead of nearly a month ago, when he had watched the latter ride off with Mahto-sapa’s band into what looked perilously like the very jaws of death. But he could not restrain a covert guffaw as he marked in what company he now met his friend again.
“Hello, Bill! Any news?” cried the latter, as they rode up to the waggon corral. “By the way, I must call round and collect that twenty dollars from Seth Davis.”
“Guess you’ll have to trade his scalp to raise it,” was the grim reply. “And you’ll find it drying in the smoke of an Ogallalla teepe.”
“That so?”
“It is. Couple o’ nights after War Wolf was run off, a crowd of ’em came along and shot Seth in the doorway of his store. Then they cleared out all the goods and burnt down the whole shebang. They couldn’t nohow get rid of the idea that he’d had a hand in giving War Wolf away.”
“Well, we’ve just stood off a handful of reds.”
“Sho! With the young lady too! Say, stranger” – he broke off, turning to Geoffry – “are you the ‘tenderfoot’ them reds was after?”
“Er – yes. But – how did you know?” answered Geoffry, staring with astonishment.
“Struck your trail. But jest before, I’d struck the trail o’ them painted varmints. Knew they’d jump you, but reckoned you’d make camp ’fore they got within shootin’ distance.”
“You’re out of it this time, Bill,” said Vipan. “He’d have been roast beef by now if we hadn’t happened along. It was a very pretty chase, though,” he added, with a laugh. “Our friend here covered the ground in fine style.”
“Bless your heart, stranger, that’s just nothing,” laughed the scout, noting the offended look which came into the young man’s face at this apparently unfeeling comment on the frightful peril from which he had barely escaped. “Why, me and Vipan there have had many and many such a narrow squeak when we’ve been out scoutin’ alone – ay, and narrower. Haven’t we scooted for a whole day with a yellin’ war-party close on our heels, and no snug corral like this handy to stand ’em off in!”
“Really!” exclaimed Geoffry, open-mouthed. “You bet. Them devils were just a lot of young Cheyenne bucks out in search of any devilment that might come handy. But you were in luck’s way, stranger, this time.”
Smokestack Bill was the bearer of news which tended not a little to relieve the travellers’ minds. He had thoroughly scouted the country ahead and pronounced it free from Indians. He was of opinion that no further trouble need be feared. The Sioux, he declared, had quite enough to occupy their attention at home, for they were mustering every available warrior to resist an expected invasion of the troops, and to this end all raiding parties then abroad on the Plains had been called in. A council of war on a large scale, together with a grand medicine dance, was to be held at the villages of Sitting Bull, Mad Horse, and other chiefs of the hostiles, and it was expected that from twelve to fifteen thousand warriors would assemble. Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and some few other chiefs still remained on their reservations, but the bulk of their followers had deserted and joined the hostiles. The scout was of opinion that they would encounter no considerable body of Indians, though their stock might be exposed to the risk of stampede at the hands of a few adventurous young bucks, such as those who had so nearly captured Geoffry Vallance.
The latter’s arrival in the camp, or rather the manner of it, was productive of no slight sensation among the more inexperienced of the emigrants. The seasoned Western men, however, characteristically viewed the incident as of no great importance, and after one glance at the new comer, tacitly agreed that the advent of a “tenderfoot” more or less constituted but a sorry addition to their fighting force. However, with the consideration and tact so frequently to be found among even the roughest of the pioneers of civilisation, no sign of this was suffered to escape them, and beyond a little good-humoured chaff, and an occasional endeavour – generally successful – to “cram” the “Britisher,” Geoffry had no reason to complain of lack of kindliness or hospitable feeling on the part of the travellers, who, while amusing themselves at the expense of his “greenness,” were ever ready and willing to give him the benefit of their experience or lend him a helping hand.
By the Winthrops the young man was made warmly welcome. The Major, glad of such an acquisition as an educated fellow-countryman, pressed him to remain with them until they arrived at their destination, and see something of the West under his own auspices, and his kind-hearted little wife, very much impressed by his tragic escape from such a terrible fate, took the young stranger completely under her wing, and was disposed to make a hero of him.
