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 D. LANGE 
 
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 THE SILVER CACHE 
 OF THE PAWNEE 
 
 
"INDIAN" STORIES 
 WITH HISTORICAL BASES 
 
 BY D. LAKGE 
 
 12mo Cloth Illustrated 
 Price per volume, fl.25 net 
 
 ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX 
 
 THE SILVER ISLAND OF THE 
 
 CHIPPEWA 
 
 LOST IN THE FUR COUNTRY 
 IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH 
 THE LURE OF THE BLACK HILLS 
 THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI 
 THE SILVER CACHE OF THE 
 PAWNEE 
 
 MTHBOP, LEE & 
 
THEY WERE PULLED OFF THEIR HORSES, HELPLESS CAPTIVES. 
 Page 152. 
 
,i: 
 
 
 JUN 13 
 
 OUttPTOH ACCESSIOi 
 
 tCKQfl LJ 
 
 6/b I* 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 This is an adventure story of the Old Santa 
 Fe Trail. 
 
 The Old Trail ran from Independence, 
 near Kansas City, to Santa Fe, across the 
 buffalo country of the Great Plains, a dis 
 tance about the same as that from New York 
 to Chicago. 
 
 At the time of the story, about 1835, the 
 vast American prairies west of the Missis 
 sippi were the undisputed territory of the 
 buffalo and the Plains Indians. 
 
 The powerful and warlike tribes of Paw 
 nees and Comanches, of Arapahoes, Chey- 
 ennes, Kiowas, and Sioux, were all bold 
 horsemen, hunters, and warriors. 
 
 Some of the tribes lived south and some 
 north of the Arkansas River, where it flows 
 through the present States of Kansas and 
 Colorado. 
 
 A central region around Walnut Creek, 
 
 3 
 
4 FOREWORD 
 
 Pawnee Eock, and Pawnee Fork in the pres 
 ent State of Kansas was inhabited by none 
 of the tribes, but was the battle-ground of 
 them all. 
 
 It was through this dangerous Indian coun 
 try that the Santa Fe traders took their 
 long trains of heavy wagons drawn by oxen 
 or mules. The proud Indians of those days 
 had not yet felt the strength of the United 
 States Army; and on the long trip of eighty 
 or ninety days each way, the men of the 
 caravan had to protect themselves against 
 the hordes of savages, who were always ready 
 to rob and scalp the traders. 
 
 The adventures of Silas Benson and his 
 two sons and their staunch friend Burley 
 among the Pawnees and Comanches are told 
 in this story. Never was there a time and 
 a country of more stirring romance and 
 bolder adventure than the period and the re 
 gion of the Old Santa Fe Trail. 
 
 D. LANGE. 
 
 St. Paul, Minnesota, 
 June, 1918. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE INDIAN SIGN STOET n 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 A SMALL BOY'S LOGIC 21 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 STRING OUT! 82 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 ON THE TRAIL 47 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 OXEN AND MULES 58 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 ALAEM AND STAMPEDE 68 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 CATCHING AN ABBOW ... 80 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE HAUNT OF EVIL SPIBITS 02 
 
6 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To PAWNEE FORK ,..... 103 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THBOUQH A HAILSTORM ......... w . 112 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE LOST WAGON 124 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 CROSSING THE ARKANSAS ...... ,. ., . 131 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE LONG DRY ROUTE 188 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 A COMANOHE SURPRISE .. ... .. ... . . ,. .., ... 149 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 A TROUBLED WAGON-MASTER 167 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 ON THE TRAIL OF THE COMANCHE 164 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 WHERE WAS Kio? 170 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 No TRAIL AND No WATER . . 177 
 
CONTENTS 7 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WELL THEY STOP? 188 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 DANGEBOUS COMPANY . . . 197 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 IN RED WOLF'S CAMP . 210 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 CAPTIVE OB FREE? ,..!... 223 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 DESPEBATE PLANS MO 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 A DABING VENTUBE 286 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 AT THE GREAT ADOBE FORT 251 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 A KNOTTY PBOBLEM 261 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE PAWNEE CACHE 270 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 HOMEWARD BOUND . 286 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 They were pulled off their horses, helpless cap 
 tives (Page 152) Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 "Look, Ted, there go our strays!" 50 
 
 Why Ted had stopped walking his beat like a soldier 72 
 
 The men watched the captain ride calmly into the 
 broad river, with nothing but a willow switch 
 to guide his mount ' . 134 
 
 "I must see the white man and the boy" . . . .216 
 
 "Catch them! Catch them!" he cried as he threw 
 a handful of silver into the air . . 284 
 
THE SILVER CACHE OF 
 THE PAWNEE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE INDIAN SIGN STOBY 
 
 C BOOKED HORN, the old Shawnee, 
 who lived west of the frontier town 
 of Independence on the Missouri 
 River, was having a great visit in the store 
 of Jack Langdon, outfitter for the Santa Fe 
 traders. 
 
 The old store, often a very noisy place, 
 was as silent as a church, for Langdon and 
 Crooked Horn were conversing in the Indian 
 sign language; and, although they had been 
 "talking" for half an hour, not a word had 
 been spoken. 
 
 "Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Kiowas," Crook 
 ed Horn was just saying with his hands. 
 
 11 
 
12 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Camp Big Timber. Cold winter. Snow 
 deep. Horses die." 
 
 "Comanches south. Warm country. 
 Waiting buffalo go north." 
 
 "News of the Pawnees?" asked Langdon. 
 
 "Pawnees bad Indians," signaled Crooked 
 Horn. 
 
 "Two white men on trail from Santa Fe. 
 Wagon, four mules. Much silver, big sack. 
 Kill one man. Take silver. ' ' 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "Four moons." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Pawnee Fork." 
 
 At this point of the story Philip Benson, a 
 lad eighteen years old, quietly slipped out 
 and mounted his pony which had been tied to 
 a post in front of the store. 
 
 Of the half-dozen men in the store no one 
 had paid any special attention to the lad, who 
 was well known at Independence. 
 
 It was now the middle of April, 1833, and 
 ever since December of the previous year, the 
 lad had been a weekly visitor in the lively, 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 13 
 
 not to say noisy, frontier town. There was 
 the usual stir connected with the overland 
 trade, but this spring much excitement had 
 been caused by the outlook for a conflict 
 with the Mormons, who had settled in large 
 numbers at Independence. 
 
 Philip Benson had been over the long trail 
 once and his father was at Santa Fe now. 
 At least he had not returned from a trading 
 trip on which he had started the previous 
 spring. So it was but natural that Philip 
 should take a lively interest in everything 
 pertaining to the Santa Fe Trail and the 
 Santa Fe trade. In fact the whole town had 
 no other interest. Since in 1828 the Missouri 
 Eiver had practically swept away the old 
 town of Franklin, Independence had become 
 the starting point of the Santa Fe Trail, over 
 which moved in long trains of heavy wagons 
 drawn by mules or oxen the whole overland 
 <trade between the United States and Mexico. 
 
 Sometimes the lad would sit with a wist 
 ful air for hours in one of the numerous 
 stores ; at other times he would chat with the 
 
14 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 workmen and the customers that came to the 
 wheelwright shop of Sam Garland, who made 
 some of the big wagons and turned out thou 
 sands of heavy ox-yokes every year. Then 
 again he would ride to the outskirts of the 
 town, where the stockmen herded and cor 
 ralled their herds of oxen, mules, and horses 
 that were bought and sold for use on the 
 long trail. 
 
 It was generally known that Philip 's father 
 had gone with a supply of goods to Santa Fe 
 in the spring of 1832 and that he had not yet 
 returned. 
 
 Philip in all the places, where he visited, 
 listened much, but said little. He was a wel 
 come visitor everywhere on account of his 
 willingness to lend a hand wherever help 
 was needed. If a merchant needed some 
 extra help, Philip was ready. Did a new 
 comer wish information about supplies and 
 things most needed on the trail, young Benson 
 modestly answered all his questions. If cat 
 tle or mules had strayed away, Philip was al 
 ways ready to ride after them for ten or 
 
OP THE PAWNEE 15 
 
 twelve miles, and he seemed to know instinct 
 ively where the lost stock might be found. 
 
 When he was asked about his father, he 
 generally replied that he had no recent news, 
 which was true. In his heart, he was sorely 
 troubled about his father's safety, but this 
 fear he kept to himself and he tried not to 
 let his mother know that he thought it strange 
 that his father had not returned with the 
 last caravan in December, and that neither 
 Indians nor white men brought any news 
 from him. 
 
 Every time he went to town he hoped to 
 meet his father safely returned, or to pick 
 up some news as to his whereabouts. He 
 knew that his father had sold all his goods 
 at a liberal profit, but this he kept to him 
 self, for the town was so full of all kinds 
 of criminals and doubtful characters, who 
 would have liked nothing better than to way 
 lay, rob, and murder a lone traveler outside 
 of the settlements, where the arm of the law 
 did not reach ; and where the lone, wide prai 
 rie told no tales. 
 
16 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Now, at last, after four months of anxious 
 waiting and listening, he had learned some 
 news. But it was not the cheering news he 
 had hoped and prayed for. That brief story 
 told by Crooked Horn, if it referred to his 
 father and his partner, was the worst news 
 possible. He tried to persuade himself that 
 it might refer to some other trader, perhaps 
 to a Mexican, who had been on his way to 
 St. Louis where these men bought large bills 
 of goods every year. Perhaps Crooked 
 Horn's story was not true; but the worried 
 lad could not believe his own arguments. 
 The old Indian's story rang only too true, 
 and it confirmed only too well the fears which 
 had slowly crept into the boy's own heart. 
 
 If Crooked Horn's story was true, the lad's 
 father was either dead or in captivity, and 
 the treasure of silver, which he had hoped to 
 bring to his family as a Christmas present, 
 had been squandered by the savage Pawnees 
 or was cached somewhere on the prairie along 
 the Arkansas Eiver to be drawn upon when 
 ever it seemed safe to the savage robbers. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 17 
 
 At all events, a great calamity had fallen 
 upon them all, father, mother, and their two 
 boys. If his father had not been killed at 
 the time of the robbery, he might have died 
 of hardships or might have been murdered 
 since. The lad knew full well that the savage 
 Plains Indians, at this time still at the height 
 of their power and entirely beyond the con 
 trol of the United States Government, often 
 killed their captives in fits of anger at trifling 
 annoyances or in order to conceal their guilt 
 of robbery or other outrages. 
 
 Even if his father were still alive, they 
 would all be hopeless beggars with hardly the 
 clothes on their backs to call their own. 
 Their beautiful farm on the bluff of the Mis 
 souri, to which they were all so much at 
 tached, and where Philip and his young 
 brother Ted hunted the wild honking geese in 
 fall and spring, they would lose; for old 
 Satterly, the money-lender at Independence, 
 would surely not extend the mortgage. He 
 was not in the business of helping poor set 
 tlers; he wanted to get for himself as much 
 
18 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 land as possible, and to seize it on mortgage 
 foreclosure was the cheapest way of getting 
 it. 
 
 To recover the treasure of which his father 
 had been robbed would be almost hopeless. 
 Who were the robbers 1 Most likely a small 
 band of unknown Pawnee outlaws, who 
 roamed like wolves over the boundless plains 
 north of the Arkansas. Where was the treas 
 ure? Who knew of its hiding-place? Prob 
 ably only a few men. Perhaps only one man. 
 Who was he? Where was he? He might 
 be dead by this time. Indian outlaws led a 
 hazardous life. If alive, how could he be 
 found and made to tell, and forced to restore 
 the stolen treasure? It all seemed utterly 
 hopeless. 
 
 These were the thoughts that crowded one 
 another in the lad's mind, as he rode home 
 ward through the night. 
 
 He gave his pony the reins, and the animal 
 fell into an easy lope. The rider did not see 
 the bright starlit sky above him, he did not 
 see the great valley below him. His young 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 19 
 
 soul was turned upon itself and he wrestled 
 with the great trial and sorrow that had sud 
 denly fallen upon him with a crushing weight. 
 
 Philip Benson lived with his mother and his 
 younger brother Ted on a farm three miles 
 below the spot where the road from the boat- 
 landing passes a fine spring near the top of 
 the bluff. 
 
 This point is really the beginning of the 
 old Santa Fe Trail, as it led in those early 
 days from Independence, Missouri to Santa 
 Fe, eight hundred miles across the plains. 
 
 "Mother," Philip said, as with a flushed 
 face he entered the log cabin, "Fm afraid I 
 have bad news. 
 
 "Crooked Horn, the old Shawnee, just told 
 Jack Langdon that four months ago some 
 Pawnees robbed two white men on the trail 
 at Pawnee Fork. The Indians took their 
 wagon and four mules and a big sack of silver. 
 One of the white men was killed, but Crooked 
 Horn did not say what became of the other 
 white man. I feel sure he did not know or 
 he would have told." 
 
20 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "That is certainly bad news," assented his 
 mother. "I always told Father he took too 
 many big chances on the trail, but you men 
 never listen to what a woman tells you, ' ' and 
 the tears came to her eyes. 
 
 "Now, Mother, don't cry!" piped up little 
 Ted. "The Indians can never get Father. 
 He got away from them lots of times." 
 
 "Yes, boys," admitted Mrs. Benson, "he 
 did. But what Phil told fits in too well with 
 the letter Father sent us with one of the 
 caravans from Santa Fe. 
 
 "He said he expected to come home about 
 Christmas time with a nice bag of coin. He 
 and his partner would take a good mule team, 
 they would take enough sugar and coffee to 
 give a treat to any small party of Indians, 
 but he would avoid their camps. But you 
 cannot tell where the Indians are roaming 
 around, even if you know where their camps 
 are, and you can never tell what some of them 
 will do. There are bad Indians, just as there 
 are bad white men. What can we do now?" 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A SMALL BOY'S LOGIC 
 
 <4 "W"F we could only obtain reliable news 
 about Father!" said Mrs. Benson, as 
 JL she was putting the supper on the 
 table for her boys. "Why couldn't Uncle 
 Jethro join one of the trains and make in 
 quiries along the trail? The blacksmith at 
 Council Grove, or the men at Bent's Fort 
 may have heard who the two men were. I 
 think Father most likely stopped at Bent's 
 Fort, unless he came by the Cimarron 
 route." 
 
 "Why, Mother," Philip objected, "we 
 might as well send Ted. Uncle Jethro 
 doesn't know the first thing about the trail 
 and about Indians. He can't even ride a 
 horse. He is always sick with dyspepsia and 
 
 would want to take a box of medicine along. 
 
 21 
 
22 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Uncle Jethro would never get farther than 
 Council Grove, and that's only the beginning 
 of the real Indian country. Beans and bacon 
 and bull-steak would make him sick; he can't 
 sleep on the ground, because he has the 
 rheumatism in his knee, and he wouldn't 
 want to stand guard at night. No, Uncle 
 Jethro would be no good on the trail. He'd 
 turn back with some tenderfoot at Council 
 Grove, and we would only lose that much 
 time." 
 
 "I'll go," Ted spoke up. "I don't have 
 any 'spepsia in my stomach and I can sleep 
 on the ground and stand guard at night. 
 I'm not afraid in the dark. I looked at my 
 catfish line after dark to-night. Honest 
 Injun, I did Phil, because I forgot it in the 
 afternoon. I can ride, too. I rode Uncle 
 Jethro 's balky mule to " 
 
 "Oh, keep still, Ted," the older boy broke 
 in, "let Mother talk. Babies can't go on the 
 long trail. The Indians would scalp you and 
 eat you up." 
 
 "You call me Baby, and I'll fight you!" 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 23 
 
 screamed Ted. " I'm no baby. I was eleven 
 last month. The Indians can't scalp me. 
 Don't you see?" and he drew his hand over 
 his hair, " Don't you see? Uncle Jethro cut 
 it short, so I wouldn't have to comb it." 
 
 Although Philip was very fond of his 
 younger brother, he loved to tease him. Ted 
 generally remained good-natured and had 
 learned to defend himself, but he resented 
 being called Baby. 
 
 "Now, boys, stop your quarreling and eat 
 your supper," Mrs. Benson admonished. 
 "This is no time for quarreling." 
 
 "I sha'n't let him call me a baby," Ted 
 replied, "I learned all my letters since fall 
 and I could learn Indians, too ; and I can hit 
 a mark at fifty " 
 
 "Ted, you're a noodlehead," Philip broke 
 in. "Now eat your supper or Mother will 
 send you to bed. You'd be scared so bad at 
 the sight of a real wild Indian that you'd run 
 and holler for Mother louder than a b " 
 
 "You call me Baby again and I'll, I'll 
 hit you with a broom!" shrieked Ted, now 
 
24 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 really growing angry and looking around for 
 some effective weapon; so Mrs. Benson had 
 to threaten him with an early bedtime, while 
 she scolded the older boy for intentionally 
 making the little fellow angry. 
 
 Any one seeing the two brothers at supper 
 might have thought that even the older boy 
 did not realize how serious his father's case 
 was, if the story of Crooked Horn referred to 
 him. In reality the grave temperament of 
 Philip was so much oppressed by the bad news 
 that he fell to teasing his small brother as 
 a relief from his own anxiety. 
 
 "Perhaps you might go with Uncle 
 Jethro," suggested Mrs. Benson to Philip, 
 after she had established peace between her 
 two boys. 
 
 ' ' Mother, please drop the thought of asking 
 Uncle Jeth to act as an Indian scout. He'd 
 be worse than a baby. Ted could do better 
 than Uncle Jeth. I see only one way out 
 of it," he continued thoughtfully, "I must 
 join one of the caravans that will soon start 
 on the trail to Santa Fe, and we must ask 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 25 
 
 Uncle Jeth to come and help you and Ted look 
 after our stock and field." 
 
 "No, I go along," Ted asserted, his face 
 flushed and his eyes sparkling. 
 
 "Ted, you keep stiU and let Mother talk," 
 the older brother demanded again. 
 
 "I am afraid Uncle Jeth is not much of a 
 farmer," Mrs. Benson suggested, ignoring 
 Ted's remark. 
 
 "No, he isn't," the young irrepressible 
 broke in, "he's a great soap-box orator. I 
 heard Mr. Langdon say so. Uncle Jeth 
 knows all about Texas and Mexico. He said 
 Texas and Mexico would have a fight and then 
 Uncle Sam's boys ^ould go down and lick 
 the tar out of both of them." 
 
 "Ted, if you don't keep still, I'll lock you 
 up in the hen-house," Mrs. Benson threat 
 ened. "Don't you ever repeat any of Jack 
 Langdon 's nasty talk about Uncle Jethro. I 
 know he calls Uncle a soap-box orator, but 
 Uncle knows more history than Jack Langdon 
 and all his store loafers together and I notice 
 Jack is always mighty glad to have Uncle 
 
26 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 come in and liven up his dirty old shack." 
 "I think, Mother, Uncle will stay with you, 
 while I am away," Philip suggested. "I 
 shall get all the planting and seeding done 
 before I leave.; No Santa Fe train will start 
 "before the first of May, because there will 
 not be enough grass on the prairie before that 
 time. All you have to do is to see that Uncle 
 cultivates the corn and potatoes and cuts 
 some hay, and doesn't go off to town to talk 
 politics except on rainy days." 
 
 "I won't stay here with Uncle Jeth," Ted 
 blurted out. "He'll want me to learn poems 
 and learn to read the papers to him. He says 
 boys shouldn't kill time by going fishing, they 
 should read history and the Bible. I want to 
 go with Philip and find Father and the sack 
 of silver." 
 
 Ted became so excited in his arguments 
 that he should go with Philip that his mother 
 did send him to bed. But as he went up 
 stairs crying, he asserted, "If you don't let 
 me go, I'll run away and hide in one of the 
 big wagons after dark and then, then I'll, 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 27 
 
 I'll ask the wagon boss to let me herd the 
 cattle at night. If I don't come along Father 
 will say, I'm a good-for-nothing brat." 
 
 Ted soon cried himself to sleep, while 
 Philip and his mother discussed still further 
 the plan of securing some reliable news of 
 their father. Both came to the conclusion 
 that some serious accident or misfortune 
 must have befallen him, or he would have 
 been home by this time, or at least, gotten 
 word to his family in some way. 
 
 "It's no use, Mother," Philip explained, 
 "to wait any longer and it's no use to expect 
 the traders to bring us any news. They all 
 go over the trail as fast as possible. They 
 have all they can do to look after their own 
 business and their own safety, and none of 
 them can come back till fall. I can't see any 
 other way, but that I have to go to find out 
 what I can and do what I can." 
 
 Uncle Jethro was willing under the cir 
 cumstances to look after his brother's farm 
 and family. 
 
 "Guess it's up to me to look after your 
 
28 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 mother and the place now," he admitted to 
 Philip. "Your father was always strong 
 for risking things. Always talked Indians 
 and the West when we were boys in Vermont. 
 Fine, daring fellow he always was. Got out 
 of many a scrape with the Indians, but I fear 
 it looks bad this time. That 's the way it goes 
 in life, Phil. 'A jug goes to the well till it 
 breaks. ' 
 
 "1*11 tidy things up a bit around here, and 
 then I'll move over. If it doesn't rain, I'll 
 put in my corn and potatoes, and perhaps 
 Sunday I'll come over; I'll bring my oxen 
 and my pig. I guess I can run both places, 
 if I hustle a bit." 
 
 Uncle Jeth was as good as his word. On 
 the following Sunday he appeared on his ox- 
 wagon with his pig in a crate behind him. 
 
 With Ted, Philip and his mother had a dis 
 agreeable time. He used all the arts which a 
 spoiled child knows so well to muster, to con 
 vince his mother that he should go with his 
 big brother. He even claimed that Phil 
 would not be safe without him. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 29 
 
 "You can't find out anything," he argued 
 with Philip, "if you stick on the trail with 
 the teams. You suppose the Comanches and 
 Pawnees will come around and tell you all 
 about Father and his silver. You bet they 
 won't. Who is going to watch, when you're 
 asleep?" 
 
 "You couldn't stay awake in a thunder 
 storm," Philip replied half converted to the 
 idea that perhaps a young boy would not be 
 entirely a hindrance, "and you don't eat beef. 
 We'll have nothing but buffalo beef after we 
 strike the Arkansas." 
 
 "Oh, shucks, Phil," cried Ted, "I'd watch 
 mighty well, 'cause I'd be too scared to fall 
 asleep. And you know I'd eat buffalo meat 
 or anything. Didn't I learn to eat fish, when 
 Father said I couldn't go fishing, if I didn't 
 eat them! 
 
 "And I don't want to stay with Uncle 
 Jeth," he continued after a short silence. 
 "I don't like him. He talks nasty about 
 Father. He says Grandpa spoiled Father 
 by letting him go fishing and hunting in Ver- 
 
30 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 mont. That's why Father didn't like to stay 
 on the farm. I told Uncle that wasn't so. 
 Father was a better farmer than he was. He 
 didn't talk so much about Texas and Mexico 
 and the black slaves, and we had a much 
 better house and barn than he had. 
 
 1 1 That 's true, Phil, ' ' he declared. ' ' Uncle 
 got mad and was going to box my ears, but 
 he couldn't catch me. He said he would tell 
 Mother on me, but I guess he forgot. I bet 
 he and Father had lots of fights, and I bet 
 Father could lick him. I'm going to ask 
 Father as soon as we find him." 
 
 After a few days Philip came to the con 
 clusion that it would be best to take his small 
 brother along. His mother would have a bad 
 time between pedantic and crabbed Uncle 
 Jethro and the impulsive small boy. More 
 over, the small lad might well be of actual 
 service in the Indian country, where two 
 travelers were at least a little safer than one. 
 
 The pleading and the arguments of both 
 the boys Mrs. Benson could not resist, and 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 31 
 
 although Uncle Jethro did not hesitate to say 
 that the youngster should stay at home, Mrs. 
 Benson reluctantly consented that Ted might 
 go with his big brother on the Santa Fe Trail. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 STRING OUT! 
 
 W IT T'HEN Ted was told that he could 
 
 V/X/ go on the Santa Fe Trail with 
 
 his brother, he was the happiest 
 
 boy on the Missouri Eiver. I am not sure 
 
 but that it would be true to say that he was 
 
 the happiest boy in America. 
 
 "Phil," he said, "I can drive the corn- 
 marker with the ponies; you can put in the 
 seeds." 
 
 All forenoon, he kept the ponies going at a 
 brisk pace. At noon he fed and watered 
 them, and scarcely had men and horses 
 finished their noon meal, when he was ready 
 to go to work again. 
 
 "Come on, Phil," he urged, "Pm going to 
 hitch up. "We can finish that patch to-day if 
 we hustle." 
 
 32 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 33 
 
 Philip smiled when his small brother as 
 sumed the airs of a man. 
 
 "I have a better plan now," he teased, 
 "you are big enough to run the farm, we don't 
 need Uncle Jeth." 
 
