The Prairie Chief by Robert Michael Ballantyne (reading cloud ebooks .txt) 📕

arms a short double-barrelled gun, and, slinging a powder-horn and shot-pouch over his shoulders, prepared to depart.

"Now listen, my soft one," he said, on completing his arrangements. "I feel a'most sartin sure that the cry ye heard was _not_ daddy's; nevertheless, the bare possibility o' such a thing makes it my dooty to go an' see if it was the old man. I think the Blackfeet have drawed off to have a palaver, an' won't be back for a bit, so I'll jist slip down the precipice by our secret path; an' if they do come back when I'm away, pepper them well wi' slugs. I'll hear the shots, an' be back to you afore they can git up the hill. But if they should make a determined rush, don't you make too bold a stand agin 'em. Just let fly with the big-bore when they're half-way up the track, an' then slip into the cave. I'll soon meet ye there, an we'll give the reptiles a surprise. Now, you'll be careful, soft one?"

Soft one promised to be careful, and Big Tim, entering the hut, passed out at a back door, and descended the cliff to the torrent below by a concealed path which even a climbing monkey might have shuddered to attempt.

Meanwhile Softswan, re-arranging and re-examining her firearm, sat down behind the breastwork to guard the fort.

The sun was still high in the heavens, illuming a magnificent prospect of hill and dale and virgin forest, and glittering in the lakelets, pools, and rivers, which brightened the scene as far as the distant horizon, where the snow-clad peaks of the Rocky Mountains rose grandly into the azure sky.

The girl sat there almost motionless for a long time, exhibiting in her face and figure at once the keen watchfulness of the savage and the endurance of the pale-face.

Unlike many girls of her class, she had at one period been brought for a short time under the influence of men who loved the Lord Jesus Christ and esteemed it equally a duty and a privilege to urge others to flee from the wrath to come and accept the Gospel offer of salvation--men who themselves had long before been influenced by the pale-face preacher to whom Softswan had already referred. The seed had, in her case, fallen into good ground, and had brought forth the fruit of an earnest desire to show good-will to all with whom she had to do. It had also aroused in her a hungering and thirsting for more knowledge of God and His ways.

It was natural, therefore, as she gazed on the splendid scene spread out before her, that the thoughts of this child of the backwoods should rise to contemplation of the Creator, and become less attentive to inferior matters than circumstances required.

She was recalled suddenly to the danger of her position by the appearance of a dark object, which seemed to crawl out of the bushes below, just where the zigzag track entered them. At the first glance it seemed to resemble a bear; a second and more attentive look suggested that it might be a man. Whether bear or man, however, it was equally a foe, at least so thought Softswan, and she raised one of the guns to her shoulder with a promptitude that would have done credit to Big Tim himself.

But she did not fire. The natural disinclination to shed blood restrained her--fortunately, as it turned out,--for the crawling object, on reaching the open ground, rose with apparent difficulty and staggered forward a few paces in what seemed to be the form of a drunken man. After one or two ineffectual efforts to ascend the track, the unfortunate being fell and remained a motionless heap upon the ground.


CHAPTER SIX.


A STRANGE VISITOR.

Curious mingling of eagerness, hope, and fear rendered Softswan for some minutes undecided how to act as she gazed at the fallen man. His garb was of a dark uniform grey colour, which she had often heard described, but had not seen until now. That he was wounded she felt quite sure, but she knew that there would be great danger in descending to aid him. Besides, if he were helpless, as he seemed to be, she had not physical strength to lift him, and would expose herself to easy capture if the Blackfeet should be in ambush.

Still, the eager and indefinable hope that was in her heart induced the girl to rise with the intention of descending the path, when she observed that the fallen man again moved. Rising on his hands and knees, he crept forward a few paces, and then stopped. Suddenly by a great effort, he raised himself to a kneeling position, clasped his hands, and looked up.

The act sufficed to decide the wavering girl. Leaping lightly over the breastwork, she ran swiftly down until she reached the man, who gazed at her in open-mouthed astonishment. He was a white man, and the ghastly pallor of his face, with a few spots of blood on it and on his hands, told that he had been severely wounded.

"Manitou seems to have sent an angel of light to me in my extremity," he gasped in the Indian tongue.

"Come; me vill help you," answered Softswan, in her broken English, as she stooped and assisted him to rise.

No other word was uttered, for even with the girl's assistance it was with the utmost difficulty that the man reached the breastwork of the hut, and when he had succeeded in clambering over it, he lay down and fainted.

