Besides, He Had Over Fifty Good Men
With Him, And Probably There Were Only Ten Or Twelve Horse Thieves.
So
not much attention was paid to what the old Frenchman had said.
But after dinner, when we were sitting outside and Faye and the doctor
were smoking, a man came around the corner of the tent with long,
swinging strides, and was in our midst before we had dreamed of anyone
being near. He spoke to Faye courteously, and declining a chair,
dropped down full length on the ground, with elbows in the grass and
chin on the palms of his hands. His feet were near the tent and his
face out, which placed him in a fine position to observe everything in
the camp without anyone seeing that he was doing so, especially as his
eyes were screened by a soft, broad-brimmed hat. It was impossible to
see their color, of course.
He was young - not over twenty-eight or thirty - and handsome, with a
face that was almost girlish in its fairness. His hair was neatly cut,
and so was his light mustache, and his smooth face showed that he had
recently shaved. He was tall and lithe, and from his chin to his toes
was dressed in fine buckskin - shirt, trousers, leggings, and
moccasins - and around his neck was tied a blue cotton handkerchief,
new and clean. That the man could be a horse thief, an outlaw, seemed
most incredible.
He talked very well, too, of the country and the game, and we were
enjoying the change in our usual after-dinner camp conversation, when
suddenly up he jumped, and turning around looked straight at Faye, and
then like a bomb came the request to be allowed to go with him to Fort
Maginnis! He raised the brim of his hat, and there seemed to be a look
of defiance in his steel-blue eyes. But Faye had been expecting this,
and knowing that he was more than a match for the villain, he got up
from his camp stool leisurely, and with great composure told the man:
"Certainly, I will be very glad to have some one along who knows the
trail so well." To be told that he knew the trail must have been
disconcerting to the man, but not one word did he say in reference to
it.
After he had gone, Faye went over to the company, where he remained
some time, and I learned later that he had been giving the first
sergeant careful instructions for the next day. I could not sleep that
night because of horrible dreams - dreams of long, yellow snakes with
fiery eyes crawling through green grass. I have thought so many times
since of how perfectly maddening it must have been to those horse
thieves to have twenty-two nice fat mules and three horses brought
almost within the shadow of their very own stockade, and yet have it
so impossible to gather them in!
At the appointed time the buckskin-man appeared the following morning
on a beautiful chestnut horse with fancy bridle and Mexican saddle,
and with him came a friend, his "pal" he told Faye, who was much older
and was a sullen, villainous-looking man. Both were armed with rifles
and pistols, but there was nothing remarkable in that; in this country
it is a necessity. We started off very much as usual, except that Faye
kept rather close to the "pal," which left Bettie and me alone most of
the time, just a little at one side. I noticed that directly back of
the horse thieves walked a soldier, armed with rifle and pistol, and
Faye told me that night that he was one of the best sharpshooters in
the Army, and that he was back of those men with orders to shoot them
down like dogs if they made one treacherous move. The buckskin man was
one of the most graceful riders I ever saw, and evidently loved his
fine mount, as I saw him stroke his neck several times - and the man
himself was certainly handsome.
Faye had told me that I must not question anything he might tell me to
do, so after we had crossed the valley and gone up the mountains a
little distance he called to me in a voice unnecessarily loud, that I
must be tired riding so far, and had better get in the ambulance for a
while. I immediately dismounted, and giving the bridle rein to a
soldier, I waited for the ambulance to come up. As I got in, I felt
that perhaps I was doing the first act in an awful tragedy. The
horsemen and wagons had stopped during the minute or two I was getting
in, but I saw soldiers moving about, and just as soon as I was seated
I looked out to see what was going on.
A splendid old sergeant was going to the front with four soldiers,
whom I knew were men to be trusted, each one with rifle, bayonet, and
belt full of cartridges, and then I saw that some of the plans for
that day's trip had not been told to me. The men were placed in front
of everyone, four abreast, and Faye at once told the thieves that
under no conditions must one ever get in front of the advance guard.
How they must have hated it all - four drilled soldiers in front of
them and a sharpshooter back of them, and all the time treated by Faye
as honored guests!
There were four men at the rear of the wagons, and the posting of
these rear and advance guards, and placing men on either side of the
wagons, had been done without one order from Faye, so my dismounting
must have been the signal for the sergeant to carry out the orders
Faye had given him the night before. Not by one turn of the head did
those outlaws show that they noticed those changes.
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