 "Oh, nix," remonstrated Ted earnestly, 
 "you can't go back on your bargain. I go 
 along on the trail. Didn't I tell you I wasn't 
 a baby any more. Hop to it, Phil, get your 
 seed corn, or I'll get far ahead of you." 
 
 Give a small boy a real motive and he will 
 work like a man with an inspiration. 
 
 Ted kept it up day after day, till his mother 
 and Uncle Jethro could hardly believe their 
 own eyes. But mothers and old men rarely 
 understand boys. They do not know the in 
 spiration of a boy motive, they do not know 
 that in almost every boy slumbers the spirit 
 of the explorer and adventurer awaiting the 
 magic call of a motive for exertion. Blessed 
 is the boy whose mother is not over-civilized, 
 and whose father has not forgotten his own 
 boyhood ! 
 
 Ted really worked like a man. The corn 
 
34 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 was planted, the potatoes were put in. He 
 helped to clean out the barn, he dug up and 
 planted his mother's flower garden. He 
 turned the grindstone for Philip, so that 
 Uncle Jethro would have a sharp ax and 
 scythe. 
 
 His mother began to feel that Ted was 
 working too hard, but Ted said he wasn't, 
 it was just lots of fun. 
 
 In the evening he did crawl into his bed 
 soon after supper, but one call in the morn 
 ing brought him to his feet. He insisted upon 
 helping Philip with the chores before break 
 fast, so that even Uncle Jethro could not help 
 remarking : 
 
 "By Jinks, Marian, I think that small lad 
 will be a real farmer some day, if he doesn't 
 turn wild in the Indian country. He reminds 
 me of his father. Silas used to work his 
 head off, when he got set on something. I 
 remember one summer, how he built a duck- 
 house and dug out a swimming-pond for 
 them. Father had promised he could have 
 all the ducks he could raise. The old man 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 35 
 
 never thought the youngster would take him 
 up on it; he was about Ted's age then. But, 
 by Jinks, he did. He sold thirty fat ducks 
 in Brattleboro that fall. But he never took 
 the money home ; blew it all on a fiddle and 
 a gun, which showed that he wasn't a real 
 born farmer." 
 
 Within a week the place was in shape to be 
 turned over to Uncle Jethro, who made it 
 plain on many occasions that he was a real 
 farmer, although thus far he had done noth 
 ing but putter around the yard and talk 
 Texas, Mexico, Mormons, and slavery. 
 
 "By Jinks, Marian," he would say, "Texas 
 is going to come to us, to the United States ; 
 they will never go back to the Greasers. 
 Then it won't be long before the slaveholders 
 have the majority in Congress and then 
 there '11 be trouble. 
 
 "Well, Marian, the lads have put the place 
 in fair shape, that's true, but if I were you, 
 I wouldn't let them go after Silas. Silas was 
 always pretty good at getting out of a scrape. 
 If he's alive I guess he'll come home some 
 
36 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 of these days. By Jinks, Marian, I wouldn't 
 let the lads go after him." 
 
 But Mrs. Benson would not listen to this 
 well-meant advice. 
 
 "No, Uncle," she replied, "I could not rest 
 and stay quietly at home. And the boys feel 
 just as I do. We must get some news, even 
 if it should be the worst news." 
 
 It was now the last week in April and the 
 boys were ready to leave. 
 
 "I want to take my white pony," Ted had 
 said when they talked over what animals to 
 take. 
 
 "No, you can't!" Philip told him flatly. 
 "An Indian can see a white pony ten miles 
 off. You'll take the bay or the black, or 
 you'll foot it. A white horse is no good in 
 the Indian country." 
 
 Ted was convinced. "All right," he re 
 plied, "I take the black and well leave the 
 white for Uncle Jeth." 
 
 "But I tell you what you ought to do, 
 Phil," he continued. "You ought to get 
 Uncle Jeth to cut your hair real short like 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 37 
 
 mine, so an Indian can't take hold of it." 
 
 Everybody laughed at Ted's advice, but 
 Uncle Jeth took his side. 
 
 "By Jinks, Phil," he remarked, "I'll cut 
 it off for you. You can't be too careful with 
 these wild critters." 
 
 "Oh, Uncle! don't talk foolish," Phil 
 laughed. "I don't intend to let any Indian 
 get that close to me." 
 
 It was a fine spring morning when the lads 
 started on their long and dangerous quest. 
 From the young foliage on the Missouri bluffs 
 rang the, "Cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer," of the 
 redbird or cardinal, but the only cheerful 
 human being in the party was Ted, too young 
 to judge the danger and difficulty of their 
 enterprise. Mrs. Benson's face only cheered 
 up with a proud smile, when Ted's boyish 
 voice piped out, "All's set! We're off for 
 Santa Fe!" 
 
 Behind each boy a large pack was tied to 
 the saddle. It contained their blankets and 
 the usual provisions for the trail: bacon, 
 flour, beans, and home-made hominy. To 
 
38 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 these supplies they would add at Independ 
 ence sugar and coffee. Each lad carried, of 
 course, rifle, pistol, and hunting-knife. 
 
 "We should have seen the lads off to 
 town/' said Uncle Jethro, breaking the 
 silence, after the boys had waved their last 
 farewell and had disappeared behind a clump 
 of trees. 
 
 "Oh, no, no," answered Mrs. Benson with 
 tears in her eyes, "I couldn't make a scene 
 for the whole town. If I had gone to town 
 with them, I fear I should have lost courage 
 and asked them to return home with me. It's 
 over now, but I shall count the days till the 
 boys and their father are home again. 
 
 When Ted and Philip reached the spot 
 where the road comes up from the old steam 
 boat landing, they dismounted for a drink 
 out of the cool spring under a young elm-tree. 
 
 The clear, cool spring runs out of the gray 
 rocks to this day, and the sapling elm has 
 grown into a fine old tree, on whose spreading 
 branches the oriole hangs his nest. 
 
 When the lads had quenched their thirst, 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 39 
 
 Ted poured a hatful of the cold water over his 
 head and face. 
 
 "What are you doing that for?" asked 
 Philip. " You can't be hot ?" 
 
 " No, I >m not hot, ' ' admitted Ted. * < But I 
 feel like bawling and riding back home." 
 
 Just then a steamer whistled about half a 
 mile below at the landing. 
 
 ' ' Get your horse, ' ' suggested Philip. ' * Let 
 us ride down and take a look at the crowd." 
 
 It was a steamer of the American Fur 
 Company from St. Louis, heavily loaded with 
 all kinds of goods for the Indian trade 
 farther up the river. 
 
 A number of families got off with a motley 
 supply of household goods destined for the 
 frontier of Kansas and Missouri. Bales and 
 boxes were being unloaded to be hauled over 
 land nine hundred miles to Santa Fe, and a 
 drove of mules and oxen were pulled and 
 pushed over a gangplank with many strong 
 expletives of their owners and drivers. 
 
 "What is in all these big boxes marked 
 Paint?" asked Ted as the boys walked around 
 
40 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 on board. * * I thought the Indians made their 
 own paint out of mud and roots f ' ' 
 
 " Those boxes, " Philip replied, "I guess 
 aren't filled with paint. I guess each has a 
 barrel inside, which some rascally trader is 
 trying to sneak past the army officers at Fort 
 Leavenworth. I hope the army officers will 
 dump the stuff into the river. ' ' 
 
 At Independence Philip had no trouble in 
 joining one of the caravans, which was to 
 start within a few days. The lads being will 
 ing to do any kind of work on the trail and 
 furnish their own horses and supplies, 
 the boss of the train, or wagon-master, as he 
 was called, was glad to add two armed recruits 
 to his force. The Indians were known to be 
 restless and troublesome, and there were 
 never too many men to serve at night as 
 guards for the wagons and as herders for the 
 oxen and mules. It was a common trick of 
 the Indians to stampede the oxen and mules 
 over the endless wild prairie, where it was 
 nearly always impossible for the owners to 
 recover them. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 41 
 
 On a fine morning early in May the train 
 was ready. At this time the Santa Fe trade 
 was still carried on by men of comparatively 
 limited means. Six of such small traders had 
 combined for the train which Philip and Ted 
 had joined. 
 
 A captain or wagon-master had been 
 chosen to have control over the whole train, 
 which consisted of twenty-five big freight 
 wagons, often called prairie schooners, and 
 one mess- wagon. 
 
 At the appointed hour the call rang out, 
 * * Catch up, catch up ! " which meant get ready 
 to move. The drivers yoked up their oxen 
 or harnessed their mules. There was much 
 noise and confusion. Each wagon was 
 drawn by four or five spans of mules, or 
 six yokes of oxen. The animals did not yet 
 know their places, so there was much confu 
 sion and much loud mule-talk and ox-talk on 
 the part of the drivers, each of whom wanted 
 to be the first to cry out, " All's set ! " 
 
 Some of the animals ,the drivers knew had 
 never been broken, but they also knew that 
 
42 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 a green ox or mule, once lie was in the yoke 
 or harness, soon had to pull as the other 
 animals did. His case was that of a raw 
 recruit put in a disciplined regiment ; he can 
 not help becoming a soldier in short order. 
 
 Half an hour might have passed, when Jim 
 Burley, an old driver and packer called out, 
 1 ' All 'a set ! ' ' Burley had only a few minutes 
 the start of the next man, and it was not long 
 before the last driver had kicked and pulled 
 and pushed and cussed the last obstreperous 
 mule into position and harness. 
 
 The wagon-master gave a few last direc 
 tions, looked at the outfit of a new driver and 
 called, " String out! String out!" and with 
 clanking of chains, cracking of whips and 
 lusty yells in both English and Spanish the 
 train strung out on the trail across the great 
 prairie. 
 
 "Gosh, it's great V 9 was all Ted could say. 
 "I'm going to be a Santa Fe trader like 
 Father. You won't catch me living in a 
 homestead shack and getting crabby like 
 Uncle Jeth." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 43 
 
 Philip and Ted had placed their bacon, 
 beans, and other eatables on the general mess- 
 wagon, while their blankets and extra clothing 
 were on the schooner of Jim Burley. 
 
 The two lads were the only members of the 
 train on horseback and the men dubbed them 
 at once, "The pony dragoons." The wagon- 
 master; Jim Burley, his assistant; one extra 
 man and the night-herder were mounted on 
 mules. The drivers walked alongside their 
 animals. Only one man was allowed to ride 
 in one of the wagons, that was the night- 
 herder. As he had to watch the cattle every 
 night, he slept in a wagon during the day 
 time. 
 
 The train had no general mess cook. The 
 thirty-two men including Ted and Philip 
 divided themselves into four messes, and the 
 man who was most handy with pans and 
 kettles acted as cook. He was relieved of all 
 guard duties and night-herding, and the other 
 men had to furnish him with wood and water. 
 
 From Independence to Council Grove, one 
 hundred and fifty miles west, the trail was 
 
44 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 well marked even at this early time and the 
 camping-places were well known. They were 
 all at some stream or spring, where wood 
 and water could be had and where the grass 
 was good for cattle and mules. 
 
 The first day the train made only about 
 ten miles. There was as yet no danger from 
 hostile Indians and only the night-herder and 
 his helper were on duty during the night to 
 keep the stock from straying away or from 
 stampeding; for both mules and cattle as well 
 as horses will at times take fright at almost 
 anything. At such moments their wild in 
 stincts gain complete control of them and they 
 run madly from some imaginary danger, as 
 their ancestors long ago ran from the wild 
 beasts and savage men that hunted them. 
 
 "Everybody lie down to-night, " ordered 
 Captain Harley, the wagon-master, who was 
 generally referred to as Doc Harley because 
 he knew as much about sick mules and oxen 
 as the regular horse-doctor at Independence. 
 "When we strike the wild country we'll set 
 guards." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 45 
 
 Philip and Ted, who were still under the 
 spell of the novelty of the whole scene, asked 
 old Shawnee Pete, the night-herder, if they 
 might help him herd the stock during the 
 night, but old Pete turned them off gruffly. 
 
 "Naw," he said; " don't want any green 
 kids around to-night. You youngsters will 
 get your hides full enough of night-herding 
 after we strike Indian country. Boll up in 
 your blankets and shut yer eyes!" 
 
 "Gosh," remarked Ted, "he's a worse crab 
 than Uncle Jeth." 
 
 "Oh, he's not so bad, after you know him," 
 replied Philip. "I guess the old man played 
 cards all last night, and is not in good humor 
 now. Let's go and see what Jim Burley is 
 doing." 
 
 Jim was just making his bed outside the 
 wagon corral. It was a very simple matter. 
 He had just folded one blanket to be used as 
 a pillow and was rolling himself up in his 
 buffalo robe. 
 
 "Put your saddles on the ground, boys," 
 he suggested, "and roll up in your blankets. 
 
46 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Old Doc will rouse the camp before daylight. ' ' 
 
 The boys did as Jim had suggested, using 
 their saddles for pillows; after they had 
 staked their horses close by. 
 
 "Why don't you let the beasts run with the 
 herd?" asked Jim. 
 
 "No," protested Philip, "we are going to 
 keep the ponies handy. It wouldn't be any 
 fun to hoof it back to town after them ! ' ' 
 
 Thus ended Ted's and Philip's first day 
 with the Santa Fe train. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON THE TBAIL 
 
 TED could not go to sleep for some 
 time. The novel scenes and the ex 
 citement of the day made him wake 
 ful. In the distance he could hear the sound 
 of the bell attached to one of the mules for 
 the purpose of keeping the herd together. 
 From time to time one of the ponies would 
 snort and Ted imagined that he faintly heard 
 an Indian creep over the prairie, and he could 
 not help thinking of Philip's carelessness in 
 going on the trail without having his hair 
 clipped. He tried to dismiss these thoughts, 
 for he knew that the train was still more than 
 a hundred miles from the region of any 
 hostile Indians. The night was growing 
 quite chilly, and from a distance came the 
 long weird howl of coyotes, which always fol 
 lowed the trains to pick up any scraps of food 
 left on the camp sites. 
 
 47 
 
48 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 But the little fellow was getting drowsy 
 now, and to avoid the chill of the night air 
 on his face and bare head, he crept entirely 
 under the buffalo robe and snuggled close to 
 his big brother, who seemed to be sound 
 asleep. 
 
 At dawn, the songs of the meadow-larks 
 and the deep booming of prairie-chickens an 
 nounced the new day. Half-awake Ted put 
 his head out to find where he was, but the raw 
 morning air caused him to crawl back under 
 cover. 
 
 Soon the call: "Roll out, roll out!" rang 
 through the camp. 
 
 Both lads felt stiff from sleeping on the 
 hard ground to which they were not accus 
 tomed, but they ran down to the creek, 
 splashed some cold water over their faces, 
 and were ready for their first breakfast on 
 the trail. 
 
 The cooks had their fires going by this 
 time, and hot coffee and fragrant bacon soon 
 put everybody in good cheer. 
 
 However, when Shawnee Pete came in on 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 49 
 
 his mule and reported that several mules and 
 six of the oxen were lost and not to be seen 
 anywhere, much of the' good cheer vanished. 
 
 This was news not at all welcome, because 
 it meant that the whole train would be de 
 layed till the lost stock was found and 
 brought in. 
 
 ' 1 Pete, you old sleepy-head, " Captain 
 Harley scolded the herder, " there you're 
 again with your tale of lost stock. You 
 curled up again in your blanket and let the 
 stock herd itself. Consarn your old hide, 
 Pete, if the Indians don't scalp you, I'll have 
 to fire you yet!" 
 
 Old Pete was very crestfallen and said he 
 would go right after the stock without first 
 eating any breakfast. 
 
 "No, you won't." Captain Harley told 
 him. ' * Sit down and get some hot coffee into 
 yourself, so you wake up; you're still half 
 asleep. It would take you and your lazy old 
 mule all day to bring in that stock. Let the 
 boys go after the beasts on their ponies." 
 
 "Yes, Captain, we'll go," Ted offered, 
 
50 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 quickly finishing the last bites of his break 
 fast. 
 
 " Father taught me a mighty good rule 
 when I went over the trail with him," Philip 
 remarked as the boys rode away toward the 
 herd. 
 
 " 'Look after your stock and horses,' he 
 often told me. 'It's easy to lose them, but 
 often hard to find them again. Keep your 
 gun loaded and keep it handy. When you 
 want it, you want it badly, and you want it 
 quick. Most of the scrapes and difficulties 
 men get into on the trail are due to plain, 
 rank carelessness ! ' 
 
 " Where do you suppose those lost animals 
 strayed?" Ted asked. "I don't see a sign of 
 hoof or horn anywhere." 
 
 "We will ride along on this ridge toward 
 town and look about on either side." 
 
 The boys had traveled about two miles, 
 when Philip spied some dark specks on the 
 prairie eastward. 
 
 "Look, Ted!" he pointed out, "there go 
 our strays. Stop a minute, let's see whether 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 51 
 
 they are moving. Yes, they are; they are 
 beating it straight for home." 
 
 After half an hour's brisk riding the boys 
 had overtaken the animals and turned them 
 back on the trail. 
 
 "If old Pete was any good as a herder/' 
 remarked Philip, "he would have been 
 especially careful so near home. After the 
 animals get used to each other and are far 
 from their home region, they are not so likely 
 to leave the herd." 
 
 There was joy in camp when the lads after 
 an absence of three hours, returned with 
 every head of the strayed animals. 
 
 "Good work!" was Captain Harley's 
 greeting to the boys. "I'm all-fired glad 
 you're with us. 
 
 "Now, Pete, you sleepy old Indian," he 
 said, turning to the disgraced herder, "you 
 crawl into your blankets, and if any man sees 
 your face before we get to camp, he'll cut 
 your big ears off with the blacksnake. A 
 fine mess you would get us into in the Indian 
 country I" 
 
52 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 The strayed animals were quickly yoked 
 and harnessed and again the caravan strung 
 out on the trail. 
 
 Captain Barley urged his men to travel 
 according to the rules of the trail observed 
 by all cautious traders. 
 
 " Don't string out too far," he told them. 
 "Not more than a mile at the most. If you 
 string out two, three miles, the Indians can 
 eat you up one by one. 
 
 "To-night we form a regular corral. 
 Teams one to thirteen form a half-circle to 
 the left, numbers fourteen to twenty-six form 
 a half -circle to the right. We might as well 
 get used to it, before we reach the dangerous 
 country around Pawnee Bock." 
 
 When the train reached the creek where 
 camp was to be made, Captain Harley ordered 
 the wagons to cross and make camp on the 
 farther side. 
 
 "Why don't we stay on this side?" asked 
 Ted. "There's more wood on this side." 
 
 "We cross over now for two reasons," 
 Philip explained. "Crossing a creek always 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 53 
 
 means a hard pull and cattle don't pull well 
 in a cold yoke, as the drivers call it ; so it is 
 always easier to get across in the evening 
 than in the morning. 
 
 "Another reason is the treacherous 
 character of these prairie creeks. You 
 strike one in the afternoon and you find it a 
 sleepy little stream, crawling along among 
 cottonwoods and box-elders with scarcely 
 enough water for the catfish and suckers to 
 hide in. You wake up in the morning and 
 find a big muddy river roaring past your 
 camp. There was a thunderstorm or a cloud 
 burst somewhere up-stream and you have to 
 sit on the bank and wait till the freshet runs 
 by, which may delay you a whole day or 
 more." 
 
 The wagons were formed into a circular 
 corral or fort as Captain Harley had ordered, 
 with two openings, where the right and left 
 wings met. 
 
 If an alarm was sounded the cattle and 
 mules could be driven inside of this corral, 
 where they could neither be stolen nor 
 
54 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 stampeded; while from behind the wagons a 
 few well-armed and resolute men could beat 
 off a horde of savage Indians, who in those 
 days were armed only with bows, arrows, and 
 spears, and poor guns. Even if they had a 
 few good guns, they had not yet learned how 
 to use them. 
 
 "Now, Pete," the Captain told the night- 
 herder after supper, "you had a long sleep 
 to-day. If you lose any more stock after 
 this, you foot it back home to hoe potatoes. ' ' 
 
 "I'll keep them rounded up, Captain," 
 Pete promised, as he mounted his mule and 
 rode off toward the herd of some three hun 
 dred and thirty head that were scattered over 
 the hills west of the creek, where the young 
 growth was coming strong and green through 
 the old grass of last year. 
 
 "You needn't stand guard, boys," the Cap 
 tain told the men, "till we have passed 
 Council Qrove. I guess the Beds won't 
 trouble us this side of the Grove. But you 
 must take turns helping Pete watch the 
 stock. We have a few extra head, but the 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 55 
 
 critters are too valuable; and I wager we'll 
 need them all, so we just can't afford to lose 
 any." 
 
 Next morning the right wing of the corral 
 pulled out first. On account of the dust it 
 was more pleasant traveling in the first sec 
 tion, and for that reason the sections changed 
 places daily, but the teams in each section al 
 ways traveled and encamped in the same or 
 der. In this way each ox and mule soon knew 
 and found his place in the line, and the train 
 was spared much trouble and profanity on 
 the part of the drivers. 
 
 When the train arrived at Council Grove 
 it was the middle of May. The trees had 
 leafed out, the woods were alive with the 
 birds of summer, and rich young grass was 
 abundant everywhere. 
 
 The train halted a day at this place. It 
 was the last place, where good timber was 
 found, and a supply was cut to be in readi 
 ness for extra poles, fallows, and yokes that 
 might be needed. 
 
 Old Bill Watson who ran a blacksmith shop 
 
56 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 at this place had a busy and profitable day 
 shoeing mules and repairing wagons. 
 
 From old Watson the lads learned the first 
 bit of interesting news. 
 
 It verified the story of Crooked Horn. 
 Two men had been robbed by some Pawnees. 
 One of the men had been killed, the other had 
 escaped. But this man was captured by a 
 party of Comanches, who fell upon the 
 Pawnees while they were committing the 
 murder and robbery. 
 
 The attack had happened at Pawnee Fork 
 a few days before Christmas. There was not 
 more than half a dozen Pawnees in the war 
 party. The two white men were each about 
 forty years old, and were traveling in a light 
 wagon drawn by four large mules. 
 
 This was all the blacksmith knew. Several 
 Pawnees had been in his shop and store since 
 that time. They claimed not to know the 
 young men that had committed the outrage. 
 No Indians had shown any money in his place, 
 nor had they worn or shown any ornaments 
 hammered out of silver or gold coins. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 57 
 
 Philip came away from the honest old 
 blacksmith in very serious thoughts. 
 
 "It was Father and his partner, all right," 
 he assured Ted. "The story tallies too well 
 with Father's plans and ways. We can't do 
 anything else now but go on with the train 
 and keep our eyes and ears open. We may 
 fall in with some friendly Indians who can 
 give us some more definite news." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OXEN AND MULES 
 
 THE train bad now been on tbe trail 
 about ten days, and tbe boys bad 
 been away from borne about two 
 weeks, although the time seemed much longer 
 to them. 
 
 The heavily laden wagons, carrying from 
 two to three tons each, could not average 
 more than ten or fifteen miles a day. The 
 caravan did not, however, attempt to make a 
 certain distance daily, but the length of its 
 day's journey depended on the location of 
 suitable camping-grounds. 
 
 It was impossible to carry grain or hay for 
 the animals of which Captain Harley's train 
 had about three hundred and thirty head. 
 All these animals had to depend on grass, 
 and for this reason the camps could be made 
 
 58 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 59 
 
 only at places where grass and water were 
 plentiful. 
 
 It took the lads, especially Ted, some time 
 to become used to the routine of the train. 
 At daylight, the herder and his helper brought 
 in the cattle, which were at once yoked to the 
 heavy wagons. Then the train started and 
 traveled until about ten or eleven o'clock, or 
 until a good camping-place was found. Here 
 the men had their breakfast. 
 
 The wagons were drawn up in a corral, 
 while the animals, in charge of the herder 
 and his assistant, were turned out to water 
 and to graze and rest till about three 
 o 'clock. 
 
 In the afternoon the train kept going till 
 the next good camping-ground was reached, 
 which was sometimes early and sometimes 
 late in the evening. In this way the cool 
 hours of morning and evening were used for 
 traveling. 
 
 When supper was ready, the men did not 
 have to be urged to eat, for daily journeys in 
 the keen air of the prairie created an appetite 
 
60 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 which people who spend their lives in houses 
 and offices do not know. When the meadow- 
 larks ceased singing most of the men were 
 asleep in their blankets and under their buf 
 falo robes, for the prairie air made them 
 sound sleepers as well as hearty eaters, and 
 the nights were always too short. 
 
 By the time the stars had lit their twin 
 kling lights above the endless prairie, a deep 
 silence had fallen upon the camp, made only 
 more impressive by the heavy snoring of 
 some tired sleepers, the muffled tread of the 
 guard, the faint sound of a cowbell from the 
 herd; and the wailing, melancholy howls of 
 the coyotes. 
 
