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Show THE SCOUT'S LAST SHOT It is ten o'clock in the morning. The honey-bees are darting over the prairie in search of the sweet flowers, butter-flies float on lazy wings, and birds are singing their sweetest songs. It is a scene of deepest peace. Away to the right is the Little Bear Range mountains - to the left the prairie ocean extends as far as the eye can reach. Ten miles ahead is a grove of cottonwood and a spring - behind are thirty half-naked savages on horseback. Here is a frontier scout as the pivot on which the scenery swings. On his way from fort to fort with dispatches, his trail has been struck by a war party of Pawnees, and they have hung to it since dark last night, following it across the levels and over the swells at a slow but never ending gallop. They know that he was a full hundred mils from help, and they knew that his bloody scalp would add another to their trophies. "You're a rubbed out man!" said the scout as he looked back at dusk and saw them coming at a slow gallop over his trail. They could not have over-taken him in a dash of two miles, but in a gallop of fifty they would tire him out. At an easy gallop of five miles an hour, the mustang forged ahead through the long and weary night, changing his pace only when the rider got down and ran beside him. Two miles behind him, riding thirty abreast and covering a front of half a mile, followed the implacable foe, gaining a little, losing a little, but ever confident [unreadable line] prairie but not a savage was missing. The scout turned in his saddle and counted them, looked ahead for land-marks and coolly said: "You took the chances and you have lost, but you will die game." The mustang was almost blown. For the last half hour he had labored heavily, and had almost been held up by the bits. "The grove would have been a better place, but the end would have been the same," said the scout as he drew up and dismounted. The Indians were two miles away. In ten minutes they would be within rifle-shot. "Good-by, old pard-I must do it," said the scout, as he took hold of the mustang's head and drew his knife across the faithful equine's throat. He wanted a breast-work and here he had it. Two minutes were time enough to cut bridle and saddle to pieces, and then he mounted the body of his dead friend and calmly waited the approach of the Indians. No shout of triumph was sent across the prairie as he was brought to bay. That had been a strange chase. They had suddenly appeared on his trail without a sound, seeming to rise out of some fissure in the flower-covered prairie. Not once through the long night had the scout heard from them, except as he dropped from the saddle and placed his ear to the ground. But for the steady thud, thud of their horses' feet he might have almost made himself believe that he was being pursued by shadows. "Sixteen bullets in this Winchester and six in the revolver," soliloquized the scout as the Indians were within a mile of the spot. Did they mean to ride him down? Each rider was bent over his horse's neck, and each horse kept the pace he had for hours. "My scalp is worth the scalp of ten Indians!" said the scout as he raised his rifle, "but maybe I can't get over six or seven." Straight at him rode the line of thirty redskins until he raised his rifle for a shot. Then the band divided right and left and enclosed him in a circle. Not a shout from any tongue. It might have been called a still hunt. The line was out of rifle-shot at first, but it gradually worked nearer and nearer, and at last the report of the scout's rifle broke the stillness of the morning. "Twenty-nine left!" he said, as he threw out the empty shell. Not a shot came from the Indians in reply. Every warrior threw himself on the opposite side of his horse, and the hardy ponies followed the circle at a steady gallop. "Twenty-eight left!" said the scout as he fired again. No shout or shot in reply, but the circle was growing narrower. "Twenty-seven left!" Three of the horses in the ring were galloping without riders. "Twenty-six left!" The scout had fired coolly and deliberately, shooting every victim through the head. His rifle had a longer range than those of the Indians, but now they were near enough to open in reply. "Twenty-five left!" he said as another savage fell into the grass with a wild scream of rage and pain. Five of the thirty were dead. Now a yell runs around the circle, and every horse turns his head towards the common center and charges the scout. "Puff! Bang! Puff! Bang! Bang! Bang!" Three horses went down and two more riders fell backwards from their saddles. "Twenty-three left!" counted the scout as he dropped the gun and leveled his revolver. They were upon him. They shot at him, struck at him, and tried to ride over him. "Puff! Bang!" "Puff! Bang!" Five shots struck men or horses, and when the hammer fell for the sixth time it sent the last bullet into the brain of the scout. Nine Indians were lying dead around the pivot, three more were wounded and five or six horses were disabled. All this for a single scalp and the glory of shooting a brave man's dead body full of arrows, cutting off his head, hands and feet, and shrieking like demons as the blood spurted far over the rich green grass. When they rode away the body was a shapeless mass. It would rest there during the day, and when night came the wolves would come sneaking from the hidden ravines to devour it to the last morsel and then fight over the bloody grass. |