Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 94 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 “They’re mournin’ fur their roasted bro- thers!” ‘“*Not for them,” said Midnight. ‘‘The In- Aian boys are setting them upon the boy!” ** Gopher?” | “* Gopher Gid!” “TI told ’im to go to the lodge and trust in us,” said Rube, surprised. ‘‘ The Injun boys, you say? * Yes.” ‘* Every one is a little devil.” ‘“‘There’s only one good one in this cursed camp, and I’ve just left him,” was the response, and the speaker resumed before the puzzled borderer could uttera word. “I don’t intend to leave him to die thus, Rube. Go back, dis- arm suspicion; get the horses; you know the corral; you know where to lead them. Let no ‘ass grow under you feet. We have much to o; we are still in the mouth of this human hell!” : ** An’ the jaws ar’ likely to close on us, too!” muttered the Eagle as he hurried from his partner. : Night had closed about the Sioux camp. The inhabitants were greedily breaking their three days’ fast by savage attacks on roasted dogs throughout the village. They seemed to care for nothing but the appeasing of ravenous ap- petites. But here and there some discussed the great events of the day—the tragic termination of the sun-dance, and not a few mourned the loss of the man who had tickled their palates with copious draughts of whisky. Old Tanglefoot’s body had been borne from the village into the midst of the dense cotton- wood forest. There red arms had hoisted it far up among the branches of a tree, and made it fast with buffalo-cords. The evening breezes had fanned that painted face, and the long, golden rays of the summer sun fell athwart its strange coloring. Had the gin-smuggler found a coffin and a ave above terra firma? Ay, in the tree-top he winds would rock him gently while he slept that long sleep of death, and his last cargo of ta had been hauled over the Deadwood trail! But, let us to another scene. Gopher Gid, bewildered by the sudden ter- mination of the sun-dance, found himself com- paratively unnoticed. All eyes were directed upon Midnight Jack, now known to the boy. ‘* Back to yer lodge, boy!” said a voice at his ear. ‘Don’t try to git away of your own ac- cord. We'll be arter ye to-night. Lie still an’ keep a stiff upper lip. We've got the trump kerds—a lone hand, as it war!” Gopher did not look into the speaker’s face; he recognized the voice of Rube Rattler; and saying, ‘I will trust you,” he glided away, and crept into the lodge w hich he had lately left as Timon Moss’s prisoner. “This luck will not last forever!” he ejacu- lated. ‘I could escape—could reach the cotton- woods and find the river. Il could go back to the home in the hill. But I will not desert them. Braver men never entered an Indian camp—a luckier shot than Midnight’s was never made. A tree for acoffin, Timon Moss! Ah! no more whisky-smuggling over this border. You said I'd never see my hole in the ground again. False prophet! not one of my traps will ever touch your vile fingers! Where is Mid- night’s sister? Ab! there is the puzzle! Is she here? Am I near that girl who seems a myth?” The boy ceased, for the subject grew deeper as he talked, and he resolved to bide the pro- mised coming of his twe friends, The sun went down; the darkness came and at last a slight noise drew Gopher to the cur- ““Deceived!” he said. ‘‘I thought I heard a step. A dog, perhaps—” At that moment a dark figure sprung into the lodge and the little trapper went down before it. He felt the naked arm of an Indian about him, and the next moment the wigwam was filled with an unseen, jabbering crowd. Resistance was in vain; the boy was over- powered and almost before he could recover his scattered thoughts, he found himself being drag- ed unceremoniously through the street. The teures of his captors, as he saw them in the starlight, were those of boys of his own age. There were sixty or more, and their savage de- ight knew no bounds. ut Gopher Gid saw more than that during that forced journey. For each boy, there seem- ed at least two dogs. There were canines of all ies, sizes and conditions: the mangy cur, ihe; unt bull-hound, the deer-slayer. They re- sembled a pack of wolves, leaping over one another, snapping, snarling, actually bit- > Midnight Jack. ing, all the time making night hideous with their yelps. The red boys tried to quiet the brutes, but in vain; their words and blows served to increase the tumult, and in this man- ner, surrounded by the noisy pack, Gopher Gid was hurried toward a fate which Indian in- genuity had devised. On, on went the Indian boys with their help- less victim. Two of the stoutest—real little athletes—griped the young trapper’s arms, and at a rapid pace he was jerked over logs and rattled across the open space, until, at last, the torturing band came toa halt. The middle of the cottonwood forest had been reached; and as the boy trapper was thrown to the ground, ex- hausted and with arms seemingly wrenched from their sockets, the dogs rushed upon him with yells of glee. But the red boys made an attack upon the animals and clubbed them back with- out mercy, so that Gopher Gid made a mira- culous escape from their teeth. In the midst of the boy’s conjectures as to the fate in store for him, he was jerked to his feet and lashed to the tree under whose wide- spreading branches he had been released. It took one-half of the Indian boys to keep the dogs back. The curs continually darted at his legs, and in their frantic efforts to reach them so excited the larger animals that the stout clubs of the urchins were constantly employed in belaboring them. ‘What if they should actually set the brutes upon me!” thought Gopher Gid. ‘‘ I would be torn to pieces in the twinkling of an eye, and Rube and Midnight still in the village uncon- scious of my danger. Oh! you scarlet imps! rive me but a revolver, and the trail that I may have to travel to-night will not be a lonely one. By the gold of Ophir! as Midnight says, Pd have company!” The tying process did not last long. Gopher Gid’s arms were left free; but cords secured his legs to the stately cottonwood. ‘Are they going to give me a chance?” pass- ed through his mind. “A good club wore not come amiss, and I’d agree to furnish meat for the next dog-feast.” And the boy laughed grimly and his eyes flashed with delight as a long stick, green and stout, was thrust forward. ‘Boy fight the dogs!” said the leader of the boys in tolerable English. ‘‘ If he kill ’em all Indians let ’im go, mebbe. White boy afeared to meet ’em?”’ “Afraid? No, you scarlet imps of Tophet!” was the response as Gopher’s hands closed about the cudgel. ‘‘If you want to try the muscle of Gopher Gid just whip your hounds off and come at me yourselves.” A series of fiendish laughs greeted this out- burst of defiance; but it was not to be taken up. The crowd drew back and the boy saw that the largest dogs were now held in leash with buffalo-cords, a reserve, probably, for the cli- max of the torture. Torches now began to light up tbe cotton- wood glade, and more fully revealed his situa- tion to Gopher Gid. He had been carried from the village without the connivance of a single adult Sioux; but he did not know this. The In- dian boys had carried out the plot they had formed, and Mouseskin’s startling declaration to Midnight Jack was sterner in reality than even the road agent could imagine. A semicircle was formed before the little trapper and one of the scarlet imps suddenly icked up a cur and tossed him at the captive. ut the quiet eyes of the trapper anticipated the dog’s destination, and down came the club while yet he was in mid-air. A death yelp followed the blow, and the little creature dropped to the ground to quiver for a moment in the agonies of death. Yells of boyish delight greeted this scene and the curs were hissed forward. They rushed up- on the captive as they would have darted upon a helpless badger; but the club which descended as Gopher Gid bent his body eagerly forward sent them howling back, with several of their number on the dead list. ‘*Ha! ha! not used to club tonic,” cried Go- pher Gid, carried away for the moment by the excitement of the temporary victory. .‘‘ Come back and try it again; there’s strength in Go- her’s arms to break every bone in your mangy odies. What! sneaking off whipped? There’s real Indian courage in your coward dogs!” The last sentence was bestowed upon his human tormentors who were now engaged in forcing the curs to a renewal of the attack. Bu the dogs were fighting shy of that formid- able cudgel; they retreated behind their half- naked masters, and would not be sent forward again by curses and blows. At last the Sioux patience—no virtue at any time—became exhausted. ‘*Let the little dogs go back to their half- picked bones!” cried the voice of the boy leader. ‘ They are not Indian dogs; they come from the forts of the white soldiers. Now let the dog- fighter look to his pale skin. Cut the cords of the King dogs! Let them fasten their teeth in the meat of the white boy.” Gopher Gid braced himself for the ordeal. He saw the leashes slipped from the heads of the gaunt dogs, long impatient for the dreadful attack, and then they darted forward with fury and death in their aspect. ‘* Heaven help me!” called the little trapper. 4 What can Ido with fifty bloodthirsty Indian dogs? What but fight them till they tear you piece- meal, Gopher Gid—till their fangs leave you a mangled lump of humanity at the foot of the cottonwood stake? The reserve did not shrink from the combat, but sprung like famished wolves at the boy. The foremost received a blow that smashed his skulland stretched him lifeless among his smaller companions, “Then blow after blow was dealt, in rapid suc- cession, the savages pressing up with their torches, and urging on the dogs which had en- tered with glee into the mad conflict. Now the glade rung with a perfect bedlam of demoniac cries; the dogs avoided the club with animal dexterity, but the doomed boy managed to keep their teeth as yet from his person, It was a terrible battle, such as was never seen in the heart of Sioux land. With bloodless lips firmly pressed together, and eyes flashing but not with anticipated victory, Gopher Gid struggled against the mad dogs. “To the death!” he said suddenly. ‘I am doomed to die! After all, Timon Moss is nota false prophet.” Up went that bloody cudgel forthe last des- perate struggle, but it did not descend. Something seemed to have caught it among the branches of the tree. Astonished, Gopher Gid looked up, and the sight that greeted his eyes caused him for the nonce to forget the wcingy Mes en that ae charg- s e contest. aoe 5 him to hat did he see? A naked arm thrust pete ig the foliage from wed and his cudgel griped by a great white and! CHAPTER XV. CAUGHT BY THE DEAD. THE face of the owner of that hand was not visible. Gopher Gid tried to wrench his club from the clutches of the ashen fingers, but his effort was not sufficient for the purpose. ‘* Devil! ghost! give me my stick! will tear me to pieces. thus?’ But the hand still held on to the cudgel, and the little trapper fell back with a PaDerng heart. The stick slipped from his fingers, an hung suspended from that ghostly hand, ‘‘ Mercy! merey!” shouted the boy, in the agony of that hour. , The dogs rushed upon him. One wolfish animal sprung upon his breast, but, nerving himself to the energy of despera- tion, he seized the brute at the throat, and, ‘with a strength that seemed supernatural, tore him off, and flung him snarling and mad among his companions. Again and again the beast sprung to the contest, over the heads of his vag Sesame but as often was he thrust back by c The dogs Do you want me to die y “ Back, dogs!” suddenly cried the leader of the Sioux youths, in his own tongue. ‘* White boy’s club catch among the limbs. He shall have it to fight with.” With a yell that. would have done credit to a full-grown warrior, the Indian boy leaped among the dogs, and, at the risk of getting his own skin torn by their teeth, beat them back with a torch and halted before Gopher. “ White fighter shall rest!” he said. ‘Him brave as Sioux warrior. He shall fight dogs with club which caich in tree.” Gopher Gid did not reply. The battle with the dogs had exhausted him. There was blood on his hands, his face; and his nether garments were hanging in threads upon his limbs. Hu- man endurance could go no further; the brutal- ity of his captors had almost extinguished his candie of life; he could but look at the boy who stood before him, and point to the stick dang- ling over his head, and still griped by the spec- tral hand. JOO (ECO NMNCE cS