 Before the train left Council Grove, Cap 
 tain Harley had urged his men to be on their 
 guard against hostile Indians. 
 
 "Dont string out too far," he told them. 
 1 ' Have your guns loaded and keep them on 
 the outside of the wagons, and don't stroll 
 far away from camp, if you want to keep 
 your scalps on." 
 
 Jim Burley who had grown fond of Philip 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 61 
 
 and Ted, also warned the boys of the dangers 
 of the country they were now entering. 
 
 "You have to cut out, boys," he cautioned, 
 4 ' riding ahead of the train, or straggling be 
 hind, or chasing after jack-rabbits. 
 
 " Don't think there are no Indians about 
 because you don't see any. An Indian can 
 hide in anything that makes cover for a prai 
 rie-chicken. Old Doc swears he once saw an 
 Indian come out of a badger-hole. So look 
 out for your hair, boys, till we get back to 
 Council Grove." 
 
 "They can't get mine," Ted protested. 
 "It's too short." 
 
 "Better not let them try it, kid," Jim 
 laughed. ' ' Some murderous buck would have 
 it yanked off before he'd noticed how short 
 it is. And I tell you, kid, your light bristles 
 are growing pretty fast. You fellows had 
 better stick to the train, I tell you." 
 
 When the train reached the camp known as 
 Last Spring, about forty miles west of Coun 
 cil Grove, they saw the first buffalo, and three 
 young men brought in a fat young bull for 
 
62 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 supper. A small herd of buffaloes was seen 
 at a distance of about two miles from camp, 
 but Captain Harley would not allow the men 
 to go after them. 
 
 "You do your hunting close to camp/' he 
 told them. "Where the buffaloes are the 
 Redskins are likely to prowl about, and be 
 tween here and the mountains we can easily 
 get plenty of buffaloes close to the trail. 7 ' 
 
 After two more days of travel, the car 
 avan reached the Little Arkansas and here the 
 lads saw the wisdom of Captain Harley in 
 having chosen as many oxen as he could get 
 for draft animals. The stream had been 
 swollen by a freshet and a great deal of mud 
 and quicksand had been deposited at the 
 crossing. 
 
 "Cut a lot of brush and dump it in here," 
 Captain Harley told the men. "I guess we 
 can make it then. ' ' 
 
 The ox-teams crossed the treacherous ford 
 without much difficulty. The big strong an 
 imals sniffed and smelled the ground as if 
 to pick out the best footing. If any of them 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 63 
 
 sank through the brush, they did not become 
 excited or lie down, but just walked ahead 
 and pulled, and as long as chains and yokes 
 did not break, the heavy wagons had to come 
 after them. 
 
 But when the first mule team tried to cross 
 there was trouble. The animals were so ex 
 cited that the driver lost control over them. 
 Some of the animals missed the ford, and be 
 came mired, and, although they made frantic 
 efforts, they were unable to pull their feet 
 out of the sticky mud, and half a dozen of 
 them came down in a heap. The heavy wagon 
 slid down almost on top of them and only came 
 to a stop the very moment when everybody 
 thought it was going to topple over into the 
 creek. 
 
 The driver looked at the confusion in help 
 less despair. 
 
 "Look at the mess!" exclaimed Captain 
 Harley. "I never believed in these con- 
 sarned mules. They are no good except on 
 a dry road. Give me a sensible ox any 
 time. 
 
64 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Bill," he then turned to the driver, "just 
 unhitch that mess. 
 
 "Here, Jack and Shorty," he called to two 
 other drivers. "Bring your cattle and pull 
 these long-eared idiots out!" 
 
 "Gosh," exclaimed Ted breathless with ex 
 citement, as the steady oxen literally snaked 
 the mass of helpless mules out of the mud, 
 "gosh, Phil ! I don't want to be a Santa Fe 
 trader, I 'm going to be a wagon-boss like Doc 
 Harley. Look, Phil! Didn't you think the 
 mules were all dead. They aren't, they are 
 getting up." 
 
 Much to the surprise of the boys, not one 
 of the mules was seriously hurt, and as soon 
 as they were relieved of their harnesses, they 
 rolled themselves on the ground and went off 
 to graze as if nothing unusual had happened 
 to them. 
 
 The captain now turned his attention to the 
 mired wagon. 
 
 "Here, men," he called to half a dozen 
 drivers, "get some poles and hold that wagon 
 up, while we are getting it started. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 65 
 
 "Bill and Shorty, hitch your cattle to it. 
 I 'm done with mules at this crossing. ' ' 
 
 It took Bill and Shorty but a few minutes 
 to obey the order. The oxen also seemed to 
 know what was expected of them. Without 
 excitement some yokes took their places in 
 the creek, while the others stood quietly on the 
 bank until all was ready and the drivers 
 called: "Get up, boys, get up!" Then 
 quietly and slowly all leaned their shoulders 
 against the yokes, and the big wagon righted 
 itself and came up the bank as if it had been 
 a child's toy cart. 
 
 "Well done, boys!" the wagon-boss called 
 out, and Philip and Ted were not sure 
 whether he referred to the drivers or the 
 oxen. 
 
 "Now get the other mule-wagons, too," he 
 told Bill and Shorty. "There'll be no more 
 mules in any train of mine. ' ' 
 
 The caravan was now within a few days' 
 journey of the Great Bend of the Arkansas. 
 This river like the Missouri and the Platte 
 is one of the great prairie streams of North 
 
66 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 America. The water of all three of these 
 rivers makes the long journey from the high 
 ranges and peaks of the Rocky Mountains 
 to the Mississippi. All three cross the Great 
 Plains, which less than fifty years ago fur 
 nished the wild pasture for vast herds of 
 buffaloes and where the hunting-grounds of 
 the most powerful, warlike Indian tribes. 
 
 The greatest and most dangerous battle 
 grounds of the Indian country lay now right 
 ahead of the train. In the region between 
 and around the present towns of Great Bend 
 and Lamed, both on the Arkansas River in 
 the state of Kansas, no Indians ever dared 
 to make a permanent camp. The country 
 was the battle-ground of many of the Plains 
 Tribes ; Pawnees, Kiowas, Comanches, Arap- 
 ahoes, Cheyennes. In the days of the Santa 
 Fe Trail every wagon-master and every 
 stage-driver was thankful when he had safely 
 passed the camping-places at Walnut Creek, 
 Pawnee Rock, Ash Creek, and Pawnee Fork. 
 
 The men in Captain Harley's train saw 
 their first Plains Indian one afternoon late 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 67 
 
 in May, when they were within a few miles 
 of Walnut Creek. He was over a mile away 
 and seemed to be riding toward a large herd 
 of buffaloes that could be seen grazing farther 
 west. 
 
 Some of the new men claimed the figure 
 seen was not an Indian, but an elk with a big 
 pair of antlers. 
 
 "One lone Indian/' claimed Fatty Jarvis, 
 the leanest and in his own opinion the wisest 
 man in the crowd, "wouldn't be hunting 
 buffaloes. There would be a bunch of them. ' ' 
 
 "Fatty, if you want to sell your hair cheap, 
 go and look for that elk, ' ' Burley challenged 
 Jarvis. "It was an Indian, I tell you. And 
 he wasn't alone either I'll wager; there's a 
 hundred of them behind the ridge, may be a 
 thousand. 
 
 "Fatty, before we get over this fight stretch 
 to the Cimarron Crossing, you'll learn a 
 whole lot more about Indians." 
 
 That night Captain Hurley ordered three 
 men to herd the stock and placed two men on 
 guard duty in the camp. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ALARM AND STAMPEDE 
 
 IT was Philip's and Jim Burley's turn to 
 stand guard from^ten to twelve at the 
 Walnut Creek Camp. 
 
 "I'm going to stand guard with you and 
 Jim," Ted declared when after supper the 
 two brothers went to the creek to see if there 
 was a good catfish hole near the crossing. 
 
 "You had better not," Philip tried to per 
 suade him. "Two guards are enough, and 
 there are plenty of men to take turns at it. 
 You had better roll in." 
 
 "No, I am going to stand guard with you. 
 You and Jim said I could in the Indian Coun 
 try. I'm not going to tell Mother that I 
 played the baby and never did anything on 
 the whole trip." 
 
 "Aren't you helping me to drive the loose 
 stock and round up the stray animals in the 
 morning?" Philip asked. 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 69 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do, but that's nothing. Any 
 body could do it; there's no danger in it." 
 
 When ten o'clock came Ted took his gun 
 and began to walk slowly back and forth on 
 his beat, which was just outside the corral 
 facing the valley of the Arkansas, where the 
 stock was grazing. A few rods off the two 
 ponies, Blackie and Kio were staked, far 
 enough away so that they could not reach the 
 wagons, and far enough apart so that they 
 could not tangle each other. 
 
 Ted had never felt quite so big and im 
 portant in all his life. Catching his first fish 
 and bringing home his first jack-rabbit was 
 nothing compared with doing real sentinel 
 duty, standing guard with a real loaded gun 
 against real Indians. He felt sure that Jim 
 was right about the Indian seen in the after 
 noon and that there were hundreds of them 
 in hiding not far from camp. 
 
 The night was warm, but spooky, with the 
 crescent of the moon hiding behind banks of 
 clouds in the southwest. From time to time 
 he met Philip or Jim, and he felt sure that 
 
70 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 he could by ear tell their walk from the foot 
 steps of an Indian. As he continued to peer 
 and listen into the darkness, his eyes and ears 
 seemed to grow keener as the darkness in 
 creased. Puffs of wind sprang up. He 
 heard the sound first in the trees on the creek 
 and was surprised that a little wind could 
 make such a big noise. The wind and the 
 increasing cloudiness would make it harder to 
 hear or see approaching Indians. 
 
 When he met Philip the next time, he asked 
 what time it was. " About half -past ten," 
 answered Philip, and strolled off. 
 
 "Gosh," said Ted. "I thought it was al 
 most twelve o'clock." Perhaps Philip was 
 teasing him again. 
 
 He was tempted to tell Philip that he 
 guessed he would roll in. There weren't 
 any Indians around camp, anyway. They 
 wouldn't steal mules or bother a camp, when 
 they could hunt buffaloes. 
 
 No, it would never do to quit before his 
 time was up. He would never hear the last 
 of that all his life. He must stick it out. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 71 
 
 That gun was getting awfully heavy. 
 What was the use of trotting back and forth 
 all the time? No need of it. He might as 
 well sit down against a wagon where he 
 could watch just as well. 
 
 Little Ted had his eyes and ears set for the 
 stealthy approach of Pawnees and Coman- 
 ches, but he did not know how softly and 
 silently a friendly old god from Mount Olym 
 pus, conqueror and consoler of tired men, can 
 creep upon his victims. 
 
 Both Burley and Philip soon discovered 
 why their enthusiastic fellow-sentry, Ted, 
 had stopped walking his beat like a soldier. 
 They planned to cure him in this way of his 
 desire for guard duty. They would let him 
 sleep until it was time to be relieved. They 
 would not give him away, but they would 
 make him promise that he would not pester 
 them again about standing guard or doing 
 anything else at those hours of the night, 
 when a youngster of his age ought to be in 
 his blankets. 
 
 A shower had threatened, but it was now 
 
72 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 passing north of the camp, while below the 
 clouds the moon was again visible and re 
 lieved somewhat the uncanny darkness that 
 had prevailed. 
 
 Suddenly there came the loud boom of a 
 gun, immediately followed by a screaming yell 
 from Ted's high-pitched voice. Philip and 
 Burley ran to the wagon where they had left 
 him scarcely ten minutes ago. 
 
 "I, I shot at an Indian," the lad gasped. 
 "He he was a big fellow. He w-was com 
 ing at me with his hatchet." 
 
 "Where is he?" asked Burley. "Did you 
 drop him?" 
 
 "I, I don't know. I think he ran. I 
 guess I missed him." 
 
 By this time the whole camp was awake and 
 in commotion. 
 
 "Where's my gun?" came from half a 
 dozen men. 
 
 "Confound you, Shorty, drop my gun right 
 there. Take your own old blunderbuss ! ' ' one 
 crusty driver called out to another. 
 

 WHY TED HAD STOPPED WALKING HIS BEAT LIKE A SOLDIER. 
 Page 71. 
 
OP THE PAWNEE 73 
 
 " What's the row about, boys?" asked Cap 
 tain Harley. "Did you see Indians?" 
 
 Burley told what had happened, but did 
 not mention that they had seen the young 
 guardsman leaning against a wheel and sound 
 asleep. 
 
 Ted told again how he had fired at a big 
 Indian, who was coming straight for him with 
 a tomahawk. 
 
 "I guess you're mistaken, sonny," the Cap 
 tain chuckled. "The ponies would not be 
 grazing so quietly if there were any Indians 
 prowling about." 
 
 The men remained at their posts for a 
 little while, but none could hear or see any 
 thing suspicious, except that the howls of the 
 big gray wolves were mixed with the wails of 
 the coyotes. 
 
 "It's a false alarm, men," the wagon mas 
 ter finally decided. "All go back to bed, but 
 it's time for the midnight relief. 
 
 "Don't dream about any more Indians," he 
 added quietly aside to Ted. 
 
74 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 However, he instructed the men to watch 
 with great care and said that he would stay 
 up a while, too. 
 
 ' ' When you hear the big wolves, ' ' t e added, 
 "the buffaloes are not far away, and where 
 you meet buffaloes, you are likely to run into 
 Indians. Wolves, buffaloes, and Indians 
 form a sort of wild plains trinity. 
 
 The men all went back to bed, and their 
 snoring soon showed how little their nerves 
 had been affected by the real or imaginary 
 danger. Most of them had taken the inter 
 ruption of their rest good-naturedly, only a 
 few grouchy ones had grumbled about the 
 idea of putting a fool kid on guard duty. An 
 hour, and almost another hour passed without 
 anything disturbing the peace of the corral. 
 
 It was almost two o'clock when one of the 
 guards heard a rumbling like distant thunder 
 north of the camp. He called the attention 
 of the other guard to it, who also heard it 
 plainly, and the sound seemed to be growing 
 louder and coming nearer, while they were 
 listening. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 75 
 
 The men called the wagon-master, who was 
 on his feet at once and listened. 
 
 < ' Buffalo stampede ! ' ' he called out. * ' Get 
 up, men! They are coming right upon us 
 from the north, thousands of them. Get your 
 ponies inside, boys ! 
 
 "Men of the first section run out to the 
 west side of the camp. Fire at the beasts, 
 yell at them to turn them west. 
 
 "Six men run over to the herd. Keep 
 them together. If they get mixed with the 
 buffaloes, we'll never see them again. The 
 rest of you guard the camp ! ' ' 
 
 The previous false alarm had been a good 
 thing for the camp in showing up every man 
 who was not ready. At this call every man 
 was ready and acted quickly. 
 
 Ted and Philip were the first to reach the 
 herd and being mounted, they could quickly 
 ride around the herd and help much to hold 
 them together, while the stampeding buffa 
 loes thundered past them a quarter of a mile 
 to the west. But in spite of the efforts of 
 the night-herders and of the boys, a few of 
 
76 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 % 
 
 the extra mules and oxen broke away to join 
 
 the mad stampede of the buffaloes. 
 
 When the noise of the thundering, bellow 
 ing wild herd had died away, Captain Harley 
 ordered all the stock to be brought inside the 
 corral. 
 
 "I have a suspicion, " he told the men, 
 " these buffaloes did not stampede of their 
 own accord. Some Indians started them to 
 stampede our mules and oxen. In a fine fix 
 we would be if we had lost our stock." 
 
 Once inside the corral the animals soon 
 became quiet and many of the oxen lay down 
 and quietly chewed the cud. 
 
 Half a dozen men were detailed for guard 
 duty, the others rolled up in their blankets, 
 for there was still more than an hour of dark 
 ness. 
 
 When daylight broke, not a buffalo was 
 seen anywhere, nor was there a sign or trace 
 of Indians near the camp. 
 
 11 Confound those red rogues, " commented 
 Burley, "if it wasn't for the buffalo meat the 
 men are bringing in, I would say the whole 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 77 
 
 camp had had a bad case of nightmare. You 
 don't see a sign of Indians around, but I feel 
 sure that they drove the buffaloes straight for 
 our camp herd." 
 
 It was decided to remain a day at Walnut 
 Creek to give time for curing the buffalo 
 meat, which had, so to speak, stampeded into 
 camp and was much needed. 
 
 When the stock was turned out again soon 
 after daylight, Ted noticed some blood on his 
 pony's neck. 
 
 "Look here, Mr. Burley," he called to his 
 friend, "what is the matter with my pony?" 
 
 The experienced plainsman looked a min 
 ute at the animal. "That pony," he replied 
 in a low voice but with a twinkle in his eye. 
 "That pony had a blasted close run from 
 a wild Indian last night. The bullet took a 
 nip out of his ear. Do you see this?" and 
 he pointed to a nick in the pony's left ear. 
 
 "You want to be a little careful, Sonny, 
 shooting from the saddle. He may be a little 
 gun-shy for a while, till he sort of forgets the 
 close call he had last night." 
 
78 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Ted knew what Burley meant and who the 
 Indian was that had fired at his pony. 
 
 The wagon-master ordered four men to 
 herd the cattle close to the corral. "At the 
 first sign of danger you bring them in/' he 
 impressed upon the men. ' ' We must not lose 
 any more animals." 
 
 Then he called Burley and Philip aside and 
 told them the real reason why he wished to 
 stay a whole day in camp. 
 
 "I want you two and three other men to 
 ride a few miles along the ridges on either 
 side of the Walnut Creek and scout for Indian 
 signs. But keep away from the timber and 
 the brush. After you have done that, ride a 
 few miles along the trail toward Pawnee 
 Bock, our next camp. Be careful and keep 
 together. Jim, you take charge and pick the 
 men you want and slip away kind of quietly. 
 You can take Ted along, if you want to. He 
 seems to be able to stick in the saddle pretty 
 well." 
 
 "Do you want us to knock over any buf 
 faloes, if we see any?" asked Philip. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 79 
 
 "No, don't go near them. We have meat 
 enough for a week or more. Hunting is too 
 dangerous around here. If I hear you shoot 
 ing, I shall know you are in a scrap with In 
 dians. I feel that they are lurking around us 
 somewhere. 
 
 "Now be careful that you don't ride into 
 a trap." 
 
 "Aren't we going to look for our lost 
 stock?" asked Philip. 
 
 "No, sir," the captain told him. "The 
 critters are miles away by this time and it 
 would be impossible to find them in the buf 
 falo herds. Let them go. The Pawnees or 
 Comanches will get them some day. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CATCHING AN ARROW 
 
 BLJBLEY and his men slipped out of 
 camp as quietly as possible. The 
 hunters brought in loads of fresh 
 meat, and the men in camp dried and smoked 
 it on frames of poles over a slow fire. To 
 dry and cure meat as the Indian often did 
 on the dry plains by simply exposing it to 
 the sun and the air would have taken too much 
 time. 
 
 Burley's scouting party rode cautiously 
 along the north side of Walnut Creek, then 
 crossed over and doubled back to camp on 
 the south side. They saw no big game ex 
 cept a small herd of antelopes, on which Ted 
 and Philip wanted very much to try the speed 
 of their ponies, but Burley would not listen 
 to their pleas that old Doc had not forbidden 
 them to hunt antelopes. 
 
 ' ' No, lads, it won 't do, ' ' he decided. ' ' Doc 
 
 80 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 81 
 
 meant that we should not hunt, so you don't. 
 If anything happened to you, I should always 
 blame myself for it." 
 
 The party scared up a jack-rabbit, who ran 
 over the nearest ridge in long leisurely 
 bounds. A prairie-hen arose with a great 
 whirr of wings from a nest containing twenty 
 eggs. Finding that the eggs were fresh, Ted 
 quickly gathered them in, except one. 
 
 * ' Hens can 't count, ' ' he said. * * If we leave 
 her one, she will lay some more. The men of 
 our mess will sure like some fresh eggs for 
 supper." 
 
 When they crossed the creek they saw a 
 big wild turkey on a tree and Ted wanted 
 very much to bring it down, but Burley said : 
 " Nothing doing, Sonny, you aren't at home 
 with your mother. No hunting means no 
 shooting." 
 
 "May I go and look for his nest?" asked 
 Ted. 
 
 "You may," Burley grunted, "if you want 
 to risk losing your hair. ' ' So Ted contented 
 himself with turning around in the saddle and 
 
82 THE SILVEE CACHE 
 
 watching the turkey as long as he could see 
 him. 
 
 On their way back they saw neither Indians 
 nor game, but a few black buzzards, hanging 
 on motionless wings, were sailing westward, 
 while a pair of large birds, which Burley said 
 were ravens, were also slowly flapping west 
 ward in the direction of Pawnee Eock. 
 
 "Well, boys, what did you see?" Captain 
 Harley asked when the scouts entered camp. 
 
 "Not a thing, Captain," Ted blurted out, 
 "except a rabbit, a prairie-chicken, and a 
 turkey. We've got the eggs of the chicken. 
 Yes, and some antelopes." 
 
 The men smiled at Ted's unconscious for 
 wardness, but said nothing. 
 
 "We saw some turkey-buzzards and a pair 
 of ravens," Burley added. "They were fly 
 ing toward Pawnee Eock." 
 
 "Well," mused the old man, "I don't know 
 what to think of it. You saw buzzards and 
 ravens, which means Indians. The buffaloes 
 are moving north now. When they get scared 
 they stampede back on their trails. I feel 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 83 
 
 that some Indians stampeded them last night, 
 but it's sort of queer that you saw no smoke 
 or sign of them. 
 
 "I tell you what you do," he continued 
 after a moment 's silence. ' ' You ride down to 
 the herders and tell them to water the stock 
 and then herd them back to the corral, they 
 are getting too far away. 
 
 "Then scout along the trail, but do not go 
 farther than Three-Mile Eidge. Jim, you 
 know the place I mean, the little ridge with 
 the stone grave to the north of the trail. If 
 you see or jump any Indians come back to 
 camp as quick as you can, and look out that 
 you don't get cut off. 
 
 "Tell the herders to hurry back with the 
 cattle. There is plenty of good grass near 
 camp; they don't need to stray away off in 
 the river bottom. ' ' 
 
 The scouts, after delivering the captain's 
 orders to the herders, cautiously followed the 
 trail westward. 
 
 When they came close to the low ridge, Bur- 
 ley stopped. 
 
84 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Look, men," he asked, "isn't that smoke 
 away off to the southwest over the Arkansas 
 bottom !" 
 
 The men soon made out a thin column of 
 smoke rising high in the still air. 
 
 "Confound them," muttered Burley. 
 "It's a Pawnee or Comanche camp, but the 
 smoke is not from their camp-fires. It is a 
 signal smoke. I don't know what it means, 
 but most likely it tells that a train of wagons 
 is coming west. 
 
 "Let us scout up to the ridge; I'll ride 
 ahead." 
 
 When Burley reached the ridge, he mo 
 tioned to the men to come on. They were 
 all halting in a group and watching the dis 
 tant signal smoke, when suddenly a gun 
 cracked in the tall dead grass to their left, 
 while an arrow whizzed out from behind the 
 stone grave. 
 
 "Turn back," ordered Burley. "Look to 
 your right, men, they are trying to cut us 
 off." 
 
 Half a dozen mounted Indians came racing 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 85 
 
 from behind some bushes in the Arkansas 
 River bottom. 
 
 But the ponies of the Indians had evidently 
 not yet recovered from their winter diet of 
 cottonwood bark, and were not equal in speed 
 to the ponies and mules of the scouts. 
 
 ' * Stop and give them a shot, lads, ' ' Burley 
 ordered, when he saw that the Indians could 
 not cut them off from camp. 
 
 Ted and Philip lost no time obeying the 
 order. One of the Indians ducked as if he 
 heard a bullet sing overhead. Apparently 
 none of them were hit, but they stopped fol 
 lowing the scouts and soon disappeared be 
 hind the willow bushes in the river bottom. 
 
 "Was anybody hurt?" asked Burley. 
 "Look, you don't always feel it when you 
 are excited." 
 
 Nobody was wounded, but an arrow was 
 found sticking in Ted's saddle. 
 
 " I '11 keep that and show it to Father. May 
 I, Mr. Burley?" Ted asked. 
 
 "Of course, you may," Burley replied. 
 "Well, boys," he continued, "that was close 
 
86 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 enough. If we had been careless they would 
 have scalped us all. ' ' 
 
 Ted instinctively felt for his scalp. 
 "Gosh," he whispered to Philip, "my hair is 
 surely growing fast." 
 
 Philip took his excited brother aside. 
 
