Part 44 (1/2)

”We shall not be ready to attack them until the Warm Spring Indians come,”

replies the general, who a few days since thought ”he could take the Modocs out with the loss of half-a-dozen men.” Why did not Col. Mason follow up the Modocs who attacked Sherwood and Boyle? _Because he could not move without orders, and the orders were not given._

Three or four hors.e.m.e.n are waiting while a dozen pencils are rattling over paper. The burden of each despatch is the a.s.sa.s.sination. ”Modoc treachery!

Gen. Canby and Dr. Thomas killed; Meacham mortally wounded; Dyer and Riddle escape.” How much these hasty lines will tell, and how many hearts will feel a dark shadow fall over them when the electric tongue of fire repeats this message to the world!

”Fifty dollars extra, if you get my despatch into the telegraph office ahead of the others,” says Bill Dad, as he hands the paper to his courier.

Away goes the courier up the steep and rugged bluff.

”One hundred dollars if you get to the office in Y-re-ka, first,” says another reporter, in a whisper, to his courier, who dashes off close behind the first.

Another rider is mounted and waiting for the word to start. Gen. Gilliam's adjutant hands this man a sealed envelope. It contains an official telegram for the authorities.

”Lose no time! Off with you!” says Adjutant Rockwell. And now three riders are urging their horses up the hill. Y-re-ka is eighty-three miles distant. A long race is before them. The evening is dark and gloomy, but the clouds pa.s.s away, and the moon s.h.i.+nes on three men galloping together, mile after mile. Sunrise finds two of them still together. One of them, as they near a ranch, swings his hat and shouts. A man in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves runs to a stable and brings a fresh horse to the man who signalled him. The rider dismounts, and, while changing the saddle from his horse to the fresh one, tells the awful tidings. The other rider urges his horse on, on, for he, too, has a fresh horse but a few miles ahead. On he goes, and looking behind him sees his rival coming. He comes up and pa.s.ses, saying, ”Good-by, George!”

Twenty minutes more and both are mounted on fresh horses, one leading, but now in sight of each other. One is casting an eye backwards over his shoulder; the other is pressing the sides of his horse. The gap closes up. Y-re-ka is now in sight, and they are galloping side by side. Both are sitting erect, and the music of jingling spurs is in harmony with the stride of the horses. One mile more, and somebody wins. It all depends on ”bottom.” The spurs cease to jingle. They are m.u.f.fled in the bleeding sides of the panting horses.

What a race! One is an iron-gray, the other a Pinto horse. The rider of the gray, reaching back with his spurs, rakes his horse from the flank forward, leaving a vermilion trail where the spurs have pa.s.sed. With extended head and neck, and lengthened stride, he goes ahead a few yards.

With another application of spurs, the switch of the horse's tail touches his rider's back.

”Ah, ha! I've got you now!” shouts the rider of the Pinto, as he comes up like the moving of a shadow, and leaves the gray and his rider behind. One hour more, and the lightnings of the heavens are repeating the messages, and sending them over mountains and plains, to almost the farthest ends of the earth.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

HARNESSED LIGHTNING CARRYING AWFUL TIDINGS--HE ”MAKES IT”--A BROKEN FINGER WON'T DISFIGURE A CORPSE.

It is night, and in the solders' camp a wail of anguish is heard coming from the tent nearest Gen. Canby's late quarters. Grief weighs down the heart of Orderly Scott, who is giving vent to his anguish in stifled sobs and vows of vengeance on the perpetrators of the foul deed. He rises from his bed, and, with face half buried in his hands, looks again on the mangled form of his benefactor, and, in renewed paroxysms of grief, is borne away by his friends.

The sound of hammer and saw disturbs the midnight hour, while the carpenters are transforming the wooden gun-cases into coffins for the dead. Two are in progress, but the mechanics are economizing the rough boards, for the probabilities are that the _third_ will be needed on the morrow.

The steward is holding a lamp while Drs. Semig and Cabanis are dressing the wounds of the only patient in the hospital tent. He is unconscious, while the ugly, ragged wound in his face is being carefully bound, and the long crooked cut on the left side of the head is being closed with the silver threads, and his ear is being st.i.tched together. He flinches a little when the flexible silver probe is following the trail cut through his right arm made by the pistol ball that struck it outside of the wrist, and, pa.s.sing between the bones of the fore arms, came out on the inside, midway between the hand and elbow. The left hand is laid out on a board, and the wounded man is told that ”the forefinger must come off.”

”Make out the line of the cut, doctor,” says Meacham.

”There, about this way,” the doctor replies, while with his scalpel he traces a cut nearly to the wrist.

”I can't hold still while you do that, without chloroform,” says Meacham.

The doctor feels his pulse, and says, ”You have lost too much blood to take chloroform.”

”Then let it stay until I am stronger,” rejoins Meacham.

For once doctors agree, one of them saying, ”The finger would not disfigure a corpse very much.”

”Please ask Gen. Gilliam to send to Linkville for my wife's brother, Capt.

Ferree,” comes from the bloodless lips of the wounded man.