12 The Flight

The sun rose from the earth, warm and bright, and swept up towards the zenith. Sweat rolled down our faces, but, with an occasional short rest, we trotted on. Pike looked anxiously around at the country. There was no change in its character. Still, the same wide rolling plains, covered with short, wiry grass.

“If we were in the mountains and timber we could give them devils the slip,” said Pike, “but in such a country as this they can see for miles.”

About noon we halted, and took a longer rest than usual. Our muscles were strained and sore after so much jogging, and we needed repose badly. Then we resumed our journey, and had been travelling about two hours when Pike, who had been looking back, said:

“It’s no use stretchin’ and strainin’ fellers. We needn’t go any further. They’re comin’.”

It was true. We could see the figures of the horsemen as they rose on the prairie. It was not worth while to run, for what were the speed and endurance of men to those of horses? Near us were some hollowed-out places in the earth, which Pike said were buffalo wallows. A man lying down in one of these would be fairly well sheltered from bullets, unless the marksmen were very near. We found three of these pretty close together, and two of us lay down in each of two, Pike taking the third alone. We had given up the hope of saving our lives, but we were determined to sell them at a high price. I felt a savage thrill at the thought that the Indians most likely would have to pay for our lives with as many of their own.

The horsemen were still some distance away, when to our utter amazement Pike walked out of his buffalo wallow, and burst into a loud, boisterous laugh. For a moment I thought he had gone crazy. But Pike was the last man among us to be upset by privation and danger, and I recalled the thought. We stared at him, and some asked what was the matter. Pike made no answer, but rolled over on the ground in his mirth.

“What on airth is the matter, cappen? Have you got the fits?” demanded Starboard Sam, impatiently.

“No, I haven’t got any fits,” said Pike, “but I deserve to have ’em. I’m just laughin’ at myself. You laugh at a fool. Waal, I guess I’ve been the biggest fool on this hull round world. The joke’s on me, boys.”

We could see nothing to laugh at, and said so. Then Pike resumed more gravely:

“Boys, we’ve made up our minds to die like brave fellers. We meant to kill as many of them Injuns as we could afore we wuz tumbled over. Waal, there ain’t any use of fightin’at all.”

“What do you mean, surrender without a struggle and be tortured to death?” Henry exclaimed, indignantly.

“No, I don’t mean to surrender any more than I mean to fight,” said Pike calmly.

“But we can’t run away, cappen,” said Starboard Sam.

“No, and I don’t mean to run away, not just now anyway,” said Pike, with the same provoking calmness. “Joe,” he said turning to me, “wet your finger, hold it up and tell me which way the wind is blowing.”

I did so, and said it was blowing towards the east.

“That’s back towards the Injuns, ain’t it?” said Pike.

I said it was.

“Waal, now,” said Pike, “you jest watch me an’ I’ll get you out of this hole quicker’n a flash of prairie-lightnin’.”

He laid his rifle almost flat on the grass and fired it. We had the old single-barrelled, muzzle-loading guns then, and when the cap exploded the dry grass ignited like tinder. It blazed up in an instant. The fire leaped over the ground, swept to right and to left, and then in whirlwinds and pyramids of flame roared over the plain and off to the east directly in the face of the incoming Indians.

It was so quick and so simple that we scarcely realized our deliverance. We could not see over that moving wall of fire, but there was no doubt that the Indians beyond it had turned and were galloping eastward for their lives. They had to choose that alternative or certain death.

“Now, boys, while they’re runnin’ for their lives, as we’ve been doin’ to-day,” said Pike, “we’ll make tracks in the other direction an’ travel towards that rainbow of gold Joe and Henry talk so much about. But don’t furgit that little trick of a prairie-fire. It may be useful again some day, providin’ the wind’s blowin’ in the right direction.”

We resumed our forward march. Behind us for a long time we could see the smoke of the fire and the tongues of flame. We were full of thankfulness for our escape, which was so simple and which yet looked like a miracle. This feeling made us forget for a while the troubles that still hedged us around.

The wind died away, and the sun shone with great splendor. We were hot, tired and dusty, and at last we sat down in the dry bunch grass to rest. The water in our canteens was exhausted, and there was neither buffalo nor antelope in sight. As we travelled onward since we set the prairie on fire, the character of the country seemed to change somewhat. It was more sterile and the grass was thinner. We also began to see queer precipitous hills, shooting up like great rocks from the plain, and bare of trees and grass. I afterwards learned that these are called buttes, which I suppose is a French name.

