This man must have been one of them two which got away though what startled me was that he could recognize me these years later without paint and in American clothes. Well, I didn’t say no more till we reached the Plum Creek station and left the cars. I let North think it was a joke, for I didn’t want to explain, but while he and another white officer was going over the situation there, I went to that Pawnee and says, in the signs: “You had big medicine that day.”
This Indian’s name was Mad Bear. He says, without expression: “You were a Cheyenne then. Now you are a white man.” And then give the signs for “I don’t understand.”
“That is a long story,” I replies. “But the Cheyenne since then have stole my white wife and child, and I am going to fight them with you, and I don’t want that anything bad should stand between my heart and yours.” To which I adds, it being an Indian idea: “Everything changes except the earth.”
“And now the earth does too,” he signals, pointing to the railroad. He went on: “I believe you, but not because of what you tell me, for you look like a liar. I believe you because Pawnee Chief” (which was to say, Frank North) “says you are only a fool who drives a wagon. He asked me to protect you if we get into a fight.”
Before telling what happened when we had that fight, I ought to say first what the Cheyenne done at Plum Creek, for it was quite a success for them and never done before nor since to my knowledge. They derailed a whole freight train! Somehow they pried out the spikes and bent a rail up into the air, then give it a twist so when the next engine come along, why off it tumbled and the cars followed suit. I don’t know where them Indians had got so clever. Earlier there had been reports of Cheyenne braves who rode alongside trains and tried to lasso them, and this was believable, for a savage Indian wouldn’t have no sense of mass or magnitude when it come to a hunk of metal that big: and he would take the fact that a white man run it to signify that a red man could as well rope it.
We stayed at Plum Creek a couple days, and the Pawnee patrolled the country roundabout, finding it altogether clear of hostiles. North and his officers had just about decided to return to the end-of-track when a force of Cheyenne appeared on the south bank, coming back, I reckon, as an Indian will, to the place of their prior victory: remember they had hit Julesburg twice.
The Pawnee howled their war cries and headed for the bridge near the old stage station, which was too small to accommodate their whole force, so a good many went into the water and forded the stream, but coming up the other shore their horses stuck in the mud, so the scouts dismounted and footed it up the bank. This movement confused the Cheyenne, who had not expected resistance where before they had it so easy, and when the Pawnee delivered a murderous fire from their Spencer repeating carbines, making a half-dozen kills, the Human Beings turned and run for it despite their advantage of number.
I rode with North across the bridge. As I have suggested he had a low opinion of me, but when the action started he didn’t have time to take a mind of what I was doing and once we reached the other bank I galloped free on the borrowed Pawnee pony. It was a liberating feeling once again to have such a mount. I hadn’t rode pad saddle for many a year, but once you have been trained to the Indian style of riding you don’t forget it no more than you disremember to swim if dumped into the water after years away.
There we went, pounding along, us few whites and forty Pawnee, with maybe a hundred and fifty Cheyenne in full flight across a mile of prairie, with the roar of hoofs and Pawnee yells and the frequent crack of them Spencers, the Human Beings loosing a few futile arrows but mainly running in disorder.
The ground slowly ascended towards a line of hills. Now and again a Cheyenne dropped from his pony and a Pawnee sprang off to deal him the death-stroke if he still breathed, and lift his scalp. I hadn’t fired yet and never intended to except in self-defense, but that Pawnee, Mad Bear, kept lateral and eyed me, his roach blown flat from the rush of wind, so at length I squeezed one off from my Ballard, purposefully aiming midway between the two nearest Cheyenne. But I had little practice at firing from a running horse up to then, on account of not having had a gun in my pony days, and by a quirk of chance cut off a flying braid from the farther man. It was entwined with blue ribbon, for I saw it on the ground as I thundered over, and indeed it looked queer there.