 "Look here, Ted," he warned him, "when 
 we get back to camp don't you start in again 
 to do the talking. It's Burley's business to 
 talk. You keep mum. Just remember you 
 aren't the cock of the walk here as with 
 Mother at home." 
 
 Ted blushed, but he felt that Philip was 
 right and that he had been pretty fresh at 
 home with his mother and Uncle Jethro. 
 
 There was excitement in camp when the 
 scouts told what had happened. 
 
 Several men wanted Ted's arrow, but Bur- 
 ley cut short their requests by saying : 
 
 "The kid caught it and it's his. Don't 
 pester him for it. If you fellows will just 
 hike out to the ridge, you can catch one your 
 selves. The Pawnee buck is still waiting for 
 you behind the stone grave. ' 9 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 87 
 
 "Yes, let's do that," came from several 
 voices. "I'll go, I will. Can we go, Doc?" 
 
 "Close up men, close up!" the captain re 
 plied. "Go back to your buffalo beef. I 
 warrant you'll all see plenty of Indians and 
 arrows before you get back to chew the rag in 
 old Jack's store." 
 
 "I'll bet the kid was all-blasted scared," 
 remarked a rough driver who went by the 
 title of Mex, because he used to tell great 
 stories about his life in Mexico. Mex did 
 not like Ted, and had several times threatened 
 that some day he would take the conceit out 
 of that fresh little kid. 
 
 This time Burley came to Ted's rescue. 
 "Maybe he was scared," Burley admitted. 
 "I'm sorry you weren't there, Mex. You 
 could have shown us how to scare the whole 
 bunch by yelling and making faces at them as 
 you did in Chihuahua. 
 
 "For a while I was pretty well scared my 
 self," he continued. "I was afraid the ras 
 cals would cut us off." 
 
 "The stock goes inside the corral to-night," 
 
88 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Captain Harley ordered after supper. "All 
 of it, your ponies, too, boys. 
 
 " Smith and Mex, before you go off duty at 
 midnight you call me. I feel sure the country 
 is full of Indians, and they are trying their 
 best to take us at a disadvantage. 
 
 " Those two fellows on the ridge must have 
 been a couple of young bucks, for the wise 
 old warriors would never have betrayed their 
 presence till the men had passed them." 
 
 Nothing occurred to disturb the quiet of 
 the camp during the evening. On the prairie 
 the meadow-larks whistled as they do on the 
 Kansas fields to-day, and in the trees on 
 Walnut Creek the brown thrush with its burst 
 of varied melody seemed trying to drown the 
 more modest tunes of robin and catbird. 
 
 The early prairie flowers dotted the plain 
 with purple and lavender; and for gopher, 
 woodchuck, and badger the season of humble 
 work and play was once more in full swing, 
 after a long winter sleep in their prairie 
 dugouts. 
 
 On days of travel the men were generally 
 
OP THE PAWNEE 89 
 
 so tired that there was little inclination for 
 sociability, but on this evening they lingered 
 at the mess-fires chatting and smoking, while 
 the sun disappeared in a flood of gold and 
 crimson. 
 
 Although the men did not doubt the pres 
 ence of Indians in the region, none of them 
 expected a night attack and most of them 
 were inclined to make light of the fighting 
 qualities of the Red Men. 
 
 Until midnight there were no signs or 
 sounds about the camp which would have 
 disturbed an old plainsman. True, the camp 
 was not as quiet as when the stock was away. 
 Oxen and mules grunted as they lay down. 
 Now a mule snorted or an ox emitted a short 
 bellow as he was pushed or gored by an ill- 
 tempered fellow-bovine. The herd had had 
 all day to fill up on grass and water, so that 
 all but a few restless beasts were quite con 
 tent to lie down for the night. None of these 
 sounds, however, disturbed the sleep of the 
 men ; as long as the beasts did not start bray 
 ing or trumpeting they might grunt and snort 
 
90 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 all they wanted. Nerves, as city people know 
 them, the old plainsmen had none. 
 
 After midnight some of the men did wake 
 up from the violent barking of Old Doc's 
 dog. 
 
 Eomp was a long-legge brindled mongrel 
 not well liked in camp, because he showed no 
 affection for anybody but his master. 
 
 "I'd like to pisen that cur," muttered Mex. 
 "What's Doc got the brute for?" 
 
 Eomp was not afraid of the prowling coy 
 otes. If they came too close to camp he drove 
 them to a respectful distance. If possible 
 he hated the gray wolves still more than he 
 hated the coyotes; but he had enough dog 
 sense to know that the gray wolf of the plains 
 is the master of all canines, so he contented 
 himself with barking violently at them when 
 they prowled near camp. At such times he 
 would run to his master with all the signs of 
 urgently requesting his assistance. 
 
 "Oh, why don't you come and shoot him?" 
 he seemed to be trying to say. "Come 
 along now! I can't bear to have him 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 91 
 
 around !" And away he would rush again. 
 But when the wolf turned and clacked his 
 terrible fangs, Romp always remembered that 
 he was only a dog. 
 
 Several times that night Captain Harley 
 was tempted to go to the aid of Romp, who 
 pleaded more urgently than ever. It seemed 
 that the two wolves, who prowled about camp 
 to-night had roused all the anger a dog's 
 soul could hold. However, a gunshot would 
 arouse the whole camp, and the Captain did 
 not wish to be responsible for a false alarm. 
 
 At daylight he went to look at the wolf- 
 tracks, but the beasts had not made as much 
 as a toe-mark. 
 
 "Eomp," he called, "they didn't fool you 
 last night, but they fooled me. Drat their 
 souls, if those wolves weren't Indians rattling 
 buffalo bones at you!" 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 THE HAUNT OF EVIL SPIRITS 
 
 IN the morning there was a kind of in 
 formal council of war. The question 
 which Captain Harley put to Burley and 
 a few good men was: Should they go on 
 or wait a few days longer at this camp? 
 
 "The Indians are out for mischief, that is 
 sure,'* he told the men. "They may tackle 
 us here, they may try us out on the trail, or 
 they may fall upon us at Pawnee Eock. They 
 are around us, that's sure." 
 
 "Yes, they come and go like the coyotes/' 
 commented Burley. "They may decide that 
 we are the wrong kind of a bunch for them 
 and melt away. I'm for moving on, Captain. 
 We knpw as much now as we shall know to 
 morrow." 
 
 Half an hour later the train moved out. 
 The brush of the scouting party with the In- 
 
 92 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 93 
 
 dians on Three-Mile Ridge, and the knowledge 
 that two Indian scouts in wolf-skins had hov 
 ered around their camp for a good part of 
 the night, put every man on the alert. All 
 felt sure that the Indians, whoever they might 
 be, Pawnees, Comanches, or Cheyennes knew 
 exactly the strength and the habits of the 
 train. 
 
 The white men on the other hand did not 
 know whether there was a large Indian camp 
 farther up the Arkansas or whether those 
 they had seen belonged to a small band of 
 marauders. 
 
 Harley himself and Burley rode ahead of 
 the train and saw to it that the wagons stayed 
 so close together that they could form a corral 
 in a few minutes. The men all carried their 
 rifles on the outside of the wagons, and many 
 of them carried a loaded pistol in the belt 
 besides, Philip and Ted with Kansas Joe, 
 the extra man, brought up the rear of the 
 train. 
 
 The wagon-master had feared that some 
 ambushed Indians would attempt to stampede 
 
94 L THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the cattle if they were driven for water to the 
 creek or the river. 
 
 ' ' Those two fellows who fooled me last 
 night with their rattles," he told Burley, 
 "were not the only ones around. The rest of 
 the bunch, I feel sure, are hiding in the brush 
 on Walnut Creek or on the Arkansas. So 
 we '11 just fool them and not take the cattle to 
 water this morning. We have had plenty of 
 rain lately and I think we shall find enough 
 water in holes and buffalo-wallows between 
 here and Pawnee Bock." 
 
 In this expectation he was not disappointed. 
 Late April and May is the rainy season on 
 that part of the Great Plains, when shallow 
 depressions and buffalo-wallows are filled 
 yntld water, while later in the season in July 
 and August, the traveler would not find a 
 drop, except in the Arkansas Eiver and in 
 the larger creeks, and he might even have to 
 dig for it in such streams as Sand Creek and 
 the Cimarron. 
 
 Bit this time of the year the buffalo calves 
 are born. The new grass begins to grow and 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 95 
 
 the buffaloes used to start on their northward 
 journey, which extended as far north as the 
 Peace Eiver Valley in Canada. 
 
 Tbe(jfcw mej) in the train were again dis 
 appointed in their hope of having a brush 
 with the Indians. Not a sign of them was 
 seen. The train wound along slowly and 
 Ted had plenty of time to ask Kansas Joe 
 about the buffalo-wallows and the so-called 
 fairy rings seen everywhere along the train. 
 
 "The buffalo-wallows, I think," Joe said, 
 "the big beasts made themselves. In the 
 rainy season they paw and roll in the water 
 and the mud and carry some of the mud away. 
 In the dry season they also paw up the ground 
 and roll in the dust. Then the wind blows the 
 dust away and the wallow is made a little 
 deeper and larger every year." 
 
 "Doesn't the wind blow some of the dust 
 into the wallows?" asked Ted. 
 
 "Well, yes, it might do that," admitted 
 Joe. ' ' But not as much as it blows out. And 
 the buffaloes also carry some of the dust away 
 in their shaggy hair." 
 
96 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Ted could not see how the buffaloes made 
 the fairy rings, which looked like small round 
 race tracks. 
 
 ' ' They are made, ' ' Joe told him, ' t in spring, 
 when the calves are born. The wolves are 
 always trying to get the very young calves 
 and their mothers, before the calves are old 
 enough to travel along with the herd. Then 
 several bulls walk around the cow and her 
 little brown calf day and night, until the 
 calf is strong enough to go along with the 
 herd. If it wasn't for that, the wolves would 
 soon kill off all the buffaloes in the country. ' ' 
 
 On some of the mesas of the Bad Lands and 
 in other undisturbed prairie lands of the west, 
 the old buffalo-wallows and fairy rings may 
 be seen to this day, where the wild cattle 
 trampled them out half a century or more 
 ago. But they are overgrown with grass 
 like the right-of-way of abandoned railroads. 
 The grass is generally of a coarser and 
 greener kind than the short buffalo grasses 
 of the plains. 
 
 The train reached the camp site at Pawnee 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 97 
 
 Bock in good time. Pawnee Eock was a bold 
 cliff of red sandstone, which rose some fif 
 teen or twenty feet above the plain, and was, 
 so to speak, the abrupt ending of a long ridge. 
 The trail passed between the rock and the 
 Arkansas, whose valley at this place is about 
 two miles wide. 
 
 The trains generally took their stock down 
 the Arkansas for water, but as the stock in 
 Harley's train had had plenty of water in 
 the afternoon and there were plenty of water- 
 holes on the prairie, the Captain told the 
 herders to let the animals graze close to the 
 corral and not take them down to the river. 
 
 The cooks had brought a supply of wood 
 and water from Walnut Creek, so there was 
 no need for anybody to stray far from camp. 
 
 "I suppose," said the Captain after supper, 
 "that we have to leave the critters out over 
 night. They haven't had any food since mid 
 night, and if we corral them again, they will 
 be bellowing and milling around and keep us 
 all awake. I don't like to leave them out 
 because I think I smell Indians. ' ' 
 
98 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Phil," asked Ted when the two boys were 
 alone, "do you believe that Old Doc can really 
 smell Indians?" 
 
 "I don't suppose he can," answered Philip 
 with a laugh. "I suppose he meant that he 
 sort of felt in his bones that there were In 
 dians around." 
 
 About two in the morning the wagon- 
 master arose and asked the boys and Burley 
 to ride with him to the herd. 
 
 "The Old Man has got something on his 
 mind," whispered Burley to Philip, "but I 
 don 't think we '11 have any trouble. The Beds 
 have just got on the Old Man's nerves." 
 
 Things went on quietly. The cattle were 
 slowly herded back and turned toward the 
 opening of the corral. Here and there the 
 coyotes howled as usual, but the big gray 
 wolves seemed to have disappeared. 
 
 It was some time after three o'clock, when 
 suddenly a horde of Indians seemed to spring 
 out of the ground yelling like maniacs and 
 shaking blankets and robes in an attempt to 
 stampede the stock toward the river. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 99 
 
 "Bush them to the corral !" shouted Harley 
 as he fired his gun at the nearest Indian. 
 
 The men from the camp came running out, 
 spreading out on either side of the herd. 
 One Indian who had gotten between the herd 
 and the corral was shot down, while the stock 
 broke with a mad rush not for the river, but 
 straight into the corral. 
 
 The whole thing was over in five minutes, 
 and the Indians had disappeared as quickly 
 as they had come. 
 
 "Are we all here?" asked the Captain as 
 soon as the men got back to the corral. All 
 had returned. 
 
 "Now," the Captain ordered, "take your 
 places; they may tackle us again." 
 
 In about half an hour when it was just 
 light enough to see, horsemen came swarming 
 up from the river. There seemed to be at 
 least a hundred of them. 
 
 "They're coming!" the men called to one 
 another. ' ' A thousand of them ! ' ' 
 
 "Keep your fire, men," Harley called out, 
 "till I give the word." 
 
100 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 On the Indians came, waving blankets and 
 yelling like demons. 
 
 < ' Let 'em yell, ' ' muttered Harley. ' ' We '11 
 make 'em howl if they come close enough!" 
 
 The Indians as was their custom began to 
 ride around the corral, coming a little closer 
 all the time. The men could see now that 
 most of them carried bows and arrows, but a 
 few had guns. Pretty soon they began to 
 shoot their arrows and fire their guns into 
 the corral, and the men were becoming im 
 patient to reply. But the Captain called: 
 "Wait a bit, boys, wait a bit, and take good 
 aim!" 
 
 The next time they came around Harley 
 called: 
 
 "First squad, blaze away!" 
 
 A dozen guns cracked almost at once. 
 Three men fell off their ponies, while several 
 horses reared and plunged as if they had 
 been hard hit. The Indians quickly picked 
 up their fallen comrades and rode off toward 
 the river. 
 
 "They will not come back," predicted Bur- 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 101 
 
 ley, " unless they have a big camp near by. 
 This bunch got enough bad medicine." 
 
 "What were they? 77 asked the boys. 
 
 "Pawnees, to judge from their trappings 
 and y ells. " 
 
 Two of the men had been slightly wounded 
 and several of the cattle and mules had ar 
 rows sticking in their skins. 
 
 After this skirmish none of the new men 
 made fun of Barley's caution, for they all 
 realized that with a careless or inexperienced 
 leader they would have lost their stock and 
 goods and probably their lives. 
 
 When the first red rays of the sun fell on 
 the sides of the white canvas wagons, the 
 prairie and the valley of the Arkansas lay 
 spread out in all the idyllic glory and beauty 
 of an early summer morning with not a sign 
 of war or hostile savages. 
 
 The men in high spirits had a feast of hot 
 coffee, buffalo-meat, and biscuits, and when 
 after an hour no Indian had been seen, the 
 stock was turned out to feed on the rich young 
 grass. 
 
102 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 As there was plenty of water for the stock 
 near the corral, the captain thought it safest 
 not to move before the Pawnees had been 
 given time to get out of the country. 
 
 "But if we don't see any more of them," 
 he told the men, "we are off for Pawnee Fork 
 at daybreak to-morrow. 
 
 "This camp is a regular robbers' roost. 
 It has the worst reputation of all the camps 
 on the whole long route. Some old plains 
 men claim that Pawnee Rock is the haunt of 
 evil spirits. They say the soul of every bad 
 Indian that ever roamed these prairies lives 
 under the ridge back of Pawnee Bock." 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 TO PAWNEE FOEK 
 
 THEEE was now a whole day ahead of 
 the men in the train with no definite 
 duties to perform. Such days, unless 
 they came too often on account of bad weather 
 or high water at the fords, were generally 
 welcome. The men rested and made up sleep, 
 they repaired and washed their clothing, they 
 put wagons, loads, and harnesses in good 
 shape, and those who were so inclined tried 
 their luck at hunting, if the wagon-master 
 permitted it. 
 
 The oxen and mules that were compelled 
 to work in the day-time and find food and 
 rest at night, were always benefited by a day 
 of rest. 
 
 Ted and Philip and a few men like Burley, 
 who were still boys at heart, cast about for 
 some activity to fill their time and minds. 
 
 103 
 
104 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 The white, hummocky sand-hills south of 
 the Arkansas had attracted the boys' fancy 
 ever since the trail struck the river at the 
 Great Bend. 
 
 11 Captain, could we ride over and explore 
 them?" asked Philip. "Burley would go 
 with us." 
 
 "You would find nothing, boys, but sand 
 and rattlesnakes, and you will see the sand 
 hills pretty soon when we cross the Arkansas 
 for the Long Dry Route to the Cimarron. ' ' 
 
 "But we might find some buffaloes or an 
 telopes," suggested Ted. 
 
 "No, you can't go hunting," the Captain 
 decided. "Before you know, the Pawnees 
 might be hunting you. You had better all 
 stick around camp to-day. I feel pretty sure 
 that some of them are watching us." 
 
 The Captain, however, had no objection to 
 the boys and Burley sauntering along the 
 ridge that ran back from Pawnee Rock. 
 
 "Do you know who is buried under those 
 two stone piles'?" asked Ted. 
 
 Burley did not know. The graves had been 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 105 
 
 there as long as he had traveled over the 
 trail. 
 
 "You will find some lone graves all the 
 way to Santa Fe," he informed the boys. 
 
 "Were all those men killed by Indians !" 
 Ted wanted to know. 
 
 6 ' Most of them were, ' ' Burley replied, ' * and 
 if their friends had not piled rocks on their 
 graves the coyotes would have dug them out 
 in a hurry. " 
 
 The boys wanted to know if Burley knew 
 of any fights that had taken place at Pawnee 
 Eock. Yes, Burley knew of plenty of them. 
 
 Several years before, three trappers that 
 were going east with their pack-loads of fur 
 from the mountains were caught at Pawnee 
 Rock by half a hundred Cheyennes. 
 
 * ' Three white men by fifty Indians f ' ' asked 
 Ted. 
 
 "Yes, that's right; if you don't want to 
 believe it, boy, you needn't listen. 
 
 "The trappers were dead shots and had 
 plenty of ammunition and every time they 
 fired an Indian rolled over dead, but the 
 
106 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Cheyennes kept the trappers on the rock all 
 afternoon and all night. 
 
 "At first the trappers were very much 
 afraid that the Indians would kill their mules, 
 but the Indians did not try to kill them. 
 They thought they could get the mules and 
 the furs after they had killed the men. ' ' 
 
 " Fifty Indians and three white men!" ex 
 claimed Ted. "Why didn't they just rush 
 at them and capture them?" 
 
 "That isn't the way Indians fight," ex 
 plained Burley. "Now keep still, kid, and 
 let me finish. 
 
 "In the morning the Indians tied blankets 
 and brush to their ponies and tried to get 
 within range of their arrows and old guns, 
 but the trappers dropped so many of the 
 ponies that the others stampeded and ran 
 away. 
 
 "After a while the Indians returned again, 
 and this time they began to set fire to the 
 prairie. It was very early in the season and 
 there was only the tall dead grass of the 
 year before. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 107 
 
 "The trappers took their mules to the side 
 of the rock, where they were somewhat shel 
 tered from the wind. Then they started a 
 back fire close to the edge of the rock; and 
 hid behind a ledge, while the wind drove the 
 black smoke and the cinders from the big 
 fire over their heads. 
 
 "When the smoke cleared away they found 
 their mules with hair and tails badly singed, 
 but not really hurt. 
 
 "Most of the Indians now went back to 
 their camp, but enough of them stayed so that 
 the trappers could not get away, and they had 
 to stay another day on the rock without food 
 or water. They had but little ammunition 
 left now, and they expected the Cheyennes 
 would come back in the afternoon with some 
 new deviltry scheme and that they would 
 finally get their scalps after all. 
 
 "But toward evening the Indians all rode 
 away and pretty soon the trappers saw a 
 caravan coming from Santa Fe. The Indians 
 had also seen this caravan and had at last 
 given up the fight." 
 
108 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 In the middle of the forenoon Captain Har- 
 ley gave orders to hitch up. "We might as 
 well move," he said to Burley and the boys. 
 "If the Reds bother us too much, we can 
 corral and stand them off." 
 
 Burley and the wagon-master were the only 
 men in the train who knew why Philip and 
 Ted had joined the train. 
 
 "You lads will want some time to look for 
 ' signs ' at our next camp at Pawnee Fork. If 
 your father and his partner had a fight there 
 with the Indians, we ought to be able to find 
 a clue of some kind. We are the first train 
 out from Independence and we have met no 
 body from Santa Fe." 
 
 The train made the sixteen miles to Pawnee 
 Fork without any difficulty, although every 
 man was constantly on the lookout for In 
 dians. It seemed that they had vanished as 
 suddenly as they had come. 
 
 As soon as the camp had been established, 
 Burley, the wagon-master, and the two boys 
 began to look for signs of the fight about 
 which Crooked Horn and the blacksmith at 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 10S 
 
 Council Grove had told. After making sure 
 that no Indians were concealed in the brush 
 and small timber along the creek, the four 
 rode carefully over every rod of ground. 
 
 "I guess we're up against it," remarked 
 Burley. "It is like looking for a needle in a 
 haystack." 
 
 "No, it is like looking for a surveyor's car 
 pet-tack in the brush," replied Harley. 
 "Jim, did you ever help a surveyor find the 
 carpet-tack driven into an old stake, which 
 marks a line somebody had run through the 
 brush a year or two ago? You know the 
 rusty little thing is there, but you have to 
 get down on your hands and knees to find 
 it." 
 
 Pretty soon the cook called supper. After 
 supper the four men searched again till dark 
 for half a mile up the creek without finding 
 anything, except the sites of some old camp- 
 fires. 
 
 In the morning they renewed their search 
 down the fork toward the river with the 
 same result. They were about ready to give 
 
110 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 up and resume their journey, when Philip 
 thought he saw a dark object in a copse of 
 scrub box-elders. 
 
 "Come here, men!" he called. "I think I 
 have found something. " 
 
 "Only a piece of an old blanket, " Burley 
 said as he turned it over with his foot. 
 
 "No, look Philip, " Ted half whispered, 
 * ' it 's a piece of Mr. Fridley 's coat. I remem 
 ber the buttons it had on when he and Father 
 left." 
 
 In the meantime Ha r ley was busy with 
 something a rod away in a wild cherry thicket. 
 
 "Have you found anything, Captain," 
 asked Burley. 
 
 "Come over here," Harley requested. 
 
 "There they are," he pointed out. "Hu 
 man bones. All the coyotes have left." 
 
 Before the train moved, the four men bur 
 ied the bones and piled some rocks on the 
 grave to mark the spot. 
 
 There could no longer be any doubt about 
 the truth of Crooked Horn's story. 
 
 "We'll hitch up now," said Harley, when 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 111 
 
 they had returned from the new lone grave. 
 "We may meet some friendly Indians or 
 some Mexicans from Santa Fe who may be 
 able to tell us more if if we can get them to 
 talk." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THROUGH A HAILSTORM 
 
 ALTHOUGH no signs of IT Vms had 
 been seen since the Iran* k-i'i Pawnee 
 Rock, the men were ii!.st,r acted not to 
 string out too far, and to keep themselves 
 ready for trouble. 
 
 The trail continues southwestward from 
 Pawnee Fork, and soon runs up a small 
 stream known as Coon Creek, on the fork of 
 which the caravan made the next camp. 
 
 The country assumed now more and more 
 the aspect of an endless, unbroken prairie. 
 The grass was much shorter than it had been 
 farther east, and it began to appear in 
 bunches like the typical buffalo grass of the 
 western plains. 
 
 "It grows like little green brushes," re 
 marked Ted. " Isn't it too short for the 
 cattle I" 
 
 "Not at all," Burley informed him. 
 112 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 113 
 
 "They like it better than the tall grass, and 
 they grow fat on it, if you give them enough 
 time to graze." 
 
 "It is even good in winter if the snow does 
 not cover it too deep; for it generally dries 
 on the stalk and is as nourishing as good 
 hay." 
 
 Large trees had now entirely disappeared ; 
 only groves and patches of small cottonwoods, 
 box-elders, and cherries grew straggling 
 along the streams, while they could just see 
 the green valley of the Arkansas and its sand 
 hills more than ten miles to the south. 
 
 In the afternoon Captain Harley was rid 
 ing about half a mile ahead of the train, while 
 Burley and the two boys were bringing up the 
 rear. The day was intensely hot. The big 
 canvas-covered wagons were slowly creeping 
 along the trail, with the oxen panting and 
 the mules sweating in the heat. On the 
 prairie scarcely a sign of life was visible, ex 
 cept when the grayish-yellow prairie dogs 
 hopped from one burrow to another; and 
 while curiously eyeing the train, accompanied 
 
114 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the flipping of their funny little tails with 
 loud, sharp whistling and scolding, as if they 
 resented the intrusion of man on their prairie 
 solitude. 
 
