JACK AND HIS CAPTIVES.
While the foregoing scenes were transpiring on the edge of our camp, other events of importance to our romance occupied the Lava-Beds, and their immediate vicinity—events destined to introduce the reader to characters who have lately carved their names on history’s tablets with the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
About a fire that blazed in the center of a large cave, stood and reclined, perhaps twenty-five Indians. With several exceptions all were chiefs, and those exceptions were squaws. The men were clothed in the noble army blue, wearing cavalry hats, sabers and regulation sashes. The clothes of some of our fallen braves fitted the Indians to a nicety, and they laughed to themselves when they surveyed the garments, and thought of the massacre which their red hands had lately inflicted.
Conspicuous among the Modocs stood a tall fellow, about forty years of age. His hair was slightly tinged with gray, and there were crow’s-feet on his forehead, which seldom come to a savage of his years. He wore the fringy leggings of the western tribes; but his body was robed in a close-fitting regulation coat buttoned tightly over his chest, and upon the blue shoulders glittered two gold stars—a General’s insignia. His head was surmounted by a military hat, and his waist was encircled by a beautiful sword sash, from which hung a sword indicative of rank.
This man, in short, was the redoubtable Captain Jack, and the uniform he wore had once graced the manly form of a lamented warrior—General Edward Canby.
Ever and anon shouts of Indian triumph entered the cave, and caused Mouseh’s companions to exchange pleasing glances; but the Modoc tiger did not deign a smile; he stood erect with brows knit, and lips glued together, as it were, by the icy glue of death.
All at once he became a living thing, for he had grown into a statue, as a young savage, clad in the full uniform of a United States artillery-man, entered the cave.
He seemed to be the person for whose arrival Jack had been watching.
“What news, Tom?” asked the chief starting forward, and as the sound of his voice, melodious for a man of his years, fell upon the ears of his co-rebels, there was a movement about the fire, and all started to their feet.
“McKay and his red foxes are near,” said the young Indian. “They crawl among the rocks like lizards, and we can not hear them.”
“Can you not see them?”
“Now and then,” answered Shack Nasty Tom. “Tom saw one; he waited and struck; see!”
As he spoke he drew a scalp from his bosom, and flung it across the Modoc’s arm.
The other chiefs crowded about the trophy.
“’Tis not McKay,” said Captain Jack, in a disappointed tone, “but one of his accursed rangers is scalpless, thanks to Tom. Chiefs, here is a right arm that is dear to Mouseh,” and turning abruptly to the red faces that appeared at his right, the Modoc terror stretched forth his muscled arm.
“Dear says Mouseh is this arm to him; but he will give it for the scalp of Donald McKay.”
“And here is an arm for the hair of the Lost River hunter,” and a tawny arm, upon which the muscles stood out like ropes, was thrown across Jack’s.
The last speaker was Boston Charley.
The next moment a wild shriek rung throughout the cavern, and a young girl, clad in civilized habiliments, darted from a gloomy corner of the cave, and threw herself among the scarlet rebels.
“He is my father!” she cried, fastening her eyes upon the last red speaker. “You shall not take his life. Already, fiends, you have slain my mother, and if you dare to take the scalp of the only relative I now possess, I’ll drive the knife and bullet to more than one red heart.”
The Indians stood speechless while she spoke, and when she had finished, Boston Charley darted upon her with the hoarse growl of the disturbed jungle tiger.
A moment later and the young girl might have been brained, had not Jack caught the uplifted arm, and clutched a hatchet with a determination not to be disobeyed.
“She is Baltimore Bob’s,” he said, looking squarely into Charley’s maddened eye. “He has a claim upon the girl which we must not meddle with. We strike the blue-coats who carry guns and swords—not women who wear long hair.”
Cowed by his chieftain’s eye and the menacing hatchet, Charley dropped the arm he had taken, and the beautiful captive staggered from the group.
“Oh, heavens! have I fallen to the lot of Baltimore Bob?” she cried, sinking back upon the heap of sage-bush, which she had lately deserted. “I have thought, for years, that he was dead; but now to fall into his power again. Oh, heaven protect me.”
“We leave this cave to-night,” said the Modoc chief, addressing his men. “Four miles south of here we find new quarters, from which the blue-coats shall never drive us. Ah, the insults of twenty years ago are being wiped out in blood! Jack treads the path of vengeance now, nor will he relinquish the rifle, until the spirits of his murdered people cry from the spirit-land, ‘Enough!’”
As he uttered the last words, a young chief named Badger Dick stepped before him, for some purpose which must rest forever unexplained, and a second later reeled from the spot with a bullet in his brain.
Instantly every chief cocked his rifle, and stared into the gloom from whence the shot had proceeded.
That the bullet was intended for Jack’s brain was patent to all, but Dick’s action had preserved the red desperado’s life for the scaffold.
The savages drew back from the fire, and a moment later Jack was sneaking toward the hidden enemy.
The formation of the Lava-Beds admitted of a thousand and one admirable concealments for a foe, and every cave could boast of a score of narrow, rocky corridors, many of which would not admit of the passage of a fox. Through one of the latter the bullet had found its way to the brain of Badger Dick, and Jack soon gave over the search, and turned into a larger corridor. This led him into the air, and, looking up, he saw the stars that looked down upon settlers abandoning their homes, all for fear of the knives that he and his merciless followers were wielding so fatally.