After Softswan had glanced anxiously in the direction of the forest, and placed one of the guns in a handy position, she proceeded to examine the wounded stranger. Being expert in such matters, she opened his vest, and quickly found a wound near the region of the heart. It was bleeding steadily though not profusely. To stanch this and bind it up was the work of a few minutes. Then she reclosed the vest. In doing so she found something hard in a pocket near the wound. It was a little book, which she gently removed as it might interfere with the bandage. In doing so she observed that the book had been struck by the bullet which it deflected, so as to cause a more deadly wound than might otherwise have been inflicted.

She was thus engaged when the patient recovered consciousness, and, seizing her wrist, exclaimed, "Take not the Word from me. It has been my joy and comfort in all my--"

He stopped on observing who it was that touched his treasure.

"Nay, then," he continued, with a faint smile, as he released his hold; "it can come to no harm in thy keeping, child. For an instant I thought that rougher hands had seized it. But why remove it?"

Softswan explained, but, seeing how eager the man was to keep it, she at once returned the little Bible to the inner pocket in which it was carried when not in use. Then running into the hut she quickly returned with a rib of venison and a tin mug of water.

The man declined the food, but drained the mug with an air of satisfaction, which showed how much he stood in need of water.

Much refreshed, he pulled out the Bible again, and looked earnestly at it.

"Strange," he said, in the Indian tongue, turning his eyes on his surgeon-nurse; "often have I heard of men saved from death by bullets being stopped by Bibles, but in my case it would seem as if God had made it a key to unlock the gates of the better land."

"Does my white father think he is going to die?" asked the girl in her own tongue, with a look of anxiety.

"It may be so," replied the man gently, "for I feel very, _very_ weak. But feelings are deceptive; one cannot trust them. It matters little, however. If I live, it is to work for Jesus. If I die, it is to be with Jesus. But tell me, little one, who art thou whom the Lord has sent to succour me?"

"Me is Softswan, daughter of the great chief Bounding Bull," replied the girl, with a look of pride when she mentioned her father, which drew a slight smile from the stranger.

"But Softswan has white blood in her veins," he said; "and why does she sometimes speak in the language of the pale-face?"

"My mother," returned the girl in a low, sad tone, "was pale-face womans from the Saskatchewan. Me speaks English, for my husban' likes it."

"Your husband--what is his name!"

"Big Tim."

"What!" exclaimed the wounded man with sudden energy, as a flush overspread his pale face; "is he the son of Little Tim, the brother-in-law of Whitewing the prairie chief?"

"He is the son of Leetil Tim, an' this be hims house."

"Then," exclaimed the stranger, with a pleased look, "I have reached, if not the end of my journey, at least a most important point in it, for I had appointed to meet Whitewing at this very spot, and did not know, when the Blackfoot Indian shot me, that I was so near the hut. It looked like a mere accident my finding the track which leads to it near the spot where I fell, but it is the Lord's doing. Tell me, Softswan, have you never heard Whitewing and Little Tim speak of the pale-face missionary--the Preacher, they used to call me?"

"Yes, yes, oftin," answered the girl eagerly. "Me tinks it bees you. Me _very_ glad, an' Leetil Tim he--"

Her speech was cut short at this point by a repetition of the appalling war-whoop which had already disturbed the echoes of the gorge more than once that day.

Naturally the attention of Softswan had been somewhat distracted by the foregoing conversation, and she had allowed the Indians to burst from the thicket and rush up the track a few paces before she was able to bring the big-bore gun to bear on them.

"Slay them not, Softswan," cried the preacher anxiously, as he tried to rise and prevent her firing. "We cannot escape them."

He was too late. She had already pressed the trigger, and the roar of the huge gun was reverberating from cliff to cliff like miniature thunder; but his cry had not been too late to produce wavering in the girl's wind, inducing her to take bad aim, so that the handful of slugs with which the piece had been charged went hissing over the assailants' heads instead of killing them. The stupendous hissing and noise, however, had the effect of momentarily arresting the savages, and inducing each man to seek the shelter of the nearest shrub.

"Com queek," cried Softswan, seizing the preacher's hand. "You be deaded soon if you not com queek."

Feeling the full force of this remark, the wounded man, exerting all his strength, arose, and suffered himself to be led into the hut. Passing quickly out by a door at the back, the preacher and the bride found themselves on a narrow ledge of rock, from one side of which was the precipice down which Big Tim had made his perilous descent. Close to their feet lay a great flat rock or natural slab, two yards beyond which the ledge terminated in