Thus the days went by, and the waggon train pursued its slow course over the Western plains; now winding around the spur of some high foot-hill of a loftier range; now emerging from the timber belt fringing some swiftly-flowing river, upon a level tableland carpeted with the greenest of prairie-grass, bespangled with many a strange and delicate-hued flower. The exhilarating air, the unclouded blue of the heavens, the danger lately threatening them removed – removed, too, by the sturdy might of their own right hands – infused a cheerfulness into the wanderers. And when the camp was pitched and the waggons securely corralled for the night, many a song and jest and stirring anecdote enlivened the gathering round the red watch-fires. By day the more enterprising spirits would diverge from the route to track the red deer or the scarcer blacktail in the wooded fastnesses of some neighbouring ravine, while the waggons creaked on their slow and ponderous course.
To this strange new life Geoffry Vallance took with a readiness which was surprising to himself. Indeed, he would have been thoroughly happy but for one thing. From the moment they had recognised each other, when he reeled panting and exhausted to the ground at her feet, Yseulte’s demeanour towards him had been one of studied coldness and reserve. She would never address him of her own initiative, and deftly defeated any attempt on his part to be with her alone. The poor fellow was beside himself with mortification; and when he recalled the circumstances of that first recognition, how he had found her alone with the splendidly handsome scout, to his mortification was added a perfect paroxysm of jealous rage.
Mrs Winthrop took in the situation at a glance – indeed, it would have been manifest to a far less clearsighted observer, so transparent were the symptoms in so simple a subject as poor Geoffry – and it annoyed her.
“I can’t think why,” she began one day, when the latter was away on some hunting expedition with most of the men, and the two ladies were alone together, “I can’t think why you treat the poor fellow so standoffishly, Yseulte. I’m sure he worships the very ground you walk on, and you might be a little kinder to him.”
“Really, I don’t see that the fact entails upon me a corresponding reciprocity,” was the reply, given a little coldly.
“There you go with your long words, Yseulte. And now you turn the stand-offishness upon me. I only mean, dear, that I want everyone to be friendly and on good terms around. Let him say what he wants to say. Then give him an answer. That’ll fix him one way or another right along, and put everything on a friendly footing again.”
“Would it? Supposing I were to tell you, Hettie, that Geoffry Vallance can’t take No for an answer, you would retort that you thought the more of him for it. But there is more than that. He should not have followed me out here. It was not right – it was even ungentlemanly. He has taken an unfair advantage in besieging me like this. In fact, he has placed me in a thoroughly false position.”
“But, dear,” mischievously, “so far from following you, it was you who brought him here.”
“Say Mr Vipan, rather. I am not an Indian fighter.”
Then spake Hettie Winthrop unadvisedly.
“Well, Mr Vipan, then. But, Yseulte dear, you are always pleasant and cordial enough with Mr Vipan. Naturally the other poor fellow notices it.”
Yseulte turned her grand eyes full upon the speaker, and there was an angry flash in them. These two friends were as near a quarrel as they would ever be likely to arrive.
“I don’t know what you mean, Hettie. Mr Vipan saved me from the most horrible of fates. Am I to show my appreciation by keeping him at arm’s length to please Geoffry Vallance?”
“Tut-tut! You needn’t be so fiery about it,” said the other, laughing mischievously. “I didn’t mean anything in particular that I know of, and I guess I don’t hold a brief for any Geoffry Vallance.”
That evening, for the first time since her rescue just alluded to, Yseulte was strolling by herself. She had been strangely reserved and silent all day, and now had stolen quietly away to be alone and think. A stream flowed between its fringe of fig and wild plum trees, about two hundred yards off the camp, and now she stood meditatively gazing into the current and thinking with a pang over the loss of her trout-rod. The evening air was lively with many a sound, the screech of myriad crickets, the shout of the teamsters driving in the animals for the night, the occasional cry of a fretful infant, and the wash and bubble of the water flowing at her feet. Suddenly the utterance of her own name broke in upon her meditations. There stood Geoffry Vallance, the expression of his face that of eagerness to make the most of his opportunity.
“Why do you always avoid me now?” he began, with a quick glance around, as if fearful of interruption, “What have I done that you will hardly speak to me now?”