We were longing for water, but there was no trace of any, not even a pool of that brackish alkaline stuff, which a man will not drink unless he is nearly dead of thirst.

What with heat, thirst and hunger, things began to look bad, and about the middle of the afternoon Pike called a council of war. He put the case to us in a few words. He said the country was entirely strange to him. In which direction water lay he did not know. But he would suggest that we lie to until sundown and rest. Then we might travel after nightfall, when we could save our strength better, for there would be no heat to assist exertion in robbing us of it.

This plan was approved with great unanimity, for all felt very tired. We lay down in the shadow of one of the buttes, and though we were deeply bitten by thirst we tried to be cheerful. In this effort Starboard Sam and Bonneau were of great service. Both were of a naturally sanguine temperament, and despite our surroundings they were able to joke and laugh and tell stories, which we found to be very interesting. Sam recounted some of his experiences in the naval wars and in the fights with the Barbary pirates, while Bonneau told us tales of Paris, which, if what he said is true, and I have no reason to doubt Bonneau’s word, is a very fine and lively place.

There was one he told about the French quarrelling among themselves and building great barricades in the streets of Paris. Behind these breast-works people who wanted to change the Government stood and fired while the soldiers charged them. Bonneau said he had been in one of these affairs, an emeute he called it, whatever that may mean, for I am not a French scholar, when he was a little boy, and had beat a drum while the bigger boys and the men fought. I was at first inclined to believe Bonneau was inventing the tale to amuse us, but Henry, who is full of book-learning, said it was in history, just as the fights with the pirates that Sam told us about were, too.

But I have often wondered since then how Paris managed to stay a great and splendid city with such goings-on as that in the streets. Bonneau didn’t seem to think much of it, and said an emeute was great fun sometimes.

When the tale-telling was done we watched the sun—a great, round, burning ball—sink in the plains. It seemed to go right into the ground, and Sam said that the whole scene reminded him of the sea. Indeed, he commented on that fact more than once. By and by the darkness came and brought some relief. We slept half the night and tramped on the other half.

A light dew that we sucked from the grass helped us wonderfully, but the sun rose the next morning on a sight even drearier and more desolate than that of the day before. The ground had become more broken, but the grass had disappeared almost entirely. Instead, we saw a queer plant, covered with needles, which Pike said was the cactus. Around us were the flat-topped buttes and the bare mud-hills. Occasionally we saw a little salt plain, from which a dreary, ghost-like mist was rising. But nowhere was there a sign of a living thing. It was inexpressibly gloomy,—a land of desolation.

We sought each other’s eyes for encouragement, but found none. Our faces were haggard, and the alkali dust that had settled upon them stuck there in a kind of crust. We seemed to be wearing ghastly masks. Henry looked very much worn down, and, knowing that he was physically the weakest of our party, I felt a sickening fear on his account. But if his strength had waned, his courage had not, and he replied cheerfully to my questions that he could go as far as any of us.

Pike, who seemed to look on me as his lieutenant, called me aside and said it was not worth while for us to tramp and waste our strength merely for the purpose, perhaps, of going deeper into a desert. He proposed that Bonneau, Sam and Henry wait at the foot of one of the hills while he and I searched the country for game or water, or both. This certainly looked like wisdom, and we put the plan into operation at once. Leaving the three at what we thought to be the most conspicuous spot in the landscape, Pike and and I set off towards the north. Pike noticed the ground very carefully as we went along.

“Ef I don’t do it,” he said, “well never find those boys agen.”

We beat around the country for hours, but we could find neither buffalo nor antelope. It seemed as if every living creature shunned this grim country as it would the shadow of death. At last, when the afternoon was growing old and we were in despair, we gave up the hunt and started back to rejoin the others. We found them without much trouble. They were sitting almost as we had left them, but Henry’s face was terribly pinched and drawn. He laughed weakly when we came up and told the pitiful result of our wanderings, and said we would find plenty of food and cool water in the morning. I looked at him in the utmost alarm, for his eye was glaring.

Sam held up his hand, and, drawing me aside, said the lad’s mind was wandering. Overwhelmed with grief, I could do nothing but sit down beside him and talk to him and endeavor to calm him. He rambled on about the shade of the forests and green grass and cool, running water, and his talk affected all of us most deeply.

