Chapter XIX: The Gamblers 'put Up'

'Towzer, my lad, you mustn't take it unkindly, but I think you and Frank had better watch together to-night. You see you ain't as used to camping out as Snap and me, and there's a good deal of risk to-night,' said Wharton.

'Quite right, Dick!' said Frank; 'I know we're duffers, but Rome wasn't built in a day.'

'No, no, lad, I know that, and you'll be as good as any of us by-and-by. Will you and Snap take the first watch till midnight?'

'All right; wake up, young 'un!' cried Frank.

'No fear of us both sleeping at once,' said Towzer sulkily to his brother, 'you snore so.'

After an hour or two spent in watching all the mysterious shadows which begin only to move and live in the forest after the moon comes up, Towzer noticed something which seemed to him more substantial than the shadows creeping slowly up a glade towards the camp. Towzer gripped his brother's arm and pointed silently towards it.

'A hind feeding up this way, isn't it?' whispered Frank.

'I don't know; that Indian was a wolf last night, it's likely enough he'll be a hind to-night; but, hind or Indian, I'm going to put a bullet into him as soon as he comes close enough to make certain,' answered the boy savagely, and he sank slowly on to his stomach to get a steady shot with his rifle.

Just then the thing, whatever it was, came out into the moonlight.

'Hold hard, Towzer, it's "the Cradle"; I can see his white fetlock as plain as the nose on your face.'

'Might be an Indian in his skin,' answered Towzer, only half convinced.

'No, no, I can see him quite plainly, can't you? And he is alone and unsaddled. Let's see what he'll do.'

Slowly the pony came along, smelling every now and then at the ground, and at last walked boldly into the camp, and, bending his neck, hung his wise old head over Snap's sleeping form, and rubbed his velvet muzzle against the boy's cheek.

Snap was on his legs in a minute.

'Why, old chap, where have you come from?' he cried, and the pony laid back his ears and whinnied ever so softly. It was a regular pony whisper.

Frank and Towzer came up and by this time old Wharton was sitting up too, his hand upon his rifle.

'Slipped them durned Redskins, hev you, old fellow?' laughed Dick softly. 'Well, I've known you get rid of better men than they'll ever be, before now; but bust me if I can guess how you found us out. You haven't brought Frank's rifle along, I suppose,' he added, for the shot fired the night before had been from Frank's rifle, which the Indian had somehow managed to steal from the bough from which it was hanging. Unfortunately, even 'the Cradle's' 'cuteness had not gone as far as this.

'I say, Snap,' said Wharton, coming out of a very brown study, in which he had remained for nearly five minutes, 'it's a very bright moon to-night, isn't it?'

'Never saw a brighter,' said the boy.

'That isn't the way "the Cradle" kem along, is it now?' asked Wharton, pointing down the glade.

'Yes, that's where I first saw him,' said Towzer, pointing.

'Ah!' continued Wharton. 'Now, did it ever strike you that that haze down theer wasn't altogether nat'ral, not on a night like this, anyway?' and he pointed to a thin vapour which hung about the trees some three miles away.

The boys looked in the direction indicated, and saw the vapour plainly enough.

'Well?' said Snap, and waited.

'Wal!' returned Dick, 'that's them durned Redskins. They don't think we'll dare to follow them; the pony has slipped 'em, that shows they are pretty careless, and' (with a vigorous slap on his thigh) 'if you're game I'm going the way that theer Cradle came, and am goin' to have Frank's rifle and an Injun's hair in camp right here before daylight.'

Here, in the heart of civilisation, Dick's speech, sounds bloodthirsty, and his programme of amusement for that autumn night anything but attractive. Out there, in those wild forests, the boys only remembered that grey wolf changing in the moonlight into a thieving savage; they remembered the rifle-ball that luckily scattered the ashes of their camp-fire and not their brains; they remembered the lost pony and lost rifle, and nothing more. Rising, they stood, tall, silent, young figures in the moonlight, ready to follow Dick Wharton anywhere.

'Towzer, my lad,' said Dick, 'I am going to give you the worst work of all. You must wait with "the Cradle"; and if anything happens to us, if we aren't back in six hours' time, get on the pony's back, turn his head for the river, and let him lead you. He'll take you back to Rosebud somehow, and then you bring the boys on our trail. Keep your rifle; I've got my six-shooter, and you'll, may be, want it. Good-bye, lad, there's not much fear, but we'll see you again soon.'