A flush of anger mounted to her face.
“Have they come back from hunting?” she said, ignoring the question.
“No, I came back by myself. I couldn’t go on any longer till I knew what I had done to offend you. Have I not followed you to the end of another world? And this is how you treat me.”
She could have struck him. “What an idiot the boy is!” she thought. “Father was right. A witless idiot!”
“That is just what you have done,” she flashed forth. “Who gave you any sort of encouragement to follow me to what you are pleased to call ‘the end of another world’? Why did you come here to render me thoroughly ridiculous, to place me in a false position? By what right do you presume to call me to account? Answer me that, and then kindly leave me at once.”
For a moment he seemed thunderstruck, and stood staring at her in blank dismay. Then a light seemed to dawn upon him.
“I thought, at any rate, that one more to protect you – to stand between you and harm – in this wild country, counted for something. But it seems to constitute an offence. Well, I will leave, this very night if you wish it.”
“Nonsense!” was the angry retort. “Have you so soon forgotten the result of trying to cross the plains alone? You know perfectly well I don’t want you to run any such foolish risk. But you should not have followed me here at all. I thought I had given you a final answer once and for all at Lant – ”
“Good evening, Miss Santorex!” struck in a voice behind them. And Vipan raised his hat as he rode by at a foot’s pace within a dozen yards of them. So engrossed had they been that they had not heard the hoof-strokes of his horse. A flush came over Yseulte’s face. Could he have heard? she thought. Surely he must have. The evening air was so still, and Geoffry’s voice was of the high “carrying” order. Oh, that unlucky Geoffry! And for the moment she found it in her heart to wish that he had been left to the tender mercies of the red men.
“I can’t think how it is,” said Geoffry, moodily, bringing his glance back from Vipan’s retreating form to the flushed face of his companion. “I’ve a dim recollection of having seen that fellow before – how, when, and where is just what puzzles me.”
Yseulte started. If she was thinking the same thing she was not going to say so. She suggested a return to the camp.
“And it’s my belief,” pursued Geoffry, with a dash of venom – “my firm belief, that he’s a bad hat.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. I’ve heard one or two queer whispers about him in the camp. It’s said that he’s too friendly with the Indians.”
“Especially the other day when you and I had the pleasure of meeting. Where would you be now but for him, or where should I? I don’t think we ought to go out of our way to cultivate a bad opinion of a man who has saved both our lives, do you?”
She left him, for they had now reached the camp – left him standing there feeling very sore, very resentful, and thoroughly foolish. Yseulte Santorex could be very scornful, very cutting, when she chose.
Chapter Twenty Six
“At his Time of Life.”
“Something not quite right there – not quite right. No, sir,” said the scout to himself, shaking his head softly as he furtively watched his companion. “And I reckon I can fix it,” he added. “Lord! Lord! To think what we may come to – the most sensible of us as well as the most downright foolishest.”
Vipan, stretched at full length beside the camp fire, smoking his long Indian pipe, looked the very picture of languid repose. Yet his thoughts were in a whirl. Why had he come there? – why the devil had he stayed?
The hour was late – late, that is, for those destined to rise at the first glimmer which should tell of the rising dawn – and sundry shapes rolled in blankets, whence emanated snores, betokened that most of the denizens of the encampment were sleeping the sleep of the healthy and the just. The murmur of voices, however, with now and then an airy feminine laugh from the Winthrops’ side of the corral, told that some at any rate were keeping late hours.
“Say, Bill, I conclude I’ll git from here.”
No change of expression came into the speaker’s face. Nor did he even glance at him addressed. The words seem to escape him as the natural and logical outcome of a train of thought.
“Right, old pard. I’m with you there. Where’ll you light out for?”
“I think I’ll go to Red Cloud’s village and see what’s on. Perhaps look in upon Sitting Bull or Mahto-sapa on the way.”
“There I ain’t with you,” answered the scout decisively. “Better leave the reds alone just now. Haven’t you been shooting ’em down like jack-rabbits around here, and won’t they now be bustin’ with murderation to take your hair? No, no.”