 Some distance ahead of the train a gray 
 cloud was rapidly forming and the men could 
 soon see sharp flashes of lightning shoot down 
 upon the plain, followed by a heavy rumbling 
 of thunder. Then the wind stopped blowing 
 and an ominous calm descended over the 
 trail. 
 
 "That cloud looks like it had a twister or 
 something in it," commented Burley. "I 
 don't like the ashiness of it." 
 
 Now Captain Harley was coming back and 
 was evidently giving some order to the driv 
 ers, for they began to turn off to the right of 
 the trail. 
 
 Very soon Burley and the lads could hear 
 the captain shout: "Turn out to the right, 
 men, and form a half-circle. We are going 
 to meet a cyclone or an earthquake. There 's 
 a roaring and rumbling ahead like a buffalo 
 stampede." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 115 
 
 The train had just come to a halt, when 
 the cloud was above them. A heavy wind 
 sprang up, and a few scattered hailstones, as 
 large as walnuts, struck the prairie and 
 bounced back over the wagons. 
 
 4 * Hail," shouted the wagon-master. 
 "Look out, men, don't let your teams break 
 away!" 
 
 Within a few minutes the hailstorm broke 
 upon men and beasts with all its fury. The 
 rumbling of the hail on the wagons and on 
 the ground drowned the shouts of the men, 
 who tried their best to keep the maddened 
 animals from breaking away or becoming 
 tangled up. 
 
 "Whoa, boys, whoa, boys!" shouted the 
 drivers and cracked their whips in the faces 
 of the animals that tried to break away and 
 run madly for shelter with the wind. 
 
 A few hailstones had almost the size of a 
 man's fist and the poor animal that was struck 
 by one of them bellowed with pain. 
 
 For ten or fifteen minutes the uproar con 
 tinued, a confused noise of storm, hail, and 
 
116 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 rain, of the shouts of men and the bellowing 
 grunts of cattle. So thick fell the hail, and 
 rain that no man could see from his leading 
 team to his wagon. 
 
 When the commotion was over the hail in 
 some places, where it had been washed and 
 blown together, lay a foot thick. 
 
 The storm ceased as suddenly as it had 
 broken, and each man began to look over his 
 wagon and animals. There was no wagon 
 without holes in the canvas, where a big hail 
 stone had gone through, and almost every an 
 imal showed some swollen or bleeding bruises. 
 The men had escaped serious injury by hiding 
 behind the animals or the wagons. 
 
 "Where's Fleming and his mules?" some 
 body asked. "I thought he headed in to my 
 right." 
 
 "Well, where is he?" several others asked. 
 
 The Captain came riding by to see how the 
 train had come through. 
 
 "Where on earth are Fleming and his 
 mules?" he asked. "He is not at the other 
 end of the line." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 117 
 
 "Wait here, men," he added. "I will go 
 and look for hi. Those infernal eastern 
 mules ! I wish I had dumped them into the 
 Missouri!" 
 
 "Come on, boys," he called to Burley and 
 the lads, "we have to hurry, if we are going 
 to catch up with them. ' ' 
 
 They found Fleming a few hundred yards 
 north of the trail, knocked senseless by a big 
 hailstone. 
 
 Captain Harley stayed with the uncon 
 scious man and asked his companions to ride 
 on and bring in the missing wagon and mules. 
 
 After a little while Fleming came to. 
 "How my head aches!" were the first words 
 he said. "Where am I? Is that you, Doc? 
 Or am I dreaming?" 
 
 "It's Old Doc himself," Harley assured 
 him. "You are still on earth, Fleming. We 
 just found you half a mile off the trail. ' 9 
 
 "What in blazes happened to me?" asked 
 Fleming. "Oh, yes," after a few minutes, 
 "now I remember. My mules started to 
 break away in the storm, and I guess a hail- 
 
118 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 stone knocked me down. Where are those 
 mules f It seems to me they headed north, 
 but I don't know. All I remember is that I 
 tried to stop them." 
 
 "The boys and Jim have gone after them. 
 They'll soon bring them in. You had better 
 get on my mule and we '11 go to camp. ' ' 
 
 When they reached the camp the men 
 crowded around Fleming to learn what had 
 happened to him. Most of the other men had 
 sore spots on their bodies and heads, but none 
 had been knocked senseless. Harley then 
 told the men to drive on a few miles so that 
 they could find dry buffalo chips for their 
 camp-fires, for he knew that a hailstorm never 
 covers more than a narrow strip of country. 
 In fact it is often only a fraction of a mile 
 wide. 
 
 "No need," he added, "to wait for Flem 
 ing's wagon. Jim and the boys will see 
 that we have gone on and they will soon bring 
 in the runaway mules." 
 
 So the train moved on about two miles and 
 the cooks soon had the coffee simmering and 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 119 
 
 the buffalo steak broiling over a liot glowing 
 fire of buffalo fuel. 
 
 The men were in fine spirit after their ad 
 venture and exchanged experiences, swapped 
 yarns, as they called it, about the worst 
 storms and the biggest hailstones they had 
 ever seen. 
 
 "Gol dern you, Pete!" one of the men ad 
 dressed Shawnee Pete. "I bet you never 
 stuck your nose out of the canvas. I guess 
 you never woke up !" 
 
 Pete said he had stuck out his head, but he 
 admitted that he drew it in again "almighty 
 quick, " for he hadn't hired out to stop hail 
 stones with his head. 
 
 The men finished their supper, and Shaw- 
 nee Pete and his helper for the night rode 
 out after the cattle. The men were in a talk 
 ative mood. All kinds of stories were ex 
 changed and the talk turned upon Santa Fe 
 and Mexico, for in those days Santa Fe was 
 still within Mexican territory. Would the 
 tax of $500 a wagon be still in force? If so, 
 they would combine two or three loads before 
 
120 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 they entered the old adobe town and burn the 
 empty wagons. Would Old Doc hide his ex 
 port gold and silver in hollow axle-trees as 
 some of the traders did, or was he too honest 
 to evade the outrageous export duty on gold 
 and silver coin? 
 
 What sort of a time would they have in the 
 old Mexican town? They would all do the 
 fandango with the Spanish beauties, of 
 course. A fellow wants a little fun after he 
 has been hoofing it over the trail for three 
 months. 
 
 "Have your fun, you young fellows," an 
 old gray-headed driver counselled, "but don't 
 let the Taos lightning tangle your legs/' 
 
 Then the talk drifted to the trials that were 
 likely still ahead of them, for they were now 
 nearing the half way camp of the crossing of 
 the Arkansas, that is if Old Doc took the dry 
 route by way of the Cimarron. He most 
 likely would. Old Doc never wasted any 
 time. 
 
 Would they have trouble in crossing the 
 Arkansas? The water was likely to be high 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 121 
 
 and the quicksands would bother the mules 
 quite a bit; but Doc would find a way of 
 getting them across. 
 
 Would they get into any " water scrape " 
 if they took the Cimarron route? Anyhow 
 there would be sixty-five miles from the 
 Arkansas to the Cimarron, where there 
 would not be a drop of water for the stock. 
 
 While this talk was going on among the 
 men, the Captain and Fleming were begin 
 ning to feel uneasy about the runaway team 
 and the three men. 
 
 "We ought to see them by this time," 
 Harley declared as he scanned the horizon 
 to the northeast. * ' I hope they haven 't fallen 
 in with any savages. I'm afraid I should 
 not have let them go, especially the boys. 
 The sun will be down in an hour ; and if they 
 don't show up pretty soon, I'll go after them 
 myself." 
 
 Another half -hour passed and still no men 
 or mules were to be. seen, and several men 
 volunteered to go with the Captain in search 
 of the men and animals. 
 
122 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 The sun had just set when they saw three 
 horsemen outlined against the crimson sky. 
 
 "Well, I'll be hanged, " muttered Harley, 
 "if they aren't coming back without the 
 wagon! Where on earth can those crazy 
 beasts have gone? Can't have sunk into the 
 prairie? Surely that's Jim and the lads. I 
 can tell little Ted on the pony and Jim on his 
 big mule. Those aren't Indians, are they, 
 men?" 
 
 The men agreed that the coming horsemen 
 were not Indians. 
 
 The three horsemen now headed directly 
 for the Captain and his men. 
 
 "Doc," reported Burley as soon as they 
 met, "it sounds all-fired strange, but never a 
 hair or a hoof did we see of those dog-gasted 
 mules." 
 
 For a moment the wagon-master was 
 speechless, then he gave vent to a string of 
 strong invectives on mules in general and on 
 Fleming's string in particular. 
 
 "Well, boys," he ended, catching his 
 breath, "come along and get some supper. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 123 
 
 You must be half starved. Hang it if I don't 
 go after them myself in the morning. I 
 guess the blasted fool critters will have 
 stopped running by sunrise 1" 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE LOST WAGON 
 
 NEXT morning the Captain placed 
 Burley in charge of the train with 
 instructions to move in close order 
 and with great caution. At a place known 
 as The Caches the train was to make camp 
 and wait for the Captain, if he had not joined 
 them before they reached The Caches. 
 
 Harley himself asked the two lads and 
 Fleming to go with him in search of the lost 
 wagon. They rode at a brisk pace back to 
 their "Hail Camp," as the boys called the 
 place and tried to find a trail of the lost 
 wagon. 
 
 "It would be all-fired queer," vowed the 
 old wagon-master, "if we could not find the 
 trail of a three-ton prairie schooner and ten 
 mules. Bless your soul, the critters can't 
 
 124 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 125 
 
 crawl into a badger hole and they can't fly! 
 We must catch sight of them somewhere." 
 
 So all four of them rode back and forth 
 between the stopping-place and a branch of 
 Coon Creek, but not a track of a wagon could 
 they find. Then they followed up the branch 
 of the creek westward, expecting every 
 moment to catch sight of the wagon lying on 
 its side in the bed or gully of the small 
 stream. They doubled back in a half -circle 
 around the head of the branch and rode east 
 ward along the divide between Coon Creek 
 and Pawnee Fork. 
 
 The Captain was in a truly grim humor now. 
 
 "Fleming," he said, "look yonder. Do 
 you see that coyote about a mile away driving 
 a jack-rabbit ahead of him?" 
 
 After some careful directions Fleming and 
 the boys saw the coyote but they could not 
 find the jack. 
 
 "Drat these infernal plains!" the old man 
 broke out. "I can see a gopher half a mile 
 away, why in thunder can't I see a ten-mule 
 team with a house behind them! They must 
 
126 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 be here somewhere. The beasts couldn't eat 
 the wagon and then crawl into the ground like 
 prairie dogs!" 
 
 Fleming and the boys were almost hope 
 lessly puzzled. They scanned the prairie and 
 the horizon east and west, north and south; 
 they searched the ground for tracks of the 
 big wheels ; but nothing was to be seen. They 
 rode closer toward Pawnee Fork and crossed 
 innumerable buffalo trails, where for cen 
 turies the great wild ^ herds had gone to 
 water. They did find the tracks of some 
 Indian ponies that had gone north along one 
 of the trails. 
 
 ' ' There ! ' ' exclaimed Harley, ' ' that was the 
 bunch that thought they would like our stock. 
 Look at your guns, boys. They may be tak 
 ing a rest in the brush along the Fork some 
 where." 
 
 "How do you know, Captain," asked 
 Philip, "that they were not just a bunch of 
 wild ponies?" 
 
 " Their tracks cut in too deep. That shows 
 they carried riders." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 127 
 
 They rode about almost till noon, when the 
 old man stopped with a grunt. 
 
 " Bless my soul/' he growled, "I guess we 
 have to give it up. Old Satan himself must 
 have carried those mules to the place where 
 all mules ought to go! 
 
 "I have heard of men losing wagons and 
 teams on the prairie but I always thought 
 they were city fellows who couldn't follow a 
 trail or were too blasted scared to look 
 around, but this beats me. Losing a ten-mule 
 team in broad daylight! It's too much for 
 my old head, and I thought I knew these 
 prairies some. 
 
 "Well, let's trot it back to camp, boys, and 
 let the devil keep the mules ! It means $3000 
 off our profits, but we'll be all right, if we 
 can only bring the rest of the outfit safe to 
 Santa Fe." 
 
 The men were overjoyed to see their leader 
 return, for they had begun to fear that some 
 accident had befallen him and his companions. 
 
 "Boys," he told them, "that wagon is 
 gone, lost for good. I can't understand it, 
 
128 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 but I reckon we have done our best to find 
 it, and we can't hunt for it any longer. We 
 just have to let the small thing go to save 
 the big." 
 
 Philip and Ted were curious about the big 
 holes in the prairie which had given the name 
 to this camp. 
 
 "Who made those big holes?" asked Ted, 
 "and what were they for?" 
 
 Burley told them that some traders had 
 made them about ten years before. They 
 had started too late in the season, and winter 
 overtook them when they came to this place. 
 Nearly all their animals died from cold and 
 hunger, so they hid their goods in these holes, 
 and in spring they traveled on foot to the 
 Taos Valley in Mexico, where they bought 
 mules to transport their merchandise. 
 
 "Didn't the Indians find their caches?" 
 Ted wondered. "I thought they noticed 
 every little change or track on the ground." 
 
 "No, the Indians never found these caches, 
 for the men knew how to make a cache. They 
 made the pits in the shape of big jugs and 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 129 
 
 lined the inside with grass and brush to keep 
 the goods dry. 
 
 "But the most important thing was to con 
 ceal all traces of the caches from the Indians. 
 So they carefully scattered the dirt dug out, 
 and some of it they threw into the river. 
 When the goods were all in place, they cov 
 ered the small opening with brush and strong 
 poles, and then they replaced the sod so care 
 fully that not even an Indian could tell that 
 the wild prairie had ever been disturbed. " 
 
 "How could they hide their big wagons f " 
 the boy wanted to know. 
 
 "In those early days the traders had no 
 wagons, they used only pack mules. " 
 
 Before the men rolled up in their blankets, 
 the wagon-master told them that to-morrow 
 they were likely to have a hard day. The 
 day's journey would not be long, but they 
 would cross the Arkansas and would then be 
 ready for the long waterless stretch to the 
 Cimarron. 
 
 "And now one last caution," he concluded. 
 1 ' Don 't any of you stray off after buffalo or 
 
130 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 antelope. If a big ten-mule team can vanish 
 on this endless, wild prairie, we surely can 
 never find any lost men. 
 
 "Another thing. We have not seen any 
 Indians for several days, but that doesn't 
 mean that they may not be watching us this 
 very moment. 
 
 "It is my duty to take this train to Santa 
 Fe and bring you all safe home. If any man 
 gets lost or falls into the hands of the In 
 dians, he will have to save himself or perish. 
 The rest of us could not do a thing for him. 
 For we could not, with a dozen men, start 
 chasing ten thousand Indians, who roam over 
 half the continent. We are passing out of 
 the range of the Pawnees, but on the other 
 side of the Arkansas we strike the country of 
 the Comanches, who are in a bad mood on ac 
 count of the treatment they have received by 
 the Texans." 
 
o 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CROSSING THE ARKANSAS 
 
 LD SHAWNEE PETE and his 
 helper took great pains to have the 
 whole herd drink plenty of water 
 before he returned them to the corral next 
 morning, for he knew only too well that no 
 driver could control thirst-famished animals 
 in crossing a stream. 
 
 Moreover, crossing the Arkansas was not 
 like crossing one of the numerous creeks on 
 the trail. The Arkansas was a real river, 
 running with a strong current over ever- 
 shifting quicksands. The river was deep 
 from the snow water that was coming down 
 from the mountains and also on account of 
 the rainy season that had just passed over 
 the plains. 
 
 Some of the men thought the train should 
 wait till the river had subsided some, but the 
 
 131 
 
132 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 wagon-boss was impatient at any further de 
 lay. 
 
 In the bunch of loose cattle there was a 
 very large ox called Big Bill. His size and 
 his horns gave him the looks of a formidable 
 beast, but Big Bill was as gentle in disposi 
 tion as a lamb and as calm as a philosopher. 
 He had been over the trail several times 
 and knew every crossing; but had never been 
 known to join a stampede. If the water in 
 a stream was too deep for wading, he calmly 
 swam across, as if swimming rivers was the 
 ordinary business of an ox. And as for the 
 treacherous quicksands, which always threw 
 the mules into a panic and made even many 
 of the oxen nervous, Bill didn't mind them 
 at all. His broad feet and long legs always 
 seemed to touch solid bottom. In particu 
 larly bad stretches he just walked along 
 briskly so as not to give himself time to sink 
 in. 
 
 Big Bill was easily the boss of the herd, 
 but only when a fresh young steer jostled 
 him too roughly did he make use of his im- 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 133 
 
 mense strength to push the offender aside, 
 but unprovoked, he never molested ox or 
 mule. 
 
 1 1 Drive up the loose stock!" called the Cap 
 tain when the train had halted on the river 
 bank. 
 
 When the stock came up with old Bill in the 
 rear, the Captain slapped the big ox on the 
 withers : ' ' Old boy, ' ' he said, ' l you carry me 
 over. ' ' 
 
 "What's the old man up to now!" several 
 of the men asked each other, as the Captain 
 swung himself on the back of Big Bill, who 
 seemed to know exactly what was wanted and 
 walked slowly into the river. 
 
 "Drive the loose stock in after me," Harley 
 called back, ' < and then wait till I come back !.' ' 
 
 Lined up gn the water's edge, the men 
 watched the Captain ride calmly into the 
 broad river, with nothing but a willow switch 
 to guide his mount. 
 
 It would have been amusing to hear the 
 comments of the men. 
 
 "Well, I'll be this and I'll be that!" came 
 
134 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 from all sides. "I'll be scalped if Old Bill 
 isn't as wise as Old Doc. Look at him 
 wading up to his neck!" 
 
 "Ah, Mex, what are you giving us? Wad 
 ing? Man, can't you see he is swimming? 
 He's a regular navigator, Old Bill is." 
 
 When Big Bill reached a place where he 
 really had to swim, Captain Harley in a 
 rather undignified way slipped off Bill's back 
 and took hold of his tail. 
 
 The men shouted and yelled. ' ' Go it, Bill ! 
 Go it, Doc! Hold on to the rope, Doc!" 
 
 But both Bill and Doc acted as if crossing 
 deep, wide rivers was their special game, and 
 the loose stock followed the leaders. 
 
 "I wouldn't cross that river for all the 
 goods in the train," drawled one of the 
 drivers. 
 
 " You are blamed right, Jack, you 
 wouldn't," his friend assented. "It takes 
 somebody with nerves and brains like Bill 
 and the Old Man. Take it r me, Jack, 
 Big Bill has got more sense tl Fome men I 
 know." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 135 
 
 And again there was alternate silence and 
 shouts and laughter as Bill walked and waded 
 and swam, first across the broad main chan 
 nel, and then across several narrower side- 
 channels. 
 
 "Well, I think we can make it," announced 
 the Captain on his return. 
 
 "Unhitch the mules and drive them across. 
 Then hitch twelve yokes of oxen to each 
 wagon and come along. Bill and I will 
 pilot you. You men will have to get into 
 the wagons, for there are several short 
 stretches where the cattle have to swim. 
 Use the whips a little and don't let them 
 slow up in the quicksand." 
 
 Much to the surprise of Philip and Ted 
 and the men who were new in handling cattle, 
 the oxen did not hesitate to take the river. 
 
 "Gosh, Philip," said Ted, "I believe they 
 know that they can go through if Big Bill 
 goes through." 
 
 Ted was afraid to ride his pony across on 
 account of the quicksand, so they threw the 
 reins over the backs of the ponies and drove 
 
136 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 them across with the mules while the boys 
 rode across in one of the wagons. 
 
 Big Bill and the Captain had picked out 
 the best ford and to the surprise of the men 
 all the wagons crossed without serious 
 trouble. Although the oxen had to swim in 
 several . places, there were always enough 
 yokes that had a solid footing to pull the big 
 wagons right along. 
 
 Only the mules proved true to their reputa 
 tion as poor waders, for several of them be 
 came mired in the quicksand on the south 
 bank and had to be pulled out by a chain 
 around their necks. 
 
 "Bill, old boy," the Captain addressed the 
 quietly grazing old ox, "when you get too old 
 for the trail you shall live in my pasture at 
 home as long as you care to eat grass on this 
 earth." 
 
 Then turning to Burley he remarked: 
 "Jim, I would have been afraid to cross with 
 out Old Bill's help. The river does seem all- 
 fired scary when you look at it. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 137 
 
 " Well done, men !" he called to the drivers, 
 when the last mule had been dragged out. 
 
 " We'll camp right over there in that level 
 spot. Get a good rest and a long sleep, for 
 to-morrow evening we start on the long pull 
 for the Cimarron." 
 
CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 THE LONG DRY ROUTE 
 
 THE men were impatient to be off in 
 the morning, although, they knew 
 well that at this camp they had to 
 change their usual order of march. 
 
 If they started in the morning they would 
 be two days and a night on the long dry 
 stretch. Exposing the stock twice to the 
 heat and dry wind of midday without water 
 would have been fatal to many of the 
 animals. In order to make it possible for 
 the oxen and mules to travel thirty-six hours 
 without water in the hot and dry air, the 
 trains always left the Arkansas in the after 
 noon and traveled two nights and a day, 
 making use of the cooler hours of the night 
 when the animals suffered much less for 
 want of water. 
 
 The boys felt by this time that they were 
 
 138 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 139 
 
 indeed a long, long way from home. It was 
 about six weeks since they had bade good- 
 by to their mother and Uncle Jethro, but the 
 time seemed very much longer. They were 
 in fine health and thoroughly hardened to the 
 rough life on the trail. To sleep on the hard 
 ground after being in the saddle all day was 
 no longer a hardship, and Ted was getting 
 along finely on two meals a day, for which he 
 always had a keen appetite. The only thing 
 that marred their happiness was the fact that 
 they had learned so little news of their father. 
 No friendly Indians had come into camp who 
 might have brought some news, and they had 
 met no train or wagons from Santa Fe. The 
 great prairie world seemed an endless soli 
 tude except for the wild animals and lurking 
 savage Indians. 
 
 About three in the afternoon the herders 
 brought in the stock and the Captain gave the 
 order to hitch up. 
 
 For miles and miles the train struggled 
 through that strange belt of sand-dunes 
 where the heavy wheels sank in so deep that 
 
140 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the draft animals had to use all their power 
 to pull the loads. 
 
 The sand-hills extend for hundreds of miles 
 along the south side of the Arkansas. In 
 most places they are only about three miles 
 wide, but opposite the Cimarron Crossing 
 they extend almost the whole distance from 
 the Arkansas valley to the Cimarron. 
 
 Many of the smaller streams of western 
 Kansas never reach the Arkansas. Although 
 they start as vigorous, lively creeks, they 
 finally spread out and just sink away in the 
 sands and gravel of the prairie. On the 
 south side of the Arkansas Beaver Creek, a 
 very considerable stream, fades away among 
 the sand-hills near a place known as the Lost 
 Well. 
 
 The boys had had plenty of time to explore 
 the sand-dunes which had for so many miles 
 followed the green valley of the river like 
 snowdrifts. And as if they were made of 
 snow, the wind, which had blown the sand up 
 from the river bed, kept ever and ever chang 
 ing and carving the dunes into a fantastic 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 141 
 
 confusion of ridges, mounds and hillocks, now 
 burying, now resurrecting the few grasses 
 and bushes which were bravely trying to bind 
 the loose sand together and cover it with a 
 sward of green. 
 
 No birds and no game were to be seen, but 
 a few large vicious rattlesnakes they found 
 basking in the sun. 
 
 "I suppose he's boiling his poison, " com 
 mented Burley when they came upon a big 
 fellow. 
 
 " Why don't you shoot him?" asked Ted. 
 
 " Can't spare the powder," Burley 
 laughed. "We may need it worse for In 
 dians. ' ' 
 
 Beyond the sand-dunes there was not a 
 bush or tree to be seen anywhere, and the 
 boys felt a sense of homesickness and of awe 
 creep over them, as one feels when for the 
 first time he sails out of sight of land. Up 
 to this time they had crossed many wooded 
 creeks. Much of the time the Arkansas 
 River with its scattered groves and the 
 fantastic ridge of the sandhills had been in 
 
142 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 view and had given the eyes of the travelers 
 something to rest on. 
 
 But now the open, unbroken prairie spread 
 out before them; vast, boundless, until far, 
 far away, both trail and plain touched the 
 sky-line. 
 