There was a lump in Towzer's throat. It was hard to be the youngest and miss all the fun; to be left alone, and have perhaps that terrible ride home; but he could not help feeling that Dick was right, for all that. Either of the others was twice the man that he was for fighting, and then, too, if it came to a long ride, he was three stone lighter even than Snap, and Frank was heavier than either. So he shook hands as heartily as he could, and stood watching his brother and his friend glide noiselessly down the glade after old Wharton.

What fine fellows they looked, to be sure! Snap was a perfectly built athlete, if there ever was one--tall and wiry, with not an ounce of spare flesh anywhere. Frank was the biggest of the three, a huge bull-necked Englishman, a man who could have killed even Snap as a terrier kills a rat if he got him in a railway-carriage or a corner, but no match for his active friend in the open. As for Dick, he was tough and old, 'old, with the might and breath of twenty boys.'

In a few minutes they had all mingled with the shadows, and Towzer and 'the Cradle,' alone, stood craning their necks after them in vain.

But we have the fairy cap, and, my boys, with your leave, will follow those three silent forms. Old Wharton had a true woodman's instinct for direction, and, having once ascertained for what point he wanted to steer, he kept his course truly and with no apparent effort. Now and again he bent down as he crossed 'the Cradle's' tracks, but he did not depend upon them for guidance. At last he paused, and, beckoning the boys to his side, whispered:

'Their camp is close to here. I'll creep on and have a look at it first, and come back to you when I've seen how the land lies.'

The two young Englishmen crouched down and waited. By some instinct, when the old fellow had slid away like a snake in the grass, Snap held out his hand silently to Frank, who gripped it hard in silence. It was an Englishman's oath. They had silently sworn to do or die.

It seemed hours before anything more happened, but at last a part seemed to detach itself from one of the pine-trees at which Frank was looking, and came gliding into the moon-lit space. It was old Wharton returning.

'They're all right,' he whispered; 'couldn't be better!'

'What, are they all asleep?' asked Snap.

'Better nor that, pard,' the old frontiersman chuckled; 'they're gambling for all they're worth; come along!' and, signing to them to follow, he glided away again from tree to tree, until at last the boys could see the red gleams of a camp-fire on the pines in front of them.

Another half-dozen yards and the whole scene was presented to their eyes. In a little hollow of grass burned the camp-fire, and in its light sat half a dozen Redskins in a group, three facing the other three. They were all squatting on their hams when Snap caught sight of them, and all chanting a kind of song which sounded like a witch's incantation more than like a decent expression of merriment, such as a song should be. The fire lit up their ugly faces, painted with bars of vermilion and black; gleamed on their long, snaky tresses, and glittered in their bead-like black eyes. Much to old Wharton's delight, too, it flickered back from a pile of rifles stacked under a pine a good twenty paces from the group of gamblers.

As the boys reached their point of view Buck Rabbit seemed the chief actor in the game. He had his back to them, but there was no fear of mistaking even his back, with its high, broad shoulders, heavy with knots and lumps of muscle, and that great bullet-shaped head, which seemed set right between them, with nothing but one great wrinkle of fat to show where the neck should be. His hands as they looked at him were the only moving things in the firelight, and they flitted and flashed backwards and forwards until you grew dizzy as you watched them, the old droning song rising and falling with the pace of the hands. The three men facing him had their eyes fastened on Buck Rabbit's hands all the while with an intensity which reminded the spectators of a cat watching a mouse or a snake trying to fascinate a bird. Suddenly, quick as a snake's stroke, one of the Indians opposite to Buck Rabbit shot out his arm and laid a long dark finger upon one of the chiefs hands. For a moment the song dropped. As his hand was touched Buck Rabbit stretched it out across the firelight, palm uppermost and empty! One of the three opposite to him without a word stooped down, and, taking one from a bundle of short sticks beside him, threw it across to Buck Rabbit's party, when the song again rose and the hands again dashed backwards and forwards in the firelight.

'I wonder, now, what that stick were worth? A blanket or a beaver-skin, you bet,' whispered Dick; 'or, may be, it's scalps they're playing for!'

'I don't understand the game,' answered Frank in the same low murmur.

'Oh, it's simple enough. That handsome old friend of ours has got a piece of bone in one of his hands. They've got to tell him in which hand it is. If they are right, he pays. If not, they do,' replied Dick. 'They'd go on at that game until this time to-morrow if we let them,' he added; 'but I guess we'll rise the winners this journey.'

'Now,' he whispered after a pause, 'you just be here and cover those Crows with your Winchesters. You, Snap, draw a bead on a spot about halfway between Buck Rabbit's shoulders, and you, Frank, cover that old villain with a little tuft of hair on his chin and only one eye. That's Teeveevex, the medicine-man, and the biggest scoundrel in the whole lot. If one moves before you hear me speak, fire and keep shooting as long as an Indian is left to shoot at.'

