The Island Trapper; or, The Young White-Buffalo Hunters

The confusion that followed gave the precious moment for action to the whites.

“Now, Tom, be a man, and help us out of this!” cried Shack.

“I’m with you, Shack, now, to the last!” cried Tom. “Take the girls and make at once for the boys on the horses. I’ll revolver every red-skin in the way; so come on!” and forward they all started.

True to his promise, Tom Kyle shot down the Ogallahs guarding the boys, and in a few moments more all were mounted for a desperate dash for the hills, miles away.

Already the cries of the victors were ascending from the field of slaughter; it was wonderful that the Apaches had withstood the avalanche so long, and the shouts of the northern barbarians drove the whites from the scene of their little victory.

Tom Kyle rode a fiery black mustang, and held Mabel Denison before him, while Lina was encircled by the strong arm of Frontier Shack, who rode beside Charley Shafer.

“How did the greasers come to catch you chaps?” he asked, as they dashed over the plain that lay between life and death.

“We waited for you last night until we knew that something terrible had transpired in the village,” was the reply. “Then we thought of rescue, but a thousand feet drove us back to the mountains, but ere we could reach them, the Pawnees came out from their fastnesses, and we fell an easy prey. Not so easily after all,” and the boys’ eyes lit up with pride; “we fought the whole troop for a while, and five empty saddles told the story of the battle.”

And while they conversed as they rode, Tom Kyle and Ned were making their explanations.

Gold Feather thus questioned his brother:

“Whither do you wish to go?”

“I want to see mother once more.”

“Then we go to Mexico.”

“To Mexico? I left mother in Baltimore, Maryland. Why should she be in Mexico?”

“She would not believe that the Comanches had killed you. She yearned to see her stolen boy again, and came thither to hunt you.”

A tear stood in Ned Kyle’s black eyes.

“But these people with us? They do not want to go to Mexico?”

“No, we go without them.”

“’Tis well; I know the trail, and we will safely reach mother’s side. Oh, Tom, I never dreamed of such a meeting.”

The renegade smiled and glanced at Mabel Denison, who had been transferred, at her own request, to a seat before the youth whom she loved.

“Look here, Ned,” and Tom Kyle’s voice sunk to a whisper. “Don’t you want a wife?”

“I leave one in the Apache camp.”

“Of course,” responded Tom, “but I’m talking about a white wife.”

“I may find one in Mexico.”

“Pshaw! can’t you see what I am driving at? I say, don’t you want that black-haired girl behind us?”

“I don’t know. She has a lover already.”

“Don’t be so accursed conscientious. The other girl is mine, and you might as well take the brunette.”

Gold Feather was silent; the battle between right and wrong was going on in his mind, and when he looked up, the keen eyes of his brother were fastened upon him.

“Tom, we can’t get them without spilling pure blood, and then we have no right—”

“Pish! who cares for a little blood?” interrupted the Pawnee king. “You didn’t the other day, when you dropped Wolf Eyes. Come, Ned, don’t be so infernal scrupulous. Work with me. I owe that trapper one. He tried to take me to Fort Kearney, and if I ever get there I’ll swing, p’r’aps. He’ll try to get me there now, and you, too, boy. He’s a veritable devil who smiles when he plots against us. I hate him; he hates us both!”

“True, Ned?”

“As true as mother’s heart. We’ll take the girls?”

“Ned will help Tom.”

A sigh followed the youth’s words, and his lips closed with the fearful determination behind it.

Half an hour later the party reached the mountains, and, far above the level plain, Tom Kyle drew a highly ornamented field glass from beneath his jacket, and turned it toward the Apache village.

A moment later an oath burst from his lips. He had descried a black mass moving toward the mountains.

Shackelford took the glass.

“Chased, by Joshua!” he exclaimed; “but if we manage it right, they won’t catch us.”

“No,” said the renegade, “but we must prepare for a long race. They’re far away, as yet, and we have a few moments here.”