 For mile after mile the train wound along. 
 Bands of antelopes stood in the distance gaz 
 ing at the strange spectacle. The comical in 
 habitants of the prairie-dog villages, that 
 were eating their evening meal of grass, 
 stopped long enough to gaze and chatter at 
 the intruders of their solitude. The odd bur 
 rowing owl, which Ted had at first mistaken 
 for a meadow-lark, rolled its weird greeting, 
 and a few ugly rattlesnakes, which like the 
 owls have forced their company upon the 
 little dog people, still lay coiled up on the 
 warm mounds. 
 
 The boys wondered where the prairie-dogs 
 found water, when their villages were located 
 many miles from any stream. Burley did 
 not know. 
 
 "Perhaps," he thought, "they dig wells 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 143 
 
 down to ground water, or they lick the dew 
 or, may be, they do not need to drink like men 
 and cattle." 
 
 An hour later the sun had sunk into the 
 prairie. The mounds in the prairie-dog vil 
 lages lay deserted; for the funny little 
 animals had gone to sleep in their burrows ; 
 and the few gray owls which seemed to be 
 standing on guard, increased the impression 
 of solitude and loneliness of the plains. 
 
 For the men and animals in the train there 
 would be no sleep to-night. They must push 
 on, push on, to reach water, or oxen and 
 mules would perish with thirst. 
 
 The stars came out and the hot south wind 
 of the afternoon gave place to a delightful 
 coolness, while packs of coyotes and gray 
 wolves yapped and howled far and near. 
 
 The wagon-master, who had been riding 
 ahead of the train came galloping back and 
 told the drivers to bring up the rear teams. 
 
 " These gray wolves," he said, "generally 
 mean buffaloes, and buffaloes may mean 
 Indians." 
 
144 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 About midnight the wagon-master ordered 
 a halt. The cooks quickly emptied their 
 sacks of buffalo chips which the men had been 
 picking up in the afternoon. In a very short 
 time coffee-pots were boiling and groups of 
 men gathered around small glowing fires for 
 a light midnight meal. 
 
 The mules and oxen had not been un 
 hitched, and within an hour the train was 
 again following the dim trail southwestward 
 towards the Cimarron. 
 
 The men had hoped that the next day might 
 be cloudy, but the sun rose on a clear sky, 
 for cloudy days in summer are rare on the 
 plains. 
 
 The train did not stop for rest or breakfast, 
 because they could not lose any time out of 
 the cool hours of the morning. As the sun 
 rose higher, the hot drying wind from the 
 southwest sprang up again, causing both men 
 and beast to suffer with thirst and fatigue. 
 
 At the approach of noon, some of the 
 animals began to pant and show signs of 
 exhaustion, but with calls and whip the 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 145 
 
 drivers urged them on, for the distance to the 
 Cimarron had not been half covered. 
 
 Early in the afternoon the train halted and 
 there was another light meal and coffee for 
 the men, but for the animals there was noth 
 ing but a short rest. Some stood panting 
 with dull eyes and lowered heads against the 
 winds ; all were too thirsty to graze and some 
 lay down utterly exhausted. 
 
 The men could refresh themselves from 
 water-casks they had filled at the river, but 
 for the animals it was impossible to carry 
 water. 
 
 " Don't eat too much," Burley cautioned 
 the boys. "A man does not travel well on a 
 full stomach. The hardest stretch of twelve 
 hours is still ahead of us." 
 
 After the exhausted cattle and mules had 
 been replaced by others, the caravan again 
 took the trail. 
 
 " Don't let any of the loose stock lie down," 
 Captain Harley warned the boys. "If they 
 once get stiff you can't get them up again. 
 Keep them going with the train." 
 
146 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 For the second time the sun disappeared 
 and the stars came out, bringing some relief 
 to the tortured animals. Coyotes and wolves 
 again made their dismal music, which to 
 gether with the bleached bones of cattle and 
 mules passed again and again, served as grim 
 warnings of the fate of man and beast falling 
 sick or exhausted on the trail. 
 
 Sheer endless was the distance, and inter 
 minably the hours dragged and dragged. 
 The men plodded along half-dazed with a 
 wabbling gait, for it was the second night that 
 they had not closed an eye for sleep. 
 
 "Ted, are you getting sleepy!" asked 
 Burley, who with the two boys was bringing 
 up the loose stock ; but Ted did not answer. 
 
 "Ted, wake up! Pinch yourself !" called 
 Philip. "You'll fall off and the coyotes will 
 chaw you up." 
 
 "Yes, all right, Phil," Ted answered in a 
 startled manner. "I guess I'll get off and 
 walk a while with Old Bill. I'll take hold of 
 his horn." 
 
 Soon after midnight the train began to 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 147 
 
 straggle out, until the first team was more 
 than a mile ahead of the last one. 
 
 The wagon-master rode up to the first 
 team; "Jack," he called to the driver, "what 
 are you driving so fast for! You have the 
 train strung out for two miles ! ' ' 
 
 1 ' Captain, ' ' returned Jack. " I 'm not driv 
 ing at all. My whip is on the wagon. The 
 oxen are smelling the water, and we must be 
 within five or six miles of the Cimarron. ' ' 
 
 "I guess you are right, " Harley replied, 
 "but you had better stop a while. I don't 
 like to have the teams string out so much!" 
 
 About three in the morning Jack called 
 back: "Wa-ter, wa-ter!" and the cry was 
 quickly passed along the whole line. 
 
 It would have been impossible to cross the 
 stream with the famished animals, so camp 
 was made on the near bank. As quickly as 
 possible the drivers unhitched the frantic 
 oxen and mules, which ran madly into the 
 river. The drivers of the last two wagons 
 lost control of their oxen and the thirst- 
 tortured animals rushed madly into the 
 
148 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Cimarron, wagon and all, but as the river was 
 shallow no damage was done. 
 
 It was but a short time before the cooks 
 called, "Breakfast!" However, most of the 
 men, including Ted and Philip, as soon as 
 camp was reached, had rolled up in their 
 blankets and crept under their buffalo robes, 
 craving rest and sleep much more than food. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A COMANCHE SUEPBISB 
 
 THE long "Roll out, roll out!" did not 
 sound at the Cimarron Camp at sun 
 rise, because nobody except Shawnee 
 Pete and Fleming who had slept on the 
 journey, opened an eye till noon. 
 
 Shawnee Pete turned the cattle down 
 stream where the best grass seemed to be, 
 and Fleming with his gun on his shoulder, 
 strolled slowly around the camp, for he was 
 the only man on guard duty till noon. 
 
 By noon the whole camp was astir. There 
 were no vacant places at the several mess- 
 fires, and the men made up for the breakfast 
 they had missed. 
 
 "Phil, I'm so starved," said Ted. "I 
 think I could eat a whole buffalo calf." 
 
 "Eat all you want, but take your time for 
 
 149 
 
150 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 it, Sonny," Burley told him. "We do not 
 leave this camp till to-morrow, so you can 
 lie around all day unless you prefer to run 
 down an antelope." 
 
 "Not I," Ted assured his friend. "I'm 
 still tired, and Blaekie needs a rest more than 
 I do. His feet are getting so sore that I 
 shall have to make moccasins for him pretty 
 soon." 
 
 At daylight next morning it was found that 
 ten mules, including a big gray ox, known as, 
 the roamer, were missing. 
 
 "Pete, what have you been doing again?" 
 exclaimed the Captain. "Where are these 
 mules 1 ' ' 
 
 But Pete assured the Captain that he had 
 kept the herd well rounded up all night and 
 that he remembered now that he had not seen 
 the roamer since the day-herders had turned 
 the stock over to him. 
 
 Whoever was to blame, the mules were 
 gone and an effort had to be made to recover 
 them. 
 
 "Eat your breakfast, men!" Harley 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 151 
 
 ordered. ' 'In the meantime Philip and I will 
 look for them up-stream. Jim, you and Ted 
 look for them down-stream." 
 
 Burley and Ted started at a brisk gallop 
 down the Cimarron and had soon vanished 
 around a bend in the valley. They rode as 
 far as the stock had grazed, but saw no sign 
 of mules. 
 
 "Here," called Ted, "are tracks going 
 down-stream. That's where they have 
 gone!" and both men rode quickly forward 
 anxious to overtake the strayed stock as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 Not a living thing was in sight. To their 
 right and left lines of steep rock walls, almost 
 bare, marked the Cimarron Valley, which in 
 this region is about two miles wide. 
 
 Every river has its own face and character, 
 so to speak, and in its bare and rocky bluffs 
 the Cimarron differs from every other river 
 in the world. 
 
 "We ought to see the beasts behind the 
 next bend of rocks," Burley just remarked, 
 when suddenly, without the slightest warn- 
 
152 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 ing, half a dozen Indians sprang up behind 
 some bushes and tall grass. Two of them 
 snatched the guns of the horsemen, some 
 seized the bridles of the horses, and before 
 the riders realized what had happened, they 
 were pulled off their horses, helpless cap 
 tives. 
 
 Ted was speechless with fright, but 
 Burley calmly called to him: "Make a bold 
 face, boy! Make them think you like it! 
 We 're caught!" 
 
 A big Indian raised his tomahawk over 
 Burley: " Texas !" he asked. "No," an 
 swered the white man boldly, "American! 
 Missouri, Independence!" 
 
 "Comanche?" asked Burley, who under 
 stood a little of that language because it was 
 the trade language of the Plains Indians. 
 
 "Yes, Comanche!" replied the leader. 
 ' ' Look for Texas. Scalp him all ! " 
 
 After this brief talk the leader had a con 
 sultation with his men, after which two of the 
 Indians mounted the ponies and made 
 Burley and Ted walk between them. 
 
OP THE PAWNEE 153 
 
 In this way they traveled several miles 
 down the river, when they came upon about 
 twenty Indians with their ponies and the 
 missing mules of the traders, concealed be 
 hind some low trees. Some members of this 
 war party had stolen the mules without the 
 herders becoming aware of it. The leader 
 had then sent out scouts to spy out the 
 strength, and probable wealth of the 
 caravan. To their own surprise they had 
 caught two of the men of the caravan and had 
 brought them in without doing any more 
 scouting. 
 
 There was the wildest joy when the two 
 captives came in. The Indians yelled, swung 
 their tomahawks and asked in a ferocious 
 manner: " Texas, Texas? 7 ' 
 
 To these apparently murderous inquiries 
 Burley calmly replied in the Indian sign 
 language by making the sign of a crawling 
 snake, which to all the plains tribes meant 
 "Comanche." At the same time Burley 
 pulled a small plug of tobacco out of his 
 pocket and handed it to the war chief. 
 
154 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 The compliment Burley had paid them by 
 calling himself a Comanche, and the gift of 
 tobacco to their chief put the Indians in good 
 humor and they apparently gave up the plan 
 of killing their captives at once. 
 
 They now consulted as to whether they 
 should rob the train of the Americans. 
 Burley knew that at this time the Comanches 
 were not acquainted with the power of Ameri 
 can firearms, but he also knew that these 
 wild, desperate horsemen might harass the 
 train for days and probably kill a number of 
 the men, so he quickly decided on a bold plan 
 to thwart their design. 
 
 He told them by such words as he knew 
 and by signs that the American captain and 
 his men were very brave and had such deadly 
 guns that many Comanches would be killed. 
 To substantiate his statements, he suggested 
 that his little son should fire his gun at a 
 stump. 
 
 "My little son," he added, "cannot shoot 
 like a man, but we shall see what he can do." 
 
 "That stump?" asked Ted, who had by 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 155 
 
 this time gotten over his fright; "I can hit 
 that with my eyes closed." 
 
 The Comanches at once agreed to this plan 
 and a number of them shot their arrows at 
 the stump, hut all of them fell short of the 
 mark. 
 
 "Step back about ten yards, " Burley told 
 Ted, "before you fire." 
 
 Ted took a quick aim, there was a sharp 
 crack, and the splinters flew right and left 
 from the stump. 
 
 The Comanches, like a crowd of school 
 boys, ran over to examine Ted's target, and 
 were much surprised at the big hole the bul 
 let had torn clear through the stump. But 
 their respect for the American gun grew still 
 more, when one of them found the bullet 
 deeply embedded in a green cottonwood some 
 ten yards behind the stump. 
 
 "My little son," Burley repeated as if to 
 offer an excuse for Ted's shooting, "is not a 
 good marksman, but the American captain 
 and his men are dead shots and their guns 
 are very big." 
 
156 THE SILVEE CACHE 
 
 The 'Comanches now said no more about 
 attacking the American train, but they 
 wanted Burley to show how he could shoot. 
 However, Burley told them that he and his 
 son had but little ammunition, that they 
 wished to use it to shoot buffalo and antelope 
 near the big camp of his Comanche friends 
 on the Canadian Eiver to the south. 
 
 At this statement the Indians at first 
 looked at each other in silence. Then the 
 chief said: "The white Comanche is a 
 medicine man. His spirit can see farther 
 than his eyes. We must not harm him and 
 his young son." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A TROUBLED WAGON-MASTER 
 
 CAPTAIN HAELEY, who was a good 
 tracker, soon found that the lost 
 mules had not gone up-stream. He 
 and Philip on their return sat down quietly 
 to breakfast with the men, expecting every 
 moment to see Burley and Ted come around 
 a bend in the river valley. When two hours 
 had passed, both the Captain and Philip could 
 suppress their anxiety no longer. 
 
 Harley told his men frankly that he feared 
 something had happened to Burley and Ted, 
 and that he and Philip would go after them. 
 He ordered the men to keep the stock in the 
 corral until his return, and placed one of the 
 older drivers in command. 
 
 It did not take the two men long to find 
 the trail of Burley and Ted. When they 
 came to the spot, where the Indians had 
 
 157 
 
158 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 sprung upon the two men, Harley at once 
 saw from the trampled condition of the grass 
 that something had happened at that spot, 
 so both he and Philip dismounted to examine 
 the place. At first they stood still a few 
 minutes, sharply looking over the place with 
 out disturbing a blade or stick. 
 
 " Great Heavens!" murmured Harley. 
 "Phil, there were four or five Indians con 
 cealed here." 
 
 "Are you sure that they were not deer or 
 antelope?" asked Philip. 
 
 "Absolutely sure," asserted Harley. 
 "There is not a hair or fresh sign of an 
 animal on the spot. The beds in the grass 
 were made by Indians. 
 
 "Now look for signs of a fight, but keep 
 your hand on your gun. We may stop an ar 
 row any moment." 
 
 Both looked the whole place over with the 
 greatest care. 
 
 "Not a sign of struggle, not a drop of 
 blood on the grass anywhere," whispered the 
 Captain. "Think of Burley, the best Indian- 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 159 
 
 fighter in the train and one of the bravest 
 men I ever knew, being taken without a 
 fight! The red rascals surely worked the 
 game of surprise to a finish. " 
 
 The men remounted and followed the trail 
 a little farther. 
 
 "We had better stick to our horses/' ad 
 vised Harley, "so we can make a race for 
 camp if we run up against too many of 
 them/' 
 
 It was not long before they came to a place, 
 where a small herd of ponies had stopped and 
 turned back. 
 
 "There is the story!" Harley exclaimed 
 under his breath. "A war-party of twenty- 
 five or thirty Comanches. The men that 
 captured Burley and Ted crawled ahead on 
 foot, and the others with the horses and the 
 stolen mules hid in the timber down yonder, 
 and that is where they took Burley and Ted." 
 
 6 ' Do you think they are still there ? ' ' asked 
 Philip. "What in the world can we do?" 
 
 "Let us see," the Captain answered, ignor 
 ing Philip's last question. "They may still 
 
160 THE SILVEE CACHE 
 
 be hiding in that timber waiting for more of 
 us to walk into their trap. They may be 
 planning to attack our train, but I think 
 Burley, if he is still alive, will keep them 
 from that by some kind of a ruse. He is the 
 greatest man for quick thinking and acting 
 in the face of great danger/' 
 
 For a short time the speaker was silent. 
 
 "It is most probable, " he began again, 
 "that they lit out after they had brought in 
 their captives. A bunch of mules and two 
 captives without losing a man makes a nice 
 little exploit to brag about. 
 
 ' ' Let us see. It was about four hours ago 
 that they trapped our two unlucky friends. 
 By this time they are most likely twenty 
 miles away down the Cimarron or across the 
 prairie to their main camp. There will be 
 heap powwow, feasting and dancing, and 
 heap big talk. 
 
 "Confound the rogues! The government 
 ought to send out enough soldiers to chase 
 them all into the mountains or into Mexico. 
 
 "That one company of soldiers the gov- 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 161 
 
 eminent keeps at Fort Leavenworth can do 
 nothing. To enforce law and order in this 
 region enough men are needed to hunt down 
 white and red criminals alike." 
 
 "But, Captain," said Philip, eagerly tak 
 ing up again the question uppermost in his 
 mind, "what can we do? What can I do to 
 get Ted back?" 
 
 "Philip, my boy, you can't do a thing! 
 Not a thing!" Harley answered with a 
 faltering voice. "If I took half the men of 
 the train, the others would be too weak to re 
 sist an attack. By to-morrow morning these 
 thieves will have fifty or sixty miles the start 
 of us. They will travel through the night, 
 you see, but we can't trail them after dark. 
 
 "And then, Phil, it would not do a bit of 
 good to follow them. The Comanches have 
 two or three thousand warriors, and we 
 would just be riding into the face of death, 
 or into captivity. 
 
 "I have no choice, anyway. I must go on 
 with the train, and you have no choice but to 
 come with us." 
 
162 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Captain, I can't do it! I can't do it!" 
 Philip cried. "I promised Mother to look 
 after my small brother, and I can't go back 
 without him!" 
 
 "Be wise, Phil, and trust Ted to Burley. 
 Jim will think out some kind of a ruse to save 
 his and Ted's scalp. He got away from the 
 Cheyennes several years ago. Some day he 
 will give the Comanches the slip, and he will 
 not come back without Ted. He lost a son 
 about Ted's age and he loves Ted as if he 
 were his own son." 
 
 But Philip would not be persuaded. 
 
 "No, Captain," he replied, "I can't. I 
 must go where Ted is. I could never face 
 my mother or father, if I did not. 
 
 ' l You must go back to the train, and I must 
 follow the trail of the Comanches. 
 
 "If I ride hard, I may catch up with them 
 before dark." 
 
 "No, you cannot go this way," Captain 
 Harley objected decisively. "I shall not let 
 you. You must come back to camp with me 
 to get some food, your blankets, and plenty 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 163 
 
 of ammunition. You don't want to be help 
 less or starve on the prairie. You come and 
 get those things, and then go, if you must." 
 
 The excitement in camp may be imagined, 
 when the two men returned and told what 
 had happened. 
 
 Philip packed up the few things he ex 
 pected to need most, and the Captain gave 
 orders for the train to hitch up and start as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 "Captain," the men told him, "you are not 
 going to leave the camp again. We were all 
 getting terribly worried, and some of us 
 were just going after you." 
 
 "Put some holes through them, Phil! 
 We'll see you with a bunch of scalps in 
 Santa Fe!" and other rough banter the men 
 called out to Philip when, in a sad but deter 
 mined mood, he headed his pony down the 
 Cimarron to follow the trail of the Comanche 
 warriors. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ON THE TRAIL OF THE COMANCHES 
 
 4 
 
 PHILIP had not given up hope of over 
 taking the captors or his brother be 
 fore dark, so he let the pony have 
 the reins to go as fast as he wished. 
 
 The lad was not trying now to avoid cap 
 ture and traveled without any attempt to 
 conceal himself. When he approached the 
 grove, where according to the correct surmise 
 of Captain Harley, the Indians had taken 
 their captives, he hoped that he might find 
 them still there. 
 
 He rode up slowly thinking that according 
 to the customs of the plains, he might be 
 asked to stop at a distance to declare, whether 
 he came as friend or foe. 
 
 However, there came no call. He stopped, 
 and listened, his heart beating louder and 
 faster. Perhaps they were waiting for him 
 
 164 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 165 
 
 in ambush and he would receive an arrow or 
 a bullet. Turning these possibilities over in 
 his mind, he rode cautiously through some 
 low brush into the grove. 
 
 The place was deserted, showing signs of 
 hasty departure. He rode carefully around 
 the edge of the open place where the grass 
 had been trampled down. It occurred to him 
 with horror that the Indians might have 
 killed their captives or left them for dead in 
 the brush and tall grass. He called Ted's 
 and Burley's names aloud. No answer came 
 to his call, not even an echo returned from 
 the wide and flat valley. It seemed to Philip 
 that he had never been in a place so lonesome 
 and uncanny. 
 
 He rode on, following the broad trail down 
 the valley. The sun stood blazing hot over 
 the river and plains, there was no stir of bird 
 or beast, only the cottonwood leaves fluttered 
 in the hot wind. 
 
 All afternoon the lad followed the trail. 
 Every time he turned a bend in the valley, 
 he expected to see the group of Comanche 
 
166 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 warriors, and every time there spread out 
 again before him the monotonous stretch of 
 bare rocky walls, valley, and river. His 
 horse began to sweat, and he led him to the 
 river for a drink. 
 
 What was that? Again his heart seemed 
 trying to jump into his throat. Half a mile 
 down stream the Indians were just crossing 
 the river. No, there were only ponies. The 
 Indians must be driving them and were com 
 ing on behind. He urged his pony to a 
 gallop, but slackened when he came close to 
 the spot. Were his eyes deceiving him. 
 The small herd of ponies were standing in 
 the river, but what had become of the In 
 dians? Were they hiding to shoot at him 
 from ambush? Now a fine white stallion 
 came out of the herd and neighed a greeting, 
 or was it a challenge to Philip 's pony, that 
 answered the call, as if glad at meeting some 
 of his own people; and Philip realized that 
 the white stallion was the leader of a small 
 herd of wild ponies and that he had not over 
 taken any Indians. 
 
."' 
 
 OF THE PAWNEE 167 
 
 He was both glad and disappointed. It 
 had flashed through his mind that he might 
 fall into the hands of a Pawnee war party 
 who would take him out of the Comanche 
 country altogether, so he was glad that the 
 ponies carried no Pawnee warriors. 
 
 He continued his journey down the river, 
 but it was becoming more difficult to follow 
 the trail, because herds of buffaloes and 
 droves of wild horses had also crossed and 
 followed this part of the river. However, he 
 saw no game except two deer at which he did 
 not fire for he carried enough dried buffalo 
 meat to last him, as he thought, a day or two. 
 He followed the trail until sunset, when it 
 quickly grew too dark to travel. 
 
 Seeing that he would be compelled to make 
 camp for the night, he took his pony to water 
 and then staked him carefully on an open 
 grassy spot, after which he built a fire under 
 a tall cottonwood close by. 
 
 He felt very grateful that Captain Harley 
 had made him take a supply of tea, sugar, 
 coffee, and meat as well as a little flour, a 
 
168 THE SILVEE CACHE 
 
 frying-pan, a tin cup, and a small kettle. He 
 felt now both hungry and tired, for he had 
 eaten almost nothing for breakfast, and the 
 excitement and the strain of following the 
 trail had greatly fatigued him and depressed 
 his spirits. At a quick fire of dry sticks he 
 baked a small cake and fried it in buffalo fat, 
 and this with dried meat and a liberal draught 
 of sweet tea revived his fagging strength and 
 drooping spirits. The meal over, he re 
 plenished his lone camp fire with some larger 
 pieces of wood and then sat leaning against 
 the tree, thinking over the events of the day 
 and making his plans for the morrow. 
 
 The silence of the night and the loneliness 
 of his camp oppressed him. There was not 
 even the doleful howling of wolves and 
 coyotes, only the crackling of his fire, a low 
 gurgling of the river against the roots of the 
 tree, and the munching and occasional snort 
 ing of the pony. The absence of wolves and 
 coyotes could only mean that there were no 
 buffaloes or Indian camps for many miles 
 around. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 169 
 
 Very soon he began to feel drowsy. He 
 laid down his saddle in place for a pillow and 
 poured a kettleful of water on the red coals. 
 Then he wrapped himself in his blanket and 
 pulled the buffalo robe over his head, for the 
 night air, as is usual on the plains, was grow 
 ing chilly. 
 
 He was awakened by a distant rumbling 
 and a loud snort of his pony. When he threw 
 back the buffalo robe, it took him a second to 
 realize that he was alone on the Cimarron. 
 The night had grown intensely dark, a west 
 erly wind had sprung up, and was bringing 
 a shower down the river. 
 
 He remembered that his father had often 
 warned him not to camp or stand under a low 
 tree in a thunderstorm, so he picked up his 
 saddle and bedding and groped his way to an 
 other place several rods away. 
 