The fatal shot had been fired by one of McKay’s Indians, perhaps by the giant half-breed himself, and the Modoc chief was bent upon finding the slayer.
The Rangers of the Lava-Beds, a title which had been gained by McKay’s band of Warm Spring Indians, were scattered about the basaltic rocks, watching the movements of the Modocs, and equally eager to shoot as to spy. They had proved of much annoyance to Jack during the war, for they were versed in savage warfare, and Donald McKay could pit cunning against cunning, with a readiness that irritated the conspirators.
About Mouseh all was still.
He lay among the rocks listening intently, and watching for shadows against their whitish sides.
For several moments he had been debating whether to proceed further, and was on the point of deciding to return to his chiefs, when a slight noise attracted his attention.
With his finger on the trigger of a new Spencer rifle, he turned his head, when a dark form leaped over the flat rock upon which the red brigand’s arm rested, and he went to the ground beneath the onslaught.
A glance would have told the spectator that the new foe could not cope with the Modoc tiger, and that he could hope for victory only in agility, and quick, sure blows.
But these the latter seemed unwilling to bestow; for he beat the Indian’s head against the rocks until he deprived him of his senses.
“Now,” the victor muttered, triumphantly. “I’ve caught the biggest devil of them all; but I’m somewhat like the man who drew the elephant—I don’t know what to do with him. Shall I kill him? No; he must die by other hands than mine. But how can I get him away from here?”
Thus commenting, the youth, a white man, though clad in Indian garments—proceeded to bind his “elephant,” whom he had recognized by the two gold stars on the shoulder and was midway in his task when a low “call,” ten feet below and slightly to his right, caused him to pause.
With his hands on the cords he listened, and at last answered the call.
Then he saw a dark figure approach with the movements of a lazy lizard; but the youth drew his knife through fear.
“Cohoon,” he ventured, at length, in a cautious tone.
“Evan,” replied the figure, and a moment later the captor of Captain Jack had a valuable assistant in the person of a Warm Spring Indian, who is destined to play no inferior part in the intricacies of our romance.
“Jack!” exclaimed the Warm Spring scout, gazing down into the captive’s face.
“Yes, Cohoon; I did not dream of catching this devil to-night. Where’s Donald?”
“Down by Black Creek.”
“Any of the boys near?”
“All away.”
“Then we must take care of the elephant ourselves. Here, tie these legs while I press them together. Draw the rope between them, that’s it. Heavens!”
Well might he utter this ejaculation, for Captain Jack, in one second, had drawn his legs to his chin, and as suddenly had straightened them out again.
Cohoon, struck in the breast by the moccasined feet, went flying over the rocks, and the youth threw himself upon the Modoc again before he could gain his feet.
“I’ll finish you now, devil!” he cried, and the knife shot aloft. “Curse you, Captain Jack—”
The Modoc rose to his feet as though there was no impediment to such action, and the next minute the youth found himself held at arm’s length by the chief of the scarlet rebels.
Captain Jack had not spoken once during the melee, nor did he speak now.
He seemed at a loss how to dispose of his captive.
He could drive the knife to his heart, or hurl him over the cordon of rock that surrounded the mouth of the corridor, and the soldiers would pick him up some time, a shapeless mass of humanity!
A footstep attracted the Indian. Was Cohoon returning?
Jack thought he was; so, raising the young white scout above his head, he stepped upon a rock that elevated him several feet, and bent his body for the death-fling.
But at that moment the figure which had occasioned the noise sprung forward, and caught the chief’s arm.
With a low cry of astonishment the Modoc left the rock, and lowered the scout.
“Spare him for me, Mouseh,” said the new-comer, who was clad in the rough garments of the frontiersman. “I’ve got a score to settle with this chap. Look here, Evan Harris, do you know me?”
As he put the question, he whirled Jack’s captive about, and leaned forward until their faces almost touched.
The scout gazed into the triumphant eyes for a moment, and then started back.
“Great Heavens! is it you?” he cried. “I thought you were dead!”
The new-comer laughed.
“Were I dead, I would surely not be here,” he said. “Evan Harris, I would not have missed this meeting for all the gold in California. I believe there’s a slight difficulty existing between us. We’ll settle it to-night, yet. Now, Mouseh we’ll go to the braves.”
Captain Jack picked the scout up again, and bore him into the corridor.
It was midnight now.
After a while the Modoc again strode into the cave with his captive, but the borderman did not follow.
Where was he?
His disappearance puzzled the scout, nor did he come while they waited, seemingly, for him.
All at once a woman glided into the cave, and as she rose erect in the firelight, the chiefs uttered a name:
“Artena!”
She started slightly when her eyes fell upon the captive scout; but recovered a moment later, and advanced toward the group.
“What news does Artena bring from the lodges of the blue-coats?” asked Jack. “She did not stay long with them, so she must have seen something important.”
“She has; the soldier with the big beard—”
Her sentence was broken by the sudden appearance of an Indian, whose voice filled the cavern.
“Arrest Artena,” he cried. “She is a snake in the grass—a traitress of the deepest dye!”
The denouncer stood in the center of the cave, and pointed a quivering finger at the Indian girl.
She did not stir, but looked the Indian squarely in the eye, as her lips shot in his face these words:
“Baltimore Bob is a liar!”