The next moment they had dismounted, for the purpose of tightening their steeds’ girths. Frontier Shack was busily employed in this operation, when a loud neigh saluted his ears, and looking down the pass, he beheld a great iron-gray horse trotting forward.

“Tecumseh, by Joshua!” he exclaimed. “Boy, I thought he was captured with you.”

“No!” answered young Shafer. “I should have told you. Tecumseh broke from us when we rode from the village last night; and his wild neighings soon died away to our left.”

“Dash me! if we ain’t lucky,” ejaculated Shackelford, leaving the Ogallah mustang, and a moment later he griped the bridle of his own dear horse.

In the exuberance of his joy, he was stroking Tecumseh’s neck, when a shriek, followed by Tom Kyle’s stern voice, saluted his ears!

He turned and beheld Gold Feather covering the young buffalo-hunters with a brace of revolvers, while the renegade’s rifle was aimed at his own head. Kyle sat bolt upright in the saddle.

“Shackelford, we’re going to part here,” said the Pawnee king, “and I guess we’ll leave you to the buzzards. Curse your heart! you tried to take me to Fort Kearney once, but I didn’t go, eh, Shackelford? Now, say your prayers. Ned, count twenty-five in the Apache tongue, and, at the end of that count, we’ll empty our weapons and go to Mexico.”

The White Apache began in a low tone, and the doomed ones looked at each other in silence.

There seemed no escape from death now; it had grown into a palpable monster and was very near.

Frontier Shack stood beside the iron-gray whose jaws champed the bit impatiently, and his eyes regarded the determined renegade.

Lina Aiken and Mabel Denison stood spellbound in the mountain pass, feeling that they were the innocent cause of the dreadful tableau.

The “count” had reached the thirteenth numeral, when Frontier Shack slowly stepped from his horse. As he executed the movement, his broad palm struck Tecumseh’s shoulder, and, with a fearful plunge, that would have overthrown the best human equilibrium, the horse shot forward!

Tom Kyle blocked the narrow pass; his brother stood beside his horse, and they uttered ejaculations of horror when they saw the trapper’s steed’s intention.

Gold Feather lifted the revolvers from the boys, and poured two shot at point blank range into Tecumseh’s front.

The brave horse reared, as blood spirted from the wounds, then staggered forward, on his hind feet, and came down with a crash upon Tom Kyle and his horse!

The renegade shrieked at the top of his voice, when he saw his fate; but the cry was broken by Tecumseh’s attack, and he found himself beneath his steed, crushed as it seemed, into the stony earth!

“Back, hunter,” cried Gold Feather, as Frontier Shack sprung forward with drawn pistol; but the trapper would not obey.

Once, twice, the White Apache delivered his fire; but ere he could send a third shot after the heart he would cleave, a report that came from a place above their heads, saluted the ears of all, and he staggered back upon the dying horse.

“Tom Kyle, you’ve deserved all this,” said Frontier Shack, drawing the renegade from his terrible position. “I intended to part from you in peace, for I owed you much; but all is over now. You are dying!”

“I know that, Shackelford. Your horse’s foot struck me squarely in the breast. I never dreamed that he would prove my death. Look out for the Indians.”

The trapper took the field-glass, and brought it to bear upon the plains below.

“They’re not far off, now,” he said, lowering the instrument. “Tom, we must go. They’ll never find you alive.”

“Thank Heaven for that!”

Then he tried to rise, but in vain; he fell back again, his hands clawed the bloody earth, and he died, gasping:

“Thank Heaven for that!”

Tecumseh was already dead. Ned Kyle’s shot had finished the career of the noble horse, and Frontier Shack clipped a bunch of the iron-gray mane, ere he turned away:

“The old horse remembered his training to the last,” he said, proudly. “He knew that that slap on the shoulder meant ‘charge!’ and dash me! didn’t he go for them rascals lively?”

He brushed a tear from his eyes, as he thrust the lock of equine hair into his bosom, and a few moments later they had left the spot.

