“Linchpin lost!—wheel off!—broke down!”
In a dark little valley, lying nearly midway between Fort Sully and Deadwood, and not far from the Cheyenne River, a gin trader, or smuggler, had met with an accident. He inaugurated a hunt for a piece of timber, which he hoped to transform into a drag to serve in lieu of the wheel.
Armed with an axe, Timon was not long in finding the desired stick, and when with the aid of straps and chains he had secured it to his satisfaction, the last streak of day left the valley, and the pale light of the stars took its place.
Then, with a self congratulatory pull at the demijohn, Timon hitched up the mules again, tossed the useless wood into the wagon, and sprung to his accustomed place.
The swearing, the cracks of the villainous whip over the heads of the patient beasts, and their desperate efforts to pull the vehicle, made up a scene never witnessed before by the hills that surrounded the little valley.
“Git ep! you stubborn Injun-coloured brutes!”
But Timon cursed, struck and pleaded in vain. The heavy drag obstructed progress, and though the faithful mules pulled with all their strength, they could not draw the wagon over ten feet at an effort.
“Thirty miles from a bushel of gold, an' bu'sted!” roared the smuggler in despair, springing from the box.
“Bless me, if I don't lighten the load! they do that when a ship's in trouble at sea, an' the ship Timon Moss jest now is in a fearful strait. Saltpeter an' soda! the thing is reasonable. I can fix up a story between hyar an' Deadwood. Fell in with Midnight Jack or the Sioux, either one will do, but the Midnight Jack story will look more likely.”
Ten whisky-kegs, with a single exception full to the bung, formed the principal part of the load; then there were sundry boxes and packages, consigned to the citizens of Deadwood, among them the legs of a billiard-table, and the nucleus of a library which some “eastern chap” was going to start in the mining-town.
“Can't throw any of the licker overboard!” said the smuggler, with settled emphasis. “But thar's them confounded books—thar goes!” and for the next ten minutes the lightening of the cargo went on: But the whisky was not touched, and the only articles that remained in the wagon beside it were consigned to the gamblers and other sporting men of Deadwood.
“Two hundred pounds lighter, my long-eared pards!” ejaculated Timon, over whose florid face the evidence of his exertion was pouring. “Now a last pull at my straw-coloured bird, an' then I'll say ho! for the sun-dance, or ho! for Deadwood. I can't make up my mind.”
Old Tanglefoot's hands flew eagerly to the demijohn encased in a network of split willows, and he was in the act of lifting the often-touched nozzle to his lips, when a human voice made him start.
“I say, stranger, ain't ye losin' a right smart bit o' yer cargo?”
The demijohn almost dropped from Tanglefoot's hands, and he retreated from the boyish countenance which, full of health and good-humour, appeared at the rear end of the wagon.
The next moment, with his hand on the butt of his “navy,” Timon Moss glided across the kegs toward the boy.
“Say, what's yer name?” he asked gruffly.
“I guess it's Gopher Gad, an' I'm not afraid of anybody in the Cheyenne country.”
“Ain't, eh?” hissed Timon, “Wal, the reason is because you've never met old Tanglefoot before. Do ye ever go to Deadwood?”
“Been there once,” answered the boy, who showed signs of retreating from the basilisk-eyes of the whisky-smuggler.
“Then, by the spirit of Bacchus, ye'll never go thar ag'in!”
The revolver full cocked, and tightly griped by hands that had wielded it before, shot from its sheath, and the boy with a cry of fright disappeared in an instant.
“Can't git away that easy,” grated Timon. “Blast my cargo! if you shall go to Deadwood an' spile the Midnight Jack story.”
The whisky-smuggler leaped from the wagon as the last sentence fell from his lips.
His murderous eyes instantly caught sight of his intended prey, and, with a roar not unlike that of a jungle tiger, he darted forward.
But the next moment the western villain executed a sudden halt, for a loud cry came down from the shadows above.
“Cl'ar the track! I'm the Thunderbolt of the Dark-edged Cloud! a reg'lar sky-scraper!”
Such were the words that halted old Tanglefoot, and, revolver in hand, he looked up, as if he expected to see the speaker leap upon him from the hills overhead.
Tall and handsome, affecting the dress of the Sicilian brigands, with a mass of dark hair falling to his shapely shoulders, this pest of the road was the most frequently-mentioned man in Dakota. He was still young, and the plundered agents whose lives he had spared said that he was nothing more than a mere boy. Though never seen in Deadwood in brigand costume, his personal appearance was well known to every one. They knew that there was a grease spot on the left side of his sombrero-like hat—that he wore a cavalry-button on his right shoulder, and that a few links of a gold watch-chain hung from his black courser's bit.
About the time when the ungenerous linchpin cast old Tanglefoot a wreck in the little valley, Midnight Jack rode upon the trail not many miles from the scene we have just left.
He had halted in an open part of the country, and the stars, as they glowed brilliantly in the heavens above, showed him the trail which he had made dangerous for some distance east and west.
With one of the huge revolvers cocked, in his right hand, Midnight Jack then kept his eyes fastened down the road, over which some kind of a vehicle was lumbering.
Louder and shriller resounded the whip, never for one moment at rest, and a puzzled expression of countenance settled on the road-agent's face as he rose in his heavy stirrups, eager to see the approaching team.
All at once a wild cachinnation, followed by a series of fiendish yells, drowned the reports of the whip, and the situation was instantly explained to the road-agent.
“Indians!” ejaculated Midnight Jack.
The wagon—for the noise told the keen senses of the road-agent that but one four-wheeled vehicle was approaching—continued to rattle over the not very smooth road, accompanied by real Indian yells.
A common wagon, to which four strong-limbed mules were harnessed, greeted the brigand's eyes. On each side of the hindmost beasts sat a half-naked Indian, whose hands griped articles entirely strange to them—whip and lines. Nor was this all. At least ten savages were crowded into the bed of the vehicle, dancing like fiends, and filling the air with those wild sounds which had so often assailed the ears of Midnight Jack.
Evidently they had imbibed liquor in no inconsiderable quantities, and they were pushing each other about in their drunken orgies, threatening to overturn the wagon, or frighten the mules, already ungovernable, into a runaway.
The wagon lumbering over the road had now reached a point almost directly abreast of the still unseen road-agent, and, as his hands shot up, a “navy” tightly clutched by each, his well-known “halt!” spoken in deep thunder-tones, fell upon the ears of the carousing Indians.
In an instant of time, as it seemed, the orgies were hushed, and the savage who had the lines, rising in the stirrups, jerked the lead mules upon their haunches, and prepared to leap to the ground.
But the quick eye and trigger of Midnight Jack, saw the action and suddenly checked it.
The stricken brave fell back upon the mule, shot through the eye, while his companion with the whip, kissed the road before the report of the first dead shot had died away. Now ensued a scene of terrible and deadly confusion.
The pistols continued to pour their leaden messengers into the wagon, until the last red reveller pitched over the dash, and quivered in the agonies of death beneath the heels of the mules.