 It was not long before the storm broke 
 upon him. The rain came down in a pour 
 and through a peephole under his robe he 
 saw the brush and grass lit up by white 
 flashes and flares of lightning, followed by 
 
170 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 instant crashes and long rolls of thunder. 
 Then there was a blinding light, immediately 
 followed by a crash which shook the ground 
 under him. He jumped out of his blankets 
 and ran toward his pony. The animal was 
 still there, but the cottonwood under which 
 the lad had at first made his bed had been 
 shattered, and lay across the ashes of his 
 camp fire. 
 
 He crept back into his blankets, but they 
 were wet and for the remainder of the night 
 he squirmed this way and that way, trying 
 to avoid the water-soaked parts of his hard 
 bed. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WHERE WAS KIO? 
 
 WHEN he awoke after several 
 hours of troubled sleep, his 
 pony was gone. 
 
 What could have happened? Perhaps the 
 animal was lying down in the brush? He 
 anxiously looked over the ground, but found 
 to his horror that he was not mistaken. The 
 pin had pulled out and gone were lariat and 
 pony. 
 
 How on earth did it happen? Did some 
 Indian steal the horse while the rider was 
 asleep? He remembered trying the pin and 
 feeling satisfied that it would hold. But 
 when he examined the ground around the pin 
 he felt satisfied that no Indian had been near 
 it. The heavy rain had softened the ground 
 so much, that a little strain on the lariat had 
 pulled the pin. 
 
 This was a calamity. Should he try to find 
 
 171 
 
172 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the horse, or should he follow the Indian 
 trail on foot and let the cursed critter go? 
 He had always felt a strong attachment for 
 Kio, but he surely had trusted the beast too 
 much. Where could the perverse brute have 
 gone? Had he joined the wild ponies or had 
 he struck out after his long-eared and long- 
 horned friends in Captain Harley's train? 
 If at this moment the pony had been where 
 Philip wished him to be, he would have 
 burnt to a crisp. 
 
 6 ' Perhaps, " thought Philip, "you can't 
 trust these Indian ponies any more than you 
 can trust the Indians. He is a Kiowa all 
 right, and I'd like to break a few of his ribs. 
 But getting mad doesn't help me. Where 
 did the critter go ? I have to get him ; no use 
 trying to foot it after the Comanches." 
 
 When Philip sat down to think, his anger 
 soon cooled. After all he could not blame 
 the pony so much, who was no more used to 
 being staked out alone all night than his 
 master was accustomed to camp alone. 
 There was little doubt that he had taken the 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 173 
 
 back trail and was trying to rejoin the car 
 avan. If one could only know when he broke 
 away. Perhaps the rope or the pin might 
 have caught on some brush and stopped the 
 runaway. 
 
 This possibility encouraged Philip so much 
 that he started at once on the back trail. 
 
 When he had gone only a few rods, he 
 stopped. 
 
 "No," he said to himself, "this won't do. 
 I'm a bigger fool than Kio. Being alone has 
 rattled my head. I must take a bite to eat, 
 and hide my stuff before I go. Indians might 
 come along and take my bedding and saddle, 
 and then I'd be in another mess. But I must 
 take my gun and ammunition with me." 
 
 Philip had now regained his self-control. 
 He would at first follow the trail slowly and 
 if he did not overtake the pony or found him 
 caught on some bush, he could increase his 
 speed. In the meantime he would look for 
 fresh tracks, so as to make sure that the 
 animal had not gone off in some other direc 
 tion or joined a band of wild horses. 
 
174 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 An hour passed without the lad being sure 
 that the pony had started back for the car 
 avan. Then, at last, the trail led over a bare 
 piece of ground where the tracks were plainly 
 visible and showed that he had been going 
 at a brisk walk. Philip increased his speed, 
 for it was now only a question of how far the 
 runaway might be ahead of him. 
 
 "If he kept on walking, or fell to grazing 
 on the way," Philip reasoned, "I ought to 
 come up with him pretty soon. ' ' Once Philip 
 thought he saw the pony a quarter of a mile 
 ahead, quietly grazing, but when he cau 
 tiously approached the bushes behind which 
 the animal had disappeared, a big buck 
 jumped up with a snort. 
 
 At noon Philip had reached the camp 
 where he had left the train, and here the 
 pony's tracks were very plain, but he had ev 
 idently concluded that he would have to hurry 
 to catch up with his friends, for the tracks 
 showed plainly that he had been following 
 the caravan on a run, which Philip knew he 
 was likely to keep up for miles. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 175 
 
 The lad refreshed himself with a drink 
 from the spring and threw some cold water 
 over his face. He had an idea now where 
 he would find that pony. He was strongly 
 tempted to relieve himself of his gun by hid 
 ing it, but he had heard old plainsmen speak 
 so often of the folly of a man leaving his gun 
 that he decided to lug it along, although it 
 was getting awfully heavy. 
 
 The plan of abandoning the pony altogether 
 occurred to him again, but he rejected it, 
 realizing that he might have to travel hun 
 dreds of miles before finding a Comanche 
 camp. 
 
 From time to time Philip now traveled 
 at a dog trot, still hoping that the pony might 
 have become hungry and stopped to graze. 
 About three hours later he passed the place 
 where the train had camped the previous 
 night. Here one of the oxen had died or had 
 been killed for some reason, and coyotes were 
 already picking the bones. 
 
 Kio had swerved off the trail, and Philip 
 knew where he would find him, if he found 
 
176 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 him at all. Some of the jackals of the plains 
 came trotting toward him as if scenting some 
 more fresh meat, but when the lone traveler 
 fired a bullet over their heads the whole pack 
 scattered over the plain. 
 
 The sun was getting low, when Philip saw 
 something moving on the trail ahead of him. 
 At first he thought it was a wolf, but when 
 the creature stood out against the sky as it 
 passed over a rise of ground he saw that it 
 was Kio. When the lad reached the ridge 
 himself he saw the caravan encamped a mile 
 beyond. 
 
 When Philip reached the camp, Kio was 
 hobnobbing with his mule friends and the 
 men were standing around watching the per 
 formance. 
 
 4 'By Jove, Phil," Captain Harley greeted 
 him with a twinkle in his eyes, " you 're a 
 queer traveler. What's the use of driving 
 him to camp? Why didn't you ride him?" 
 
 "I guess," Philip answered rather sheep- 
 facedly, "you know, Captain, why I didn't. 
 The blasted critter gave me the slip. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XVHI 
 
 NO TBAIL AND NO WATER 
 
 THE men in camp joked a good deal 
 about him and Kio having had a 
 fall-out and each traveling by him 
 self, but they nevertheless pressed him to 
 stay overnight with them. 
 
 "You can't catch any Comanches in the 
 dark," they said; "and you ought to give the 
 good little pony a rest and a chance to talk 
 things over with his friends." 
 
 Philip could do nothing else but take the 
 banter good-naturedly. "He won't give me 
 the slip again," was about all he could say in 
 reply. 
 
 By this time a smell of coffee and frying 
 bacon and meat filled the air; and Burley's 
 cook called out : 
 
 "Come here, Phil, and have a decent meal 
 
 177 
 
178 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 on me. I've heard that the Comanche girls 
 are pretty bum cooks. Serve nothing but 
 dog meat to a white man." 
 
 This invitation Philip accepted without de 
 lay, for he had eaten nothing since he left 
 his own camp, and he had walked and run 
 about thirty miles. 
 
 As the lad fell with a will upon the food 
 and the hot coffee, the cook looked upon him 
 with undisguised amusement. 
 
 "Tell you what, Phil," he commented, 
 "you'll make a good Indian runner if you 
 just keep in practice. Thirty miles a day 
 isn't so bad for a beginner. If you just keep 
 at it, you'll soon make a hundred miles a 
 day." 
 
 "Well, Fatty," the lad replied, "I don't 
 expect to keep it up. Old Kio won't fool me 
 again; I've learned my lesson." 
 
 When the caravan started next morning, 
 Philip once more struck out on the trail of the 
 Comanches. 
 
 "I hope you will have better luck this 
 time," said the Captain when he bade the lad 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 179 
 
 farewell. " And you had better take this bag 
 of tobacco. You know tobacco is big med 
 icine with all the Indians. " 
 
 The lad was compelled to camp another 
 night at the place where he had left his 
 blankets and saddle, but before he lay down 
 to sleep he tied Kio to a tree. 
 
 When he tried to take up the trail in the 
 morning, his troubles began. The trail of 
 the Comanches was now old, the rain had 
 practically obliterated it, and buffaloes and 
 wild horses had passed over the same ground. 
 The lone horseman followed it a little way 
 on the prairie south of the Cimarron and 
 then lost it entirely. He rode back several 
 times, but the result was always the same. 
 The tracks disappeared amongst a maze of 
 trails made on the hard prairie by buffaloes, 
 wild horses, and antelopes. 
 
 Philip knew from a talk with Captain Har- 
 ley that about twenty-five miles south of the 
 Cimarron ran the North Fork of the Can 
 adian Eiver, while from thirty to fifty 
 south of the latter he would strike the Can- 
 
180 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 adian River itself. He had also learned 
 from the Captain that the large buffalo herds 
 were most likely to be found southwest of 
 the place where he had camped, in the coun 
 try now in western Oklahoma and north 
 western Texas. The Indians would most 
 likely be near the buffaloes, but there was 
 no sure way of telling where either buffaloes 
 or Indians might be found. 
 
 "You can always find Indians where you 
 don't want to find them," Harley had con 
 cluded. "I should say they have a camp 
 somewhere within two hundred miles up or 
 down the Canadian River, so they can con 
 veniently make raids into Texas or Mexico, 
 or do a little friendly stealing and killing on 
 the Santa Fe Trail." 
 
 When the lad realized that he had hope 
 lessly lost the trail of the Comanches he de 
 cided to ride on in a southwesterly direction. 
 From hour to hour he hoped to see some In 
 dians, but the whole country seemed unin 
 habited by any human beings. A small band 
 of antelopes eyed him with curiosity and came 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 181 
 
 so close that he could easily have killed some 
 of them. 
 
 When evening came both the rider and his 
 pony were so tired and thirsty that Philip 
 was glad to make a lonely camp on an un 
 known stream which, however, he judged to 
 be the North Fork of the Canadian. 
 
 In the morning he shot a wild turkey and 
 ate part of it for his breakfast. When he had 
 again started southwestward for the prairie, 
 he came upon a flock of young quail, and a 
 little way out of the timber several flocks 
 of half -grown prairie chickens ran and flut 
 tered across his track. 
 
 The day grew very hot, and the country 
 had had much less rain than the region along 
 the Arkansas. For hour after hour he rode 
 without seeing a bush or a tree or a sign of 
 life except prairie dogs, gophers and rattle 
 snakes. His tongue began to feel dry, and 
 he began to look anxiously ahead for signs of 
 water. 
 
 He passed many buffalo-wallows, but they 
 were all dry. At last in the middle of the 
 
182 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 afternoon when his tongue and lips felt 
 parched and the heat had become unbearable, 
 he thought he saw some buffaloes in the dis 
 tance. He rode on eagerly, thinking the an 
 imals would not be far from water. In a 
 little while he could see more of them, an im 
 mense herd; and great was his joy when he 
 saw that they were standing in the water in a 
 big river or rather in a lake. He had never 
 heard of a lake in that region, but there it was 
 before his own eyes. There was something 
 strange about those buffaloes; they seemed 
 to be two miles away and still they seemed im 
 mensely big, and the lake or river had also 
 something strange about it. He was passing 
 into a depression now and from the rise be 
 yond he would, no doubt, be able to get a 
 clearer view of the strange scene. 
 
 When he reached the crest of the ridge, he 
 could hardly trust his eyes. The dry prairie 
 stretched away to the horizon; water and 
 buffaloes had vanished. 
 
 For a moment he was dumfounded; then 
 the meaning of it all came to him. A mirage ! 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 183 
 
 He had seen a mirage, a kind of air picture 
 of buffaloes and water that might be a hun 
 dred miles away. He had heard old plains 
 men tell of them, but had never before seen 
 one. 
 
 Again he looked around for signs of water, 
 but there was no tree or bush, not even the 
 white sandbed of a dry stream, where he 
 might have dug for water with his hands. 
 
 The country was not nearly so smooth as 
 it appeared at a distance. The rider crossed 
 many arroyos and small runs, but the pale 
 bluish sage-brush and other desert plants 
 told the lad that these depressions held no 
 water except for a few hours after a rain 
 storm. 
 
 He continued his journey till dark and was 
 thankful for the cooler air and the clouds that 
 began to cover the sky, hoping that it might 
 rain. Very soon it grew too dark to travel 
 and he began to fear that the pony might 
 turn around and take him back over the same 
 route, so he stopped to make a dry camp. 
 
 He staked his pony with great care and 
 
184 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 then built a fire of buffalo chips at which he 
 roasted a little of the wild turkey. How 
 ever, without water, he could not eat more 
 than just a few bites. The pony, too, showed 
 that he wanted water more than food, for he 
 hardly nibbled at the dry grass around him. 
 
 Now Philip knew what it meant to make 
 a "dry camp" or to get into a "water 
 scrape" as the Santa Fe traders called it. 
 
 A few drops of rain did fall on the parched 
 and cracked prairie, but only enough to tor 
 ment still more the famished horse and man. 
 The tired lad found only a much broken sleep, 
 for several times a pack of coyotes, who 
 seemed to sense that here were travelers in 
 distress, came so near that the pony snorted 
 and came close up to his master. A shot 
 fired from Philip's pistol drove them off for 
 a while, but very soon they returned, circling 
 around horse and man as if expecting that 
 both would soon fall an easy prey to them. 
 
 Philip had never known that a night could 
 be so long. He sat up and tried to estimate 
 the time of the night from the position of 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 185 
 
 the stars, which had come out again toward 
 the north. He arose and walked around, 
 chewing a spear of grass in a vain effort to 
 allay his thirst. 
 
 With the first dawn of day, he was in the 
 saddle going southwest as nearly as he could. 
 He cared no longer whether he was on the 
 trail of the Indians or not; for the present 
 he had only one thought : Water ! He must 
 find water. 
 
 He tried to urge his pony into a more rapid 
 pace, but the famished animal could go no 
 faster than a walk for more than a short dis 
 tance. 
 
 The sun rose on a sky from which every 
 promise of rain had vanished. A brownish 
 haze as of a fine dust of the desert hung 
 above the plain and encircled the horizon. 
 
 As the sun rose higher the agony of man 
 and beast grew. The pony walked along 
 slowly with drooping head, and the lad began 
 to feel faint and dazed. The much feared 
 wind from the southwest sprang up, and to 
 Philip's surprise it seemed to revive the 
 
186 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 pony's spirits, for he began to walk more 
 briskly and carried his head more erect. 
 
 Something began to stand out faintly at 
 the horizon line ahead of the traveler. 
 Philip had not heard of any such formation 
 in that direction. He looked intently, trying 
 to penetrate the brownish purple haze. Hills 
 might mean water. 
 
 No, it was something better; broken cliffs 
 with lines and clumps of trees. Trees mean 
 water. The Canadian River must run near 
 those trees. 
 
 Kio continued to walk along steadily and 
 needed no longer any urging. He was smell 
 ing the water. 
 
 Gradually the trees became more distinct. 
 When they disappeared while the rider 
 crossed a depression, Philip was haunted by 
 the fear that he might have seen another 
 mirage, but on the ridge beyond they were 
 again in plain sight, and Philip could not 
 restrain a shout of joy. 
 
 About two hours after the indication of 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 187 
 
 water had first become visible, horse and 
 rider plunged into the Canadian. 
 
 Then Philip staked his horse and stretched 
 himself on the green grass in the shade, where 
 he soon fell fast asleep. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WILL THEY STOP? 
 
 THE sun was already low in the west, 
 when the lone sleeper was awakened 
 by the neighing of his pony, who was 
 sending a message to some wild horses that 
 had just come to the river a few rods be 
 low. 
 
 Philip instinctively reached for his gun 
 and crouched behind a tree, at the same time 
 realizing that he had again done a most fool 
 ish thing. He had fallen asleep in broad day 
 light without taking the slightest precaution 
 against being surprised. Captain Harley 
 was right, Philip had acted like a babe on the 
 plains. But by this time he also saw that 
 luck had once more been kind to the careless 
 boy by indulgently sending a band of wild 
 ponies to wake him up. 
 
 As soon as he had made sure that there 
 
 188 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 189 
 
 were no Indians in the neighborhood, he 
 started the ponies on a run down stream. 
 
 "Stretch out, stretch out!" he called as he 
 flung up his hat and threw stones after them. 
 "I can't expose Kio to your temptations," 
 and the wild horses, with flying manes and 
 tails made a dash for the open prairie and 
 were soon out of sight and hearing. 
 
 Then he laughed at himself. "Here I 
 am," he thought, "traveling around to find 
 Indians, but I'm almighty afraid that they 
 might find me." 
 
 On account of Kio's weakness for the com 
 pany of his own kind, he rode a few miles 
 up stream before he selected his camp for 
 the night, because he was afraid that during 
 the night Kio might try to follow the call 
 of his wild kindred. 
 
 When Philip had first struck the river, he 
 was famished with thirst and worn out with 
 loss of sleep and fatigue. Now he felt raven 
 ously hungry and also uncomfortable with 
 a fine dust that had filled his hair and seemed 
 to have crawled through all his clothing. So 
 
190 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 while the water in his kettle was boiling, he 
 took a quick plunge in the river and then 
 sat down at his camp fire for a real meal, 
 for he had eaten very little since the early 
 morning on the previous day. He had be 
 come quite accustomed to eating only two 
 meals a day, but on this occasion he had 
 eaten only one meal in two days. 
 
 After supper he sat and watched the sun 
 sink into the plain. Some owls began to 
 screech and the whippoorwills opened their 
 strange nocturnal concert. The stars came 
 out and the moon spread an atmosphere of 
 unreality over the gurgling river and the 
 plains, while coyotes and gray wolves, some 
 near and some far, set up their dismal wails 
 and howls. 
 
 Philip was not yet hardened to the soli 
 tude of wild nature, like old trappers and 
 plainsmen. The loneliness and weirdness 
 weighed so on him that he almost wished that 
 some Indians would come and capture him. 
 
 During the night his sleep was much 
 broken. Several times the deep, loud howls 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 191 
 
 of the gray wolves came quite near, and the 
 pony snorted and came close to his lone 
 master as if for protection from the brutes. 
 When Philip slept among the men of the 
 Santa Fe Train, these common sounds of 
 the plains did not awaken him; but now that 
 he was alone he suddenly developed the wake- 
 fulness of wild animals, which seem to sleep, 
 so to speak, with one eye open, always ready 
 for flight or defense. 
 
 He was glad when, at last, the gray dawn 
 of morning marked the beginning of another 
 day. But what should he do now? He felt 
 hopelessly lost and alone in the world. How 
 could he ever hope to find his lost brother and 
 Burley? With the country south of the 
 Canadian Eiver, he was entirely unac 
 quainted. How far it was to the next river 
 and what kind of country lay south of him 
 he did not know. He wished again that some 
 Indians might come. It would be better to 
 be captured than to wander about in this end 
 less solitude. 
 
 Perhaps Uncle Jethro was a wise man 
 
192 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 after all. How happy life would be on their 
 farm on the Missouri, if he could be there 
 with Ted and his father and mother. If he 
 ever got home he would never again be lost 
 on these uninhabited plains. 
 
 But the rising sun and a good hot break 
 fast enabled him to shake off his despair. 
 His courage and spirit revived, he would find 
 Ted and Burley and together they would 
 contrive some means of escape. Then, if only 
 their father would return, Philip for his part, 
 would not care what became of the silver the 
 Indians had stolen. They might squander it, 
 hammer it into ornaments, or cache it any 
 where on this forsaken prairie. 
 
 He did not know which way to travel, he 
 was only sure of one thing: he would not 
 again strike out for the open plain, he would 
 stick to the river until he found some Indians 
 or till some Indians found him. All that 
 day and the whole next day he rode carefully 
 up stream ever on the lookout for signs of 
 human beings. But he saw none. He did 
 indeed come across some camps, but the signs 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 193 
 
 were old. He could not tell like Kit Carson 
 and other famous plainsmen, just how old 
 they were. They might be only a month or 
 three old, or they might be a year old; but 
 the men who left them were certainly not 
 close by now. 
 
 So he turned his pony eastward determined 
 to follow the river down till he found Indians 
 or fresh signs of them. 
 
 His nervousness and his fear of the wild 
 solitude had left him, and his inborn Saxon 
 courage had asserted itself. 
 
 * ' No matter how scared you may feel, show 
 them a bold front," Captain Harley had told 
 him. "If you don't show fear, they will be 
 afraid ; but if you show fear, you are lost. ' ' 
 
 His sleep was light, but not on account of 
 fear; he had acquired the watchfulness of 
 the wild animals, of a man in the wilderness 
 where laws and police did not reach, but 
 where a man protected himself by the 
 strength of his arm and keenness of his 
 senses. He was well armed with rifle and 
 pistol. He had plenty of ammunition, and 
 
194 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 he knew how to use the keen blade of his 
 hunting-knife. He knew that most of the 
 Plains Indians of that time were armed only 
 with spears and arrows, no mean weapons in 
 their skillful hands, but vastly inferior to the 
 best firearms in the hands of a courageous 
 and determined white man. 
 
 He thought it all over. Of course he would 
 be helpless against a big camp of them, 
 against a hundred or a thousand, but against 
 a small band of marauders or Indian des 
 peradoes, he surely was not quite helpless, 
 provided of course that he did not allow him 
 self to be surprised or ambushed. 
 
 It was in this frame of mind that he rode 
 down the rugged, beautiful valley of the 
 Canadian day after day in search of a 
 Comanche camp. 
 
 He felt no longer afraid and oppressed. 
 He had a duty to perform and he meant to 
 do it with all his heart and all his courage. 
 There was no other way to do it. He really 
 enjoyed now being on the watch all day long 
 like a deer or a wolf. In the morning he felt 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 195 
 
 as much refreshed after his light broken 
 sleep as if he had been lying in his safe bed 
 at home. 
 
 He had been traveling down stream about 
 a week when he met the great test of his cour 
 age and self-control. 
 
 As he crossed a ridge, he found himself 
 suddenly in sight of a small Indian camp, 
 consisting of one skin tepee, near which half 
 a dozen ponies were staked. 
 
 His heart thumped and seemed to rise into 
 his throat. He halted a moment to recon- 
 noiter, then he rode slowly onward, but drew 
 a little further away from the timber. He 
 had not gone far, before he discovered sev 
 eral men lying on the grass near the tepee. 
 They had seen him too, and were soon riding 
 toward him at full speed. Philip knew that 
 this was their custom in approaching 
 strangers. He halted his horse and when 
 the Indians were close enough to see his sig 
 nals, he gave them the sign to stop. 
 
 He was now perfectly cool. Would they 
 stop ? He was determined that none of them 
 
196 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 should lay hands on him. They did not stop. 
 
 Philip repeated his signal. He raised his 
 right hand with the palm forward and moved 
 it back and forth several times. They were 
 close enough now to have seen the signal and 
 he was sure they had understood it. 
 
 The Indians reduced their speed, but did 
 not stop. Philip repeated the "halt" signal 
 a third time, and then quickly threw up his 
 rifle aiming it directly at the leader. This 
 signal they understood and obeyed by coming 
 to a sudden stop. 
 
CHAPTEE XX 
 
 DANGEROUS COMPANY 
 
 ALTHOUGH Philip felt that probably 
 the Indians were Comanches, he nev 
 ertheless asked for the sign of their 
 tribe. He raised his right hand and with the 
 palm upright, waved it from right to left. 
 This meant "I do not know you. Who are 
 you?" 
 
 One of the Indians in reply made with his 
 hand the sign of a creeping serpent, which 
 to all the prairie tribes meant: Comanche. 
 
 Then Philip clasped both of his hands high 
 in front of him. The Indian spokesman did 
 not repeat the sign, but called out, " Texas V 9 
 
 Philip knew what was in their mind. They 
 thought he was a Texan and they were bit 
 terly hostile to the Eepublic of Texas. So 
 Philip shouted back: "No, American !" 
 
 197 
 
198 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 The Indians consulted a little while before 
 one of them repeated Philip 's sign of clasping 
 hands, which meant: "We are friendly, " 
 and at the same time the others motioned for 
 him to approach. 
 
 Philip, however, had made up his mind not 
 to allow them to approach, so he signaled 
 them again to stop and move away ; and when 
 in spite of his signals they started toward 
 him, he boldly aimed his gun at the fore 
 most. 
 
 When his determined attitude again 
 brought them to a halt, the white lad tried 
 to make them understand that he was going 
 to the large Comanche camp eastward down 
 stream, and that he had a message for the 
 chief. Then he signaled them to go back to 
 their camp and not follow him. 
 
 He was not at all sure that they had under 
 stood his signs about the message, but he was 
 sure that they understood that they were not 
 to approach or follow him. 
 