But they had scarcely cleared a hundred yards when the trapper suddenly drew rein. A human figure had dropped into a clump of bushes beside the dusky trail.

“Indians!” he ejaculated, riding slowly forward again; but a moment later he uttered a new cry.

The figure had crept from the bushes, and, with their support, was standing erect.

“Winnesaw, upon my life!” exclaimed Charley Shafer, recognizing the Pawnee girl who had loved him during his captivity.

The party soon reached the girl’s side, and saw at once that she stood on the brink of the dark river.

“Winnesaw escaped from the Pawnees,” she said, in feeble tones, “and she sought her mother who lives among the Apaches. She reached the mountains, and in the darkness she met the bear. They fought; Winnesaw conquered with her knife; but the beast tore her limbs. She is dying; she shot the pale Indian when he fired at the white trapper.”

She sunk to the earth from exhaustion, but Frontier Shack raised her up.

“Gold Girl,” she gasped, her eyes falling upon Lina Aiken, “Winnesaw love you. She loves boy with black eyes, too. But she give him up now; she go to light the fires in Red Eagle’s lodge in Manitou lands!”

Frontier Shack sprung into the saddle again.

“Look here, youngster, don’t this mean you?”

The speaker was a United States soldier, and he thrust a small piece of paper into the hands of a handsome youth who sat near an old hunter within the walls of Fort Kearney.

The boy held the paragraph before his eyes, and read:

“Read that to me, boy!” said the hunter, as the youth looked up with a tear in his eye.

The youth complied.

“Well, I see you’re worth five hundred dollars to the old folks,” said the old man, with a smile. “And I guess I’ll claim the reward. But, I do wish you could take some white buffler hides home with you, anyhow. This hes been a wild-goose chase, Charley, hesn’t it?”

“Yes, so far as white buffaloes are concerned,” replied the boy, with a deep blush.

“Well, what have you gained by it?”

The youth drew nearer the hunter, and glanced at two beautiful girls standing in the little barrack yard, conversing with a youth of about their own age.

“Oh, I see!” exclaimed the man. “You needn’t tell me, Charley. This has not been a wild-goose chase for you two boys. You’ve gained something worth a million billion of buffler hides, and I’m going to stay in Cincinnati till I see you hitched.”

“Oh, Frontier Shack, we owe you so much!”

“If you talk that away, I’ll be dashed if I go back with you. You don’t owe me any thing. Boy, I thought that this thing was going to turn out all right, when the boat struck the sunken island that terrible night, and throwed George among the quicksands. I can’t tell how I managed to git into the boat again, but heaven helped me, I guess. The water carried me too far down-stream to help George then. Golly! how ’stonished I war to find him in the Pawnee village, with you at his side. But every thing has turned out right. I’m a lone man now,” he continued, after a pause. “Tecumseh and Massasoit are gone; they war my brothers. Peace to their ashes!”

A month later a happy reunion took place in the Queen City of the West, and smiles came back to faces to which they had long been strangers.

The runaways had returned, and when their overjoyed fathers asked to behold the results of their escapade, they led the plain-found girls blushingly forward.

“These girls are better nor white buffler-skins,” said Frontier Shack, in his rough way. “The boys hev won ’em, and if they don’t git ’em, Frontier Shack will raise a rumpus and clean the ranche.”

Into the palatial homes of the Cincinnati merchants the fair girls were warmly welcomed, and, in due time, a double wedding proved a fitting sequel to the wild hunt for white buffalo-skins.

After the grand affair above mentioned, Frontier Shack returned to the Plains, but, several years ago, he left them in disgust.

He said that the railroads were “spoiling a trapper’s fun” in the wild West, and so, seeking retirement, he came to spend the remaining days of his life with those whose lives his bravery had saved.

I need not say that he met a hearty welcome in two stately mansions in Ohio’s proudest city, and to this day he relates to attentive children the thrilling story which has called forth the service of my humble pen.

THE END.