This last sentence the old man hissed out with an energy which impressed his hearers, and before it was well finished he had gone again. The boys could hear their hearts beat, and the only wonder to them was that the Indians could not hear them too, so loudly they seemed to thump against their ribs.

This time, it seemed, Teeveevex had been too many for old Buck Rabbit. His long, skinny claws clutched the chief's wrist like a vice, and when his palm was turned up the little ivory disc gleamed in it. All the shiny, evil-looking heads were bent together, when a voice rang out clear and hard in the stillness, 'Hands up! the man who moves dies!'

The boys were as much startled as the Redskins. Looking up they saw the Indians sullenly and in silence lift their hands above their heads, red statues of wrath glaring fiercely but helplessly at a tall, rigid figure in the moonlight, standing between them and their rifles, its right arm raised, its vigilant eyes noting their every breath, and in its ready right hand a revolver, on which the moonlight rested cold and chill. That little weapon held the lives of six men. If one dared to move, that one died before he could draw another breath. They knew that. At ten yards old Dick Wharton could not miss. How they must have cursed the madness which had riveted their eyes on that glancing bone whilst this avenger stole between them and their weapons! If all rose and dashed at him he would not have time to kill more than one or two, but then he who led that movement must die, and, even so, would the others back him up? It was a hard question. No one was ready to make that first move and pay the price, and so, as men always do when 'put up' by a resolute man who 'has the drop upon them,' they sat still.

'Boys,' said the voice again, 'you can git up now and take these here rifles from behind me. Look sharp.'

Frank and Snap needed no second bidding, though they felt the six men's eyes following their movements. Their eyes were all they dared to move, for they knew that even while he issued his orders Dick Wharton's eyes never left them for a moment; like the muzzle of his revolver, they rested on them unceasingly.

'There's a Redskin tied up to a tree and gagged behind them rifles,' the voice continued; 'cut his thongs and set him free; give him a rifle and see as it's loaded; pick a rifle for me and see as that's loaded; take all the cartridges as you can get your claws on, and then smash up them other rifles against the handiest bull-pine. Do you mind me?'

'All right, Dick,' answered Snap, his knife already hacking at the leather thongs which bound the captive Indian, a fine-looking fellow, whose eyes glistened, but whose tongue said nothing even when Snap took away the gag.

He stretched his arms stiffly, and bent the joints of both legs and arms backwards and forwards once or twice as if uncertain whether or not he had lost the use of them, and when first set free he almost fell from weakness or stiffness--and no wonder, for his bonds had cut deep into his flesh and were dark with his blood.

Crash! crash! went the butts of the good rifles against the bull-pine. It seemed a sad waste, but they were Dick's orders and he was in command.

'Are you through there?' cried the voice again.

'Yes,' cried Frank.

'All the rifles broke, mine loaded, the Indian free and armed, and the cartridges pouched?' he inquired again.

'Yes, Dick,' they replied.

'Very well; now keep your rifles ready if they try to rush me,' said Wharton, and then added, to the figures by the fire:

'Now, gentlemen, I'll not detain you any longer; you can skip;' and, dropping his revolver, he turned on his heel and joined the boys. As he did so a report rang out, and then another. The next moment Dick Wharton had wrenched the smoking rifle from the hands of the Indian whom Snap had released; but it was too late, one of the gamblers had a bullet through his skull, and the great hare-lipped chief himself reeled for a moment as the second bullet cut through the muscles of his arm. With a curse, however, he recovered himself, and, dripping with blood, followed his comrades into the forest.

'Why does my brother spare these dogs?' cried the Blackfoot; 'we should have taken six scalps to-night, and my brother has but one.'

'We don't set much store by scalps, exceptin' our own, Warwolf,' replied the cowboy; 'and whites don't care about shootin' men without arms in their hands.'

It took all Dick Wharton's eloquence, however, and tried Warwolf's gratitude for his deliverance to the uttermost, before he could be persuaded not to pursue the five unhappy Crows that night. It was a clear waste of the good gifts of Providence, he thought, and, though Dick Wharton might be a good fellow and a mighty warrior for a whiteskin, he could not help feeling that he was something quite out of the common as a fool. He followed his old friend Wharton back to camp, however, and there dressed his wounds, and gave his deliverers some account of what had been happening lately in Bull Pine Park and its neighbourhood.

Needless to say that for a night or so, at any rate, the three boys and the old foreman, with Warwolf for an ally, had no fear of attack from the disarmed Crows. Still they kept a good look-out, from habit.