Starboard Sam, who was a tender-hearted old fellow, muttered that he couldn’t stand it. He got up with his rifle on his shoulder and staggered off over a little hill that lay only a hundred yards from us. We were in a benumbed condition, and nobody said anything to him. Besides, we thought he would be back in a few minutes.

Sure enough he reappeared in a minute over the crest of the hill. But he was acting in a manner that seemed very strange to us. He held his gun up with both hands and was waving it as if it were a flag. Moreover, he was running as fast as he could towards us. His manner betrayed great excitement. Our first thought was of Indians, and we sprang to our feet with our rifles ready.

“I’ve found a buffalo! I’ve found a buffalo!” exclaimed Sam when he came up. “He’s over the hill thar! He’s over the hill thar!”

At first we believed that the sailor’s eyes had deceived him or his mind was wandering like Henry’s, but he insisted with so much emphasis and so much clearness of statement that we started off with him. Henry going along, too. Pike warned us to step lightly, for if there were really any buffaloes it was of the last importance to us not to frighten them away until we could get a shot. Our exhaustion for the moment forgotten, we tiptoed up the hillside, and when we reached the crest Starboard Sam pointed triumphantly to the valley below.

An old buffalo bull, perhaps an outcast from some herd, for often when these old bulls become crusty and too savage for good company the others drive them away, was picking at a few wiry tufts of bunch-grass. Our hearts rose at the sight, and perhaps never was the death of anything wished for more eagerly than we wished for a mortal shot at that poor, forlorn old buffalo.

Luck was with us in one respect, for the wind was blowing in our direction and could carry no warning to the buffalo. His head, too, was turned away, and the chances favored a close shot at him. Pike, like the good general he was, at once arranged our advance upon the enemy. Starboard Sam was ordered to stay put of sight with Henry, while the other three were to steal upon the unsuspecting buffalo.

“Get down on your knees,” said Pike to Bonneau and me, “and sneak up as quietly as you did when we were creepin’ through the Injun lines. If the buffalo takes alarm aim as well as you can and fire at him. If he doesn’t take alarm wait until I give the word, and we’ll fire, all three together.”

With these instructions, we dropped down on our knees and began to worm over the grass. The old bull nibbled placidly at the tufts of grass, and we passed more than half the distance before he gave any signs of alarm. Then he sniffed, raised his head, and appeared to be listening intently. We lay still and waited with anxious hearts, for the death of that lean, mangy old bull meant life to us. But Master Buffalo got over his alarm, lowered his head, and resumed his browsing. Fortunately he kept his head still turned away from us.

Patience and much muscular exertion soon cut off half the remaining distance, and we were within range for a good shot. But the bull did not present his flanks to us, and Pike said we must aim for his heart. So we waited fully ten minutes—like a day it seemed to me—until the old bull shifted around where we got a good side view of him.

Then we took aim, Pike cautioning us to be steady. He counted three and cried, “Fire!” Our rifles cracked so close together that we could distinguish but one sound. The old buffalo gave one leap forward, stood stock-still for half a minute, then began to run around in a circle, This he did for another half minute, and then pitched over dead.

We uttered a shout of exultation and ran up to his body. Pike waved his hat to Sam to come on with Henry, and then we did a thing which may seem very ghastly and repellent to those who sit in their nice houses with food and water in plenty, but which was the saving of our lives. We opened his veins and drank some of his blood. Then we skinned him, cut off hunks of raw flesh and ate it. The meat was stringy and tough. God knows the old bull had found little enough to eat in that desolation, and the wonder of it is that he had not died of starvation long before we found him. Perhaps we saved him from such a fate, anyhow.

This savage repast heartened us up mightily, and to the great joy of us all, Henry came back to himself. The night that followed brought a blessed Providence with it, for rain, a cloud-burst in the desert, came. It was like a deluge, and soaked us through, but we did not mind that. Instead we laughed at it and played with it like children. We turned our eyes up to the heavens and let the cool drops beat in our faces and fall in our mouths. I think we were half delirious with joy, but at last we sat down, dripping, and planned for the future. All the little depressions in the earth held pools of the fresh rain-water, and we filled our canteens.

Careful husbanding of such a supply would make it last us several days. we cut off great strips of the buffalo meat, and laying them beside us, sank into a deep and happy sleep, careless of Indians or anything else.

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