Charlie to the Rescue, Robert Michael Ballantyne [pocket ebook reader txt] 📗

needlessly cruel."

For some moments the old man gazed sternly at his questioner as if he heard him not. Then the frown darkened, and, pointing to the grave at his feet, he said--

"The white man was _more_ cruel."

"What had he done?" asked the scout.

But the old man would not reply. There came over his withered features that stony stare of resolute contempt which he evidently intended to maintain to the last in spite of torture and death.

"Better question the child," suggested Dick Darvall, who up to that moment had been too much horrified by what he had witnessed to be able to speak.

The scout looked at the child. She stood trembling beside her captor, with evidences of intense terror on her dusky countenance, for she was only too well accustomed to the cruelties practised by white men and red on each other to have any hope either for the old man or herself.

"Poor thing!" said Hunky Ben, laying his strong hand tenderly on the girl's head. Then, taking her hand, he led her gently aside, and spoke to her in her own tongue.

There was something so unexpectedly soft in the scout's voice, and so tender in his touch, that the little brown maid was irresistibly comforted. When one falls into the grasp of Goodness and Strength, relief of mind, more or less, is an inevitable result. David thought so when he said, "Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord." The Indian child evidently thought so when she felt that Hunky Ben was strong and perceived that he was good.

"We will not hurt you, my little one," said the scout, when he had reached a retired part of the copse, and, sitting down, placed the child on his knee. "The white man who was killed by your people was a very bad man. We were looking for him to kill him. Was it the old man that killed him?"

"No," replied the child, "it was the chief."

"Why was he so cruel in his killing?" asked the scout.

"Because the white man was a coward. He feared to face our warriors, but he shot an old woman!" answered the little maid; and then, inspired with confidence by the scout's kind and pitiful expression, she related the whole story of the savage and wanton murder perpetrated by the Flint, the subsequent vengeance of her people, and the unchecked flight and dispersion of Jake's comrades. The old woman who had been slain, she said, was her grandmother, and the old man who had been captured was her grandfather.

"Friends, our business has been done for us," said the scout on rejoining his comrades, "so we've nothing to do but return home."

He then told them in detail what the Indian girl had related.

"Of course," he added, "we've no right to find fault wi' the Redskins for punishin' the murderer arter their own fashion, though we might wish they had bin somewhat more merciful--"

"No, we mightn't," interrupted Crux stoutly. "The Flint got off easy in _my_ opinion. If I had had the doin' o't, I'd have roasted him alive."

"No, you wouldn't, Crux," returned Ben, with a benignant smile. "Young chaps like you are always, accordin' to your own showin', worse than the devil himself when your blood's roused by indignation at cruelty or injustice, but you sing a good deal softer when you come to the scratch with your enemy in your power."

"You're wrong, Hunky Ben," retorted Crux firmly. "Any man as would blow the brains out of a poor old woman in cold blood, as the Flint did, desarves the worst that can be done to him."

"I didn't say nowt about what _he_ desarves," returned the scout; "I was speakin' about what _you_ would do if you'd got the killin' of him."

"Well, well, mates," said Dick Darvall, a little impatiently, "seems to me that we're wastin' our wind, for the miserable wretch, bein' defunct, is beyond the malice o' red man or white. I therefore vote that we stop palaverin', 'bout ship, clap on all sail an' lay our course for home."

This suggestion met with general approval, and the curious mixture of men and races, which had thus for a brief period been banded together under the influence of a united purpose, prepared to break up.

"I suppose you an' Darvall will make tracks for Traitor's Trap," said Crux to Hunky Ben.

"That's my trail to be," answered the scout. "What say you, Black Polly? Are ye game for such a spin to-night?"

The mare arched her glossy neck, put back both ears, and gave other indications that she would have fully appreciated the remarks of her master if she had only understood them.

"Ah! Bluefire and I don't talk in that style," said Crux, with a laugh. "I give him his orders an' he knows that he's got to obey. He and I will make a bee-line for David's Store an' have a drink. Who'll keep me company?"

Several of the more reckless among the men intimated their willingness to join the toper. The rest said they had other business on hand than to go carousin' around.

"Why, Crux," said one who had been a very lively member of the party during the ride out, "d'ye know, boy, that it's writ in the book o' Fate that you an' I an' all of us, have just got so many beats o' the pulse allowed us--no more an' no less--an' we're free to run the beats out fast or slow, just as we like? There's nothin' like drink for makin' 'em go fast!"

