A DARING DEED.
In the mean time, the battle was raging with infernal hotness. All of Captain Shields’ party were unerring marksmen, and they were so accustomed to the most desperate contests with the red-skins, that despite the terrible strait in which they were placed, they preserved their coolness and equipoise like true veterans, and loaded and fired with such rapid sureness, that to this alone may be attributed the severe check, which kept the Comanches from making an overwhelming charge, that would have carried every thing before them.
The first night passed with little disturbance, as we have already shown, and the second day the battle was renewed and kept up with scarcely an intermission until nightfall.
This day, especially the latter portion, was very warm, and the suffering of the little band was terrible—so much so that many of the living envied the dead, who had been so speedily released from their distress. The thirst felt by all was a perpetual torment, from which there was scarcely the slightest relief. Many of the men, despite the great danger, dug into the ground, until the damp soil was reached, which they scooped up and placed in their mouths as a slight assuagement of their anguish.
The females stood the trial like martyrs, for their own greatest suffering was that of seeing the half-dozen moaning children piteously begging for water, when there was none to give them.
The history of the world has proven that men will run any risk, no matter what, for the sake of satisfying the maddening thirst, that threatens to drive them raving wild; and, it was this that was the cause of one of the most daring deeds ever recorded, upon the part of young Egbert Rodman.
The Comanches could not but be aware of this fearful distress of the whites, and with a fiendish malignity, characteristic of the Indian race, just at nightfall, when the Dead Man’s Gulch was bathed in mellow twilight, one of the red-skins was seen to leap off his mustang and walk toward the encampment, with a large tin canteen in his hand—a relic undoubtedly of some massacre of United States soldiers.
There was a lull in the firing at this moment, and the whites, at a loss to understand the meaning of the proceeding, stealthily peered out from their coverts in the wagons, to learn what new trick was on the tapis.
It looked as if he were going to summon them to surrender, or call for a parley, as he walked straight forward until he was within a hundred feet of the nearest wagon, when he paused and held up the canteen before him, contorting his face into the most grotesque grimaces, and shaking the vessel in front and over his head.
The stillness at this moment was so profound, that more than one distinctly heard the gurgle of water in the vessel, and, if any doubt remained of the red-skin’s purpose, it was dissipated by his calling out, in broken English:
“Yengese—come—muchee drink—hab muchee drink—”
These words were scarcely uttered, when crack, crack went two rifles almost simultaneously, and the foolhardy wretch made a scrambling leap, and his taunting words ended in a wild howl, as he fell prostrate across the can, that he had brandished so tormentingly in the faces of the sufferers.
It is strange that such a dog should not have known the risk he ran in making such a taunt.
The Indian had scarcely fallen when several of his comrades started down the declivity to bring away his body. At the same moment, Egbert Rodman, who was in one of the wagons, sprung out, and was seen to run at full speed in the direction of the fallen man.
“Come back! come back! or you’re a dead man!” shouted Captain Shields, divining his purpose on the instant.
But the young man’s lips were set, and he was determined upon possessing that canteen, if it were within the range of human possibility. He saw a horde of Comanches swarming down the gulch on a full run, screeching like demons, and evidently certain of securing the daring Yengee, whose torturing thirst had stolen away his senses.
But Egbert was not to be deterred by any such appalling danger as this. Now that he had undertaken the desperate task, nothing but death should turn him aside!
In far less time than it requires to be narrated, he had sped over the intervening ground, and was at the prostrate figure. He was fleet of foot, and he ran as he never ran before, reaching it, however, only a few seconds in advance of the rescuing Comanches, one of whom actually fired and missed him, when scarcely a rod in advance.
One tremendous jerk of his arm, and Egbert threw the dead Indian off the canteen, and catching it up in his hand, he turned about and started at the same headlong speed for the encampment, clinging to the vessel as if it was his own life; but the Comanches were all about him, and it looked as if it was all up, when he whipped out his only weapon—his revolver, and blazed away right and left in their very faces. At the same instant the whites opened fire, and made such havoc, that in the confusion Egbert made a dash, and sped like a reindeer for the wagons, and leaped in behind them with the canteen and the water and himself intact.
Then a shout went up from within the little band, and making his way to the central wagon, Egbert first furnished the moaning children with several swallows of the delicious—(oh, how delicious!) fluid, no argument inducing Lizzie Manning to take a drop, until all her companions had first done so.
Then the brave fellow made his way from man to man, every one partaking of the soul-reviving cold water, whose delicious taste could not have been approached by the “nectar of the gods.”
All drank moderately, for they knew that Egbert was to come last, and nothing could induce one to cut his allowance short; and so he let several swallows gurgle down his parched throat, when he carried the remainder to the women’s wagon, and placing it in the hands of Lizzie, said:
“Keep it for the poor suffering little ones and for yourselves! We are hardy men, and can stand thirst better than they, and know how to chew our bullets, when we have nothing else!”
With many a fervent blessing upon the noble fellow’s head, the canteen was accepted and preserved as he requested.