“May be. But I want a change, anyway. So I’m for looking up that placer on upper Burntwood Creek. The troops won’t molest us this time, because all the miners’ll have left. Besides all available cavalry will be told off against Sitting Bull.”
“It’s strange that Mr Vipan hasn’t been near us all day,” Mrs Winthrop was saying. “But I suppose he’ll clear out as suddenly as he came. These Western men are queer folks, and that’s a fact.”
“Vipan isn’t a Western man,” answered the Major, thoughtfully. “And it’s my private opinion he could give a queer account of himself if he chose. Sometimes I could swear he had been in the Service. However that’s his business, not ours.”
“Well, he might be a little more open with us, anyway, considering the time we have been together.”
“Just over a week.”
“That’s as long as a year out here. But I shall be sorry when he does leave us – very sorry.”
“May I hope that remark will apply to me, Mrs Winthrop?” said a voice out of the gloom, as its owner stepped within the firelight circle. “It’s odd how things dovetail, for as a matter of fact I strolled across for the purpose of taking leave.”
“Oh, how you startled me!” she cried. “Of taking leave? Surely you are not going to leave us yet, Mr Vipan? Why, we hoped you would accompany us home, and stay awhile, and have a good time generally. You really can’t go yet. Fred – Yseulte – tell him we won’t allow it.”
“Why, most certainly, we won’t,” began the former, heartily. “Come, Vipan – your time’s your own, you know, and you may just as well do some hunting out our way as anywhere else.”
“Of course,” assented his wife. “But – I know what it is. We have offended him in some way. Yseulte, what have you done to offend Mr Vipan? I’m sure I can’t call to mind anything.”
“There is no question of offence,” protested Vipan. “I am a confirmed wanderer, you see, Mrs Winthrop – here to-day, away to-morrow. The country is clear of reds now, and you will no longer need our additional rifles. If we have rendered you some slight service, I can answer for it, my partner is as glad as I am myself.”
No man living was less liable to be swayed by caprice than the speaker. Yet suddenly he became as resolved to remain a little longer, as he had been a moment before to leave. And this change was brought about by the most trivial circumstance in the world. While he was speaking, his eyes had met those of Yseulte Santorex.
Only for a moment, however.
When Vipan, in his usual laconic manner, informed his comrade that he concluded to wait a bit longer, the latter merely remarked, “Right, pard. Jest as you fancy.” But as he rolled over to go to sleep, he nodded off to the unspoken soliloquy —
“It’s a rum start – a darn rum start. At his time of life, too! Yes, sir.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
In the “Dug-Out.”
Yseulte Santorex was conscious of a new and unwonted sensation. She felt nervous.
Yet why should she have felt so, seeing that this was by no means the first time she had undertaken an expedition à deux under her present escort? But somehow it seemed to her that his tone had conveyed a peculiar significance when he suggested this early morning antelope-stalk at the time of making up his mind to remain.
It was a lovely morning. The sun was not an hour high, and the air was delicious. But their success had been nil. To account for the absolute lack of game was a puzzle to Vipan, but it could hardly be the cause of his constrained taciturnity.
Yseulte felt nervous. Why had he induced her to come out like this to-day? Instinctively she felt that he was on the eve of making some revelation. Was he about to confide to her the history of his past? Her nervousness deepened as it began to dawn upon her what an extraordinary fascination this adventurer of the Western Plains, with his splendid stature and magnificent face, was capable of exercising over her. A silence had fallen between them.
“I want you to see this,” said Vipan suddenly as they came upon the ruins of what had once been a strong and substantial building. “It’s an old stage-station which was burnt by the reds in ’67.”
There was eloquence in the ruins of the thick and solid walls which even now stood as high as ten or twelve feet in places, and which were still spanned by a few charred and blackened beams, like the gaping ribs of a wrecked ship. The floor was covered with coarse herbage, sprouting through a layer of débris, whence arose that damp, earthy smell which seems inseparable from ancient buildings of whatever kind. Standing within this relic of a terrible epoch, Yseulte could not repress a shudder. What mutilated human remains might they not actually be walking over? Even in the cheerful daylight the flap of ghostly wings seemed to waft past her.
“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.