"I don't believe that, Robin Stout," returned Crux; "an' even if I did believe it I'd go on just the same, for I prefer a short life and a merry one to a long life an' a wishy-washy miserable one."

"Hear! hear!" exclaimed several of the topers.

"Don't ye think, Crux," interposed Darvall, "that a long life an' a happy one might be better than either?"

"Hear! _hear_!" remarked Hunky Ben, with a quiet laugh.

"Well, boys," said one fine bright-looking young fellow, patting the neck of his pony, "whether my life is to be long or short, merry, wishy-washy or happy, I shall be off cow-punching for the next six months or so, somewhere about the African bend, on the Colorado River, in South Texas, an' I mean to try an' keep my pulse a-goin' _without_ drink. I've seen more than enough o' the curse that comes to us all on account of it, and I won't be caught in _that_ trap again."

"Then you've bin caught in it once already, Jo Pinto?" said a comrade.

"Ay, I just have, but, you bet, it's the last time. I don't see the fun of makin' my veins a channel for firewater, and then finishin' off with D.T., if bullet or knife should leave me to go that length."

"I suppose, Pinto," said Crux, with a smile of contempt, "that you've bin to hear that mad fellow Gough, who's bin howlin' around in these parts of late?"

"That's so," retorted Pinto, flushing with sudden anger. "I've been to hear J.B. Gough, an' what's more I mean to take his advice in spite of all the flap-jack soakers 'tween the Atlantic and the Rockies. He's a true man, is Gough, every inch of him, and men and women that's bin used chiefly to cursin' in time past have heaped more blessin's on that man's head than would sink you, Crux,--if put by mistake on _your_ head--right through the lowest end o' the bottomless pit."

"Pretty deep that, anyhow!" exclaimed Crux, with a careless laugh, for he had no mind to quarrel with the stout young cow-boy whose black eyes he had made to flash so keenly.

"It seems to me," said another of the band, as he hung the coils of his lasso round the horn of his Mexican saddle, "that we must quit talkin' unless we make up our minds to stop here till sun-up. Who's goin' north? My old boss is financially busted, so I've hired to P.T. Granger, who has started a new ranch at the head o' Pugit's Creek. He wants one or two good hands I know, an' I've reason to believe he's an honest man. I go up trail at thirty dollars per month. The outfit's to consist of thirty hundred head of Texas steers, a chuck wagon and cook, with thirty riders includin' the boss himself an' six horses to the man."

A couple of stout-looking cow-boys offered to join the last speaker on the strength of his representations, and then, as the night bid fair to be bright and calm, the whole band scattered and galloped away in separate groups over the moonlit plains.


CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.


THEY RETURN TO THE RANCH OF ROARING BULL, WHERE SOMETHING SERIOUS HAPPENS TO DICK DARVALL.

When Dick Darvall and Hunky Ben returned from the expedition which we have just described, they found all right at the cave, except that a letter to Leather had been sent up from Bull's ranch which had caused him much grief and anxiety.

"I have been eagerly awaiting your return, Ben," said Charlie Brooke, when he and the scout went outside the cave to talk the matter over, "for the news in this letter has thrown poor Leather back considerably, and, as he will continue to fret about it and get worse, something must be done."

He paused for a few moments, and the scout gravely waited for him to resume.

"The fact is," continued Charlie, "that poor Leather's father has been given far too much to the bottle during a great part of his life, and the letter just received tells us that he has suddenly left home and gone no one knows where. Now, my friend Leather and his father were always very fond of each other, and the son cannot forgive himself for having at various times rather encouraged his father in drinking, so that his conscience is reproaching him terribly, as you may well believe, and he insists on it that he is now quite able to undertake the voyage home. You and I know, Ben, that in his present state it would be madness for him to attempt it; yet to lie and fret here would be almost as bad. Now, what is your advice?"

For some moments the scout stood silent with his eyes on the ground and his right hand grasping his chin--his usual attitude when engaged in meditation.

"Is there enough o' dollars," he asked, "to let you do as ye like?"

"No lack of dollars, I dare say, when needed," replied Charlie.

"Then my advice," returned the scout promptly, "is to take Leather straight off to-morrow mornin' to Bull's ranch; make him comfortable there, call him Mister Shank,--so as nobody'll think he's been the man called Leather, who's bin so long ill along wi' poor Buck Tom's gang,-- and then you go off to old England to follow his father's trail till you find him. Leather has great belief in you, sir, and the feelin' that you are away doin' your best for him will do more to relieve his mind and strengthen his body than tons o' doctor's stuff. Dick Darvall could remain to take care of him if he has no objection."