 He felt strongly inclined to leave a present 
 of tobacco for them on the ground, but feared 
 
OP THE PAWNEE 199 
 
 that this would only arouse their cupidity 
 so he turned his horse more toward the open 
 prairie and rode slowly away, for he held 
 the worst suspicion about the character of his 
 professed friends. 
 
 All six of them were young men. No 
 women were visible about the camp, there 
 fore they were not a hunting party. Their 
 horses appeared thin and hard used, and one 
 of the men had his arm bandaged. All these 
 things made Philip conclude that they were 
 a small war party returning from an un 
 successful raid against the Pawnees or some 
 other tribe. Philip knew that a war party 
 returning without scalps and having perhaps 
 lost one or more of its own members, was 
 the most dangerous band of Indians for a 
 lone white man to meet. 
 
 He really longed to travel once more in 
 human company, but he felt that in this com 
 pany his life would not be safe a moment. 
 The temptation to bring home the scalp, horse 
 and equipment of a white man would be too 
 strong for these savages, whose fame as war- 
 
200 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 riors was evidently much in need of bolster 
 ing up. 
 
 The sun was just touching the prairie and 
 within half an hour it would be dark. 
 
 Philip looked back from time to time to 
 see what his would-be friends were doing. 
 At first they seemed to be consulting and 
 watching him, but when he was half way up a 
 rise in the prairie, they started to follow. 
 When Philip had reached the crest of the 
 rise, he turned his horse and holding up his 
 pistol in his left hand, pointed his rifle at 
 them with his right hand. At this signal the 
 Indians promptly stopped, and Philip turn 
 ing around in the saddle rode slowly over the 
 crest of the rise. 
 
 No sooner, however, felt he sure that he 
 was out of their sight, than he urged his 
 pony into a gallop and disappeared around 
 a kind of a spur from the prairie, beyond 
 which he dashed into some scattered timber 
 in the river bottom where he felt the grow 
 ing darkness of evening would hide him from 
 pursuit. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 201 
 
 For the present he felt that he had escaped 
 from the treacherous band and the more he 
 thought of it, the more he was convinced that 
 they could not be trusted. He felt assured 
 that during the night they could not follow his 
 trail and that most likely they would not try 
 it. But he felt just as sure that at day 
 break they would start on his trail like a 
 pack of hounds, and that they would employ 
 all their wonderful endurance, their Indian 
 wiles and cunning to overtake and surprise 
 him. 
 
 He felt grateful that he had not fallen in 
 with them on the first or second day of his 
 lonely travels, before he had had time to ad 
 just his mind and nerves to the loneliness and 
 dangers of the wild plains. 
 
 Now he was perfectly cool and made his 
 plans with a clear head. There would be 
 no rest and no camp for him this night. The 
 moon would soon rise and he would travel all 
 night. He had taken pains not to overtax his 
 horse, and the animal was in fine condition. 
 
 After he had covered about two miles, he 
 
202 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 let Kio take a drink and also refreshed him 
 self. Then he rode on again, eating his sup 
 per of dried buffalo meat in the saddle, while 
 his pony slowly traveled eastward at the foot 
 of the rugged bluffs between the prairie and 
 the river bottom. 
 
 His thoughts ran back to the long night 
 ride over the dry route between the Arkansas 
 and the Cimarron. He let the pony pick his 
 own way without urging him to any speed. 
 He must keep him in condition to keep going 
 all night and all next day. Hour after hour 
 horse and rider wound their way in and out 
 among clumps and groves of trees and around 
 spurs of bold rocky bluffs, and Philip felt 
 that the shadows of the night made horse and 
 rider almost invisible. 
 
 The lad had become oppressed by the weird 
 silent shadows and lights of the moon, when 
 a piercing scream across the river made him 
 instinctively grasp his gun and caused a 
 shiver to creep up his spine. His first 
 thought was "Comanche war-whoop !" but 
 a moment's reflection told him that he had 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 203 
 
 heard the nocturnal scream of a panther, a 
 call closely resembling the outcry of a human 
 being in distress. A second time the op 
 pressive silence was broken by the wild 
 scream, and Philip, glad that the beast was 
 not ahead on his path, thumped the pony into 
 a more rapid pace. 
 
 He had not gone far before he realized 
 once more that this region deserted by man 
 was the realm of wild beasts. His pony sud 
 denly stopped and while trembling and rear 
 ing with fright, refused to go forward. 
 Something in the brush right ahead fright 
 ened the animal. Was it another panther or 
 was it a lurking Indian? Philip grasped his 
 pistol with his right hand, for the enemy was 
 close by. Then some large black object with 
 a blood-curdling "Whoof, whoof!" rushed 
 out of the thicket, while the frightened horse 
 almost threw his rider. 
 
 "Go on, go on, Kio." Philip patted the 
 wildly excited horse. "Go on, we'll get out 
 of this spookland," and he turned the animal 
 toward the open prairie. 
 
204 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Philip felt now quite sure that by this time 
 the Indians he had left behind had given up 
 following him, so he believed that it would 
 be quite safe to travel in the open. The 
 wooded bottom was really getting too spooky 
 for himself as well as for his pony. 
 
 On the prairie traveling was delightful. A 
 gentle breeze was springing up from the east, 
 and Philip felt sure that the pony would scent 
 any danger ahead, so they would not suddenly 
 come upon either bears or panthers, or In 
 dians. 
 
 For an hour or more the lad rode silently 
 over the moonlit plain. Then the pony began 
 to sniff the air and even began to neigh so 
 that Philip slapped him gently on the neck 
 saying: "Keep still, Kio. You talk too 
 much. Just march along and let me do the 
 talking. " 
 
 From the behavior of Kio Philip felt 
 assured that there was no danger ahead. 
 Perhaps Kio had smelled buffaloes or wild 
 horses. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 205 
 
 It was not long before the lad thought he 
 could make out some black spots in the dis 
 tance, and very soon he found himself in a 
 herd of buffaloes, quietly grazing or lying 
 down on the prairie like cows and oxen. The 
 whole country seemed to be covered with 
 them, but they were scattered in small 
 bunches of fifty or a hundred. Philip rea 
 soned that they had been to the river to drink 
 late in the afternoon and that they were now 
 resting and chewing the cud like domestic 
 cattle. 
 
 He wound his way through the scattered 
 bands and was careful not to disturb them, 
 for if they should become aroused and start 
 a stampede, he and Kio might have a hard 
 time to keep out of the mad rush of thousands 
 of frantic wild cattle. 
 
 There seemed no end to the herds, and 
 Philip rode on and on, till he noticed that 
 the pony was getting tired and judged that 
 it must be past midnight. The lad himself 
 also began to feel tired and hungry, so he 
 
206 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 stopped for a rest and a meal in a clump of 
 trees growing on a small creek flowing toward 
 the Canadian. 
 
 While the pony was eating his fill of grass, 
 his master built a small fire and was soon 
 refreshed with a kettle of sweetened tea and 
 dried meat. Thinking that the pony needed 
 some more rest and food, Philip lay down 
 for a short sleep, but before he did so, he 
 put the saddle on Kio so he could be off 
 quick if necessary. He felt quite sure that 
 he would not oversleep, for since he had trav 
 eled alone he awoke frequently during the 
 night. He could have gone without sleep, but 
 he knew from experience how hard it is for 
 a man to be really himself if he has gone 
 entirely without sleep for a whole night. 
 
 When he awoke the stars were still shin 
 ing, and Philip did not know whether he had 
 slept an hour or two. The pony had eaten 
 his fill of grass and brush and was lying flat 
 on his side as sound asleep as a pony can 
 be. 
 
 "Get up, lazy boy," Philip called as he 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 207 
 
 went went over to him. i ' We had better slip 
 away before our Comanche friends shoo us 
 out of this nest. Hope you didn't dream of 
 bears and panthers, old boy." 
 
 Again the rider was on his way through 
 buffalo herds, which spread over the prairie 
 on the other side of the creek. Philip was 
 glad that he had fallen in with the buffaloes. 
 The Comanches would find it difficult to fol 
 low his trail through the buffaloes ; moreover 
 he felt almost sure that they would kill one 
 or two and stop for a big feed. If they did 
 that, he was safe ; they would never overtake 
 him. 
 
 It was almost noon when he came to the 
 end of the herd. He had amused himself es 
 timating the number he had seen. His count 
 soon ran up to 5,000, then to 10,000, and he 
 quit counting, when he had reached 20,000. 
 A few days ago the prairie had seemed to be 
 lifeless, now he had a feeling that it was a 
 great wild cattle ranch covered with buffa 
 loes, big bulls and cows and little brown 
 calves, not thousands, but millions of them. 
 
208 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Captain Harley had claimed that the buffa 
 loes would some day all be killed off. It 
 seemed impossible. There must be hundreds 
 if not thousands of such big herds spread 
 over the Great Plains from Texas and Mexico 
 far into Canada. Neither Indians nor whites 
 could ever kill them all. 
 
 In the afternoon Philip scouted carefully 
 over every rise in the prairie. He did not 
 wish to ride into a trap and, if there was 
 a large Indian camp on the river, he might 
 expect signs of it almost any time. 
 
 Since he had left the buffaloes, the plains 
 again appeared almost lifeless. One small 
 band of antelopes and a few wolves and coy 
 otes was all he had seen. 
 
 When the sun sank low on the horizon, 
 he once more made camp under some trees 
 on a small stream. He understood now that 
 a big wagon with a dozen mules or oxen 
 might absolutely disappear on these plains. 
 It was a sheer endless and boundless world 
 of prairie and streams, of valleys and ra 
 vines. Perhaps, he thought, he had made a 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 209 
 
 mistake by not allowing those Comanches to 
 approach him. Maybe he might travel a 
 month clear to the Mississippi or Missouri 
 he did not know which he would strike with 
 out seeing a human being. 
 
 He staked his pony and before cooking sup 
 per he scouted on foot to the crest of the next 
 rise. 
 
 When he looked cautiously over the ridge, 
 something at once attracted his attention. 
 He rose on his hands and peered hard ahead. 
 It was no mistake. There was smoke rising 
 in the river valley about two miles off. He 
 lay down flat on the prairie, his ear on the 
 ground. He did not realize how all his senses 
 had become more alert and sharper during 
 his days of lone travel. He could plainly 
 hear some noise. What was it? Very soon 
 he made it out. 
 
 It was the beating of Indian drums. He 
 had found what he had been looking for. A 
 big Indian camp was located only two miles 
 away. 
 
CHAPTEK XXI 
 
 IN BED WOLF'S CAMP 
 
 PHILIP decided not to enter the 
 Comanche camp before next morning. 
 Whether he would find Ted and Bur- 
 ley in that camp, he had of course no means 
 of knowing. He felt that he would probably 
 be treated as a prisoner even if his life was 
 spared. He had never been in a Comanche 
 camp but was quite well acquainted with the 
 customs of the Shawnees and other tribes 
 who in those days were living near Inde 
 pendence. 
 
 He had some knowledge of the Indian sign 
 language, and he had learned a few Coman 
 che words, because Comanche was a kind of 
 inter-tribal trade language. He hoped to 
 have a little luck in his adventure, and he 
 was determined to use his wits and put on 
 
 a bold face, no matter what happened. 
 210 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 211 
 
 He would have preferred to ride into the 
 camp at once and learn if Ted and Burley 
 were there. But it would be almost dark 
 by the time he could reach the place, and it 
 would be much safer to go amongst the 
 strange savages in the morning. 
 
 So he made himself as comfortable a camp 
 as possible for the night, and hid a part of 
 his ammunition in a hollow tree. 
 
 " There is no telling, " he thought, "what 
 need I may have of it. After I join the big 
 camp, I may not be able to keep anything for 
 myself. ' ' 
 
 He was careful to stake out his pony so 
 that he could not be seen from the prairie 
 around, and he did not make a fire for his 
 supper and coffee until it was so dark that 
 he felt sure that all the Comanche hunting- 
 parties or scouts had returned to camp. He 
 felt quite sure that he had thrown off the 
 small war-party of a few days ago. He had 
 crossed and followed so many tracts of buf 
 faloes and wild horses, and had sometimes 
 followed the windings of the river and at 
 
212 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 other times cut across the prairie that they 
 could not possibly have picked out his trail. 
 Still he took the precaution to put out his 
 small fire as soon as his bacon and coffee were 
 done. 
 
 He awoke several times during the night 
 and listened for signs of danger, but there 
 came only the sounds to which he was well 
 used by this time, the howling and yapping 
 of coyotes and wolves and the screams and 
 calls of a few night birds like owls and whip- 
 poorwills. 
 
 In the morning he fixed himself up as well 
 as he could and then rode straight into the 
 Comanche camp. It was a big camp contain 
 ing some two hundred skin tepees, and east 
 of the camp he saw a herd of about a 
 thousand ponies. His keen eyes picked out 
 several animals that seemed unusually large 
 for Indian ponies. They must be mules, the 
 stolen mules of Captain Barley's train. His 
 heart beat faster, when he made this dis 
 covery. If Captain Harley's mules were 
 here, Ted and Burley ought to be here, too. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 213 
 
 The sudden appearance of a lone white man 
 in the Comanche camp caused at once a great 
 stir. A pack of dogs yelped and jumped 
 around him, small naked children tumbled 
 hastily into the tepees, larger ones gath 
 ered around him, while crowds of men and 
 women stared at him in wonder. What could 
 it mean 1 No lone white man had ever ridden 
 boldly into the camp of the Lords of the 
 Plains. 
 
 Philip made signs to a young man that he 
 had come to see the chief, and the young man 
 led him to a large tent decorated with the 
 head of a wolf in bright red paint. 
 
 The chief, a middle-aged man, came out, 
 and Philip, who had dismounted, shook hands 
 with him. 
 
 Philip did not know what to do next, but 
 he felt that he must do something, so he told 
 the chief that he had a message from his mas 
 ter and pulled out a paper Captain Harley 
 had given him. 
 
 The chief told the people to go away and 
 motioned to Philip to come into the tepee 
 
214 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 with him, where he took the paper and looked 
 it over with a grave mien. 
 
 "What does it say?" lie asked as he handed 
 it back to Philip. 
 
 "It says," Philip told him, "I have learned 
 that one of my men and one of my boys live 
 with yon. I am glad they are with a great 
 and good chief , who will treat them well. I 
 send you some presents as much as my runner 
 could carry on his long journey." 
 
 Philip thought the chief looked puzzled, but 
 when the white lad gave him the tobacco, 
 sugar, and coffee, he was evidently pleased. 
 
 In those days the Northern Comanches had 
 very little intercourse with white men, and 
 sugar and coffee were almost unknown lux 
 uries. 
 
 After a period of silence, the chief asked, 
 "Is it the Great Father of all -the white 
 men who sends this?" 
 
 Now Philip understood what puzzled the 
 chief. 
 
 "No," he told him. "My brave chief of 
 the Long Trail, who is taking a large train 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 215 
 
 of wagons to Santa Fe. He could not visit 
 your camp because he must go to Santa Fe." 
 
 "Has he many soldiers with him?" asked 
 the chief. 
 
 "No, he is a brave man and a friend of the 
 Comanches, so he travels without soldiers. 
 He is sorry that your young men stole some 
 of his mules but he has enough mules and 
 gee-haws to reach Santa Fe and wished you 
 to keep the mules your young men took. ' ' 
 
 Philip could not tell whether the chief be 
 lieved his message or not. 
 
 After sitting in silence for a while, the 
 chief took a pinch of the brown sugar Philip 
 had given him. 
 
 "Good, good!" he grunted. "We shall 
 make a feast to-night ! ' ' 
 
 "Now," Philip thought, "is the right time 
 to make my big request," and he tried hard 
 to appear calm and bold. 
 
 "I must see the white man and the boy," 
 he told the chief, "my master wishes me to 
 tell them that they may stay with his friends, 
 the Comanches." 
 
216 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 There came a pause of painful silence. 
 Were Burley and Ted in this camp? Philip 
 had boldly assumed that they were. Would 
 the chief acknowledge it, if they actually 
 were in this camp ? 
 
 He looked the chief straight in the face, 
 but did not press him for an answer. 
 
 The chief took another pinch of sugar, and 
 smacking his lips with delight at the taste of 
 the rare luxury, invited Philip to take a 
 pinch. 
 
 "Ugh," he grunted as he put the sugar 
 aside. "Eat it to-night at big feast." 
 
 Philip began to wonder if the chief had 
 forgotten his request about seeing the white 
 man and the boy, but was afraid to repeat it. 
 
 The chief chewed a few of the roasted 
 coffee beans and again muttered: "Good, 
 good!" 
 
 Then when Philip was just about to re 
 mind him of his request, he said : 
 
 "The white man and the boy cannot come 
 now. They are herding the ponies over 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 217 
 
 there. My young men shall bring them in 
 to-night." 
 
 Philip wanted to embrace the old Coman- 
 che, throw up his arms and shout and dance 
 like a boy whose team has just won a hard 
 football game. But he set his teeth on his 
 tongue, reached out his hand and said 
 gravely : 
 
 ' ' Thank you. I shall be glad to bring them 
 greetings from my chief." 
 
 After a while the chief told a young man 
 to take care of Philip's pony while he took 
 the lad to a tepee in front of which a rather 
 old woman was sitting. The chief spoke a 
 few words to the squaw and then, after taking 
 Philip into the tepee, motioned him to take 
 the place opposite the opening, which was 
 the seat of honor in an Indian tepee. Then 
 the chief went away and Philip was left alone 
 with his thoughts. 
 
 The events of the last few days passed 
 through his mind like a dream. He could 
 hardly believe that on the boundless world of 
 
218 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the great plains, he, a rather green plains 
 man, had actually struck the Indian camp, 
 where Burley and Ted were living. The 
 chief had treated him well. Could he really 
 be trusted, or was he concealing some Indian 
 treachery? Philip could not tell, he did not 
 know the Comanche customs and the Coman- 
 che character well enough. He had largely 
 followed the advice Captain Hurley had given 
 him, and had done what the hour and the cir 
 cumstances made necessary. He also won 
 dered how much of Harley's message the 
 chief had really understood. How much re 
 spect did he feel for a chief of trainmen, 
 mules and gee-haws? Philip was much in 
 doubt on this point. He knew that up to this 
 time the Plains Indians had never felt the 
 military strength of the United States, and 
 that many of them thought the whites were no 
 more numerous than one of the Indian tribes. 
 His thoughts were interrupted by the old 
 squaw coming in with a kettle of fresh 
 buffalo meat and hot broth. When Philip 
 had eaten, the woman brought him a pair of 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 219 
 
 moccasins and motioned to him to take off Ms 
 boots and put on the moccasins, a request he 
 was glad to comply with. 
 
 Some curious people came to take a look 
 at the white boy, but the old woman drove 
 them away with angry words ; while Philip, 
 tired and almost worn out with the excite 
 ment and hard travel of a week, stretched 
 himself on the buffalo-skins and soon fell 
 asleep. 
 
 In the evening the chief sent for him to 
 come to the feast. Some of the other chiefs 
 were already there, more came in soon, and 
 the last to come in were Burley and Ted. 
 Had it not been for Burley 's serious Indian- 
 like face, Philip would have jumped up and 
 given a yell that might have scared every 
 Comanche out of the tepee. 
 
 But he caught himself in time and in a dig 
 nified manner, as became the messenger of 
 a great wagon-master, gravely shook hands 
 with Ted and Burley just as he had done with 
 the Indians. 
 
 At first the pipe went around filled with 
 
220 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the tobacco Philip had brought. When Ted 
 passed it on without taking a few whiffs, the 
 Indians all laughed. 
 
 "Too little, too little, " one of the Indians 
 remarked. "Get heap sick. Keep no eat." 
 
 That remark seemed to have taken the stiff 
 ness, as we say, out of the party; and the 
 scarred old braves began to thaw out. 
 
 Indians among themselves are really a so 
 cial and jovial people, but are very sensitive 
 to ridicule and always reserved in the pres 
 ence of strangers. 
 
 After the pipe had gone around several 
 times, a woman brought in a kettleful of 
 coffee, which was poured into a few tin cups 
 and passed around, everybody taking a few 
 swallows. When Burley stirred some sugar 
 into the coffee they were as delighted as 
 schoolboys with an unlimited amount of ice 
 cream, for most of them had not tasted sugar 
 for years. 
 
 There was plenty of food in camp and the 
 women brought in kettles filled with the meat 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 221 
 
 of buffaloes, elk, deer, and antelope. Forks 
 and knives there were none, every one helped 
 himself with his fingers and drank as much 
 hot broth as he liked. 
 
 Both Philip and Ted were surprised at 
 the amount of meat which vanished. When 
 the feasters seemed to be sated with the wild 
 meat, the chief pointed to a piece of bacon 
 Philip had brought. Philip at once arose, 
 cut the bacon into slices and fried it in his 
 pan over the tepee fire. 
 
 With this new dish every Indian seemed to 
 grow hungry again and Philip fried and 
 passed bacon till nothing but the rind was 
 left. After the bacon was gone a squaw 
 brought in another kettle of coffee, and when 
 the feast ended about midnight, there was 
 not an ounce of sugar, coffee, or bacon left 
 in camp but every Indian had had the feast 
 of his life ; for it was an unheard-of thing for 
 a Comanche to have all the sweet coffee and 
 bacon he wanted. 
 
 " Great stunt of you to bring that grub!" 
 
222 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Burley hurriedly whispered to Philip as the 
 strange party broke up. "We are safe, I 
 think, for the present. But don't forget we 
 are prisoners, all three of us. Don't say a 
 word about your father and the silver." 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 CAPTIVE OB FREE? 
 
 WHEN Philip returned to his tepee 
 that evening, two old Indians 
 were already there, although 
 there had been noisy feasts all over the big 
 village. His gun and pistol had disappeared. 
 Philip thought it would do no good to ask 
 what had become of them, but when the old 
 man noticed that Philip missed his weapons, 
 he pointed in the direction of the chief's 
 tepee and said : * ' Red Wolf. ' ' 
 
 Then Philip knew that Red Wolf the chief 
 whom he had furnished the means to get up 
 a swell Indian feast had sent for his weapons. 
 "It's just for safe keeping," Philip said to 
 himself, "the small white boy might get hurt 
 playing with the guns." 
 
 If Philip had been in any doubt whether 
 he was a captive or a free man he learned 
 
 223 
 
224 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the truth next morning. The old man, who 
 with his squaw was not only Philip's atten 
 dant but his guard pointed to a kettle in front 
 of the tepee. 
 
 * ' Eat, ' ' he said. ' * No leave big camp. ' ' 
 
 In front of the tepee two poles had been 
 stuck in the ground and from the top of each 
 hung a scalp. As Philip looked at them, won 
 dering what they meant, the old man grunted : 
 "He run away. Comanche catch him.'' 
 
 Philip knew that the scalps had been put 
 up as a warning to him, and for the present 
 he had no intentions of running away ; but he 
 started on a leisurely stroll through the camp, 
 which had been made in some scattered tim 
 ber near the river. The stroll was more in 
 teresting than pleasant, for a mob of dogs 
 and children were soon at his heels. The 
 hunters had evidently found plenty of buffa 
 loes, for everywhere Philip saw plenty of 
 fresh and dried buffalo meat. 
 
 The women were all busy. Some were 
 scraping and smoking skins of deer and buf 
 falo, others were making moccasins or hunt- 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 225 
 
 ing shirts or braiding long ropes out of raw 
 hide, while others were taking care of their 
 small children and gossiping and laughing. 
 
 A good many of the men were away hunt 
 ing; and Philip could not help seeing how en 
 tirely these people depended on the buffaloes 
 for almost everything they needed. 
 
 Most of the men in camp were doing noth 
 ing but smoke and bask in the sun, while a 
 few were making bows and arrows, and one 
 old man was making a pipe out of a piece of 
 soft rock. 
 
 Philip was very desirous of learning 
 whether Burley and Ted were herding the 
 ponies every day, and where their tepee was. 
 Apparently neither Burley nor Ted were in 
 camp, nor did he learn what had become of 
 his own pony and saddle. 
 
 When Philip returned to the tepee of Old 
 Bear, the name of his keeper, he had taken 
 a kind of census of the Comanche camp. He 
 had counted more than two hundred tepees, 
 all made of buffalo skins and many of them 
 beautifully decorated with simple designs 
 
226 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 and with the figures of many kinds of birds 
 and animals. 
 
 "There must be a thousand Indians in this 
 skin town," thought Philip as he stretched 
 himself on the buffalo rug in Old Bear's 
 tepee. "That means about two hundred 
 warriors and hunters. Pretty slim chance 
 for the three of us to get away. They would 
 hunt us down like a pack of wolves run a deer. 
 But wait till I see Burley." 
 
 For a few days Philip rather enjoyed the 
 lazy life. It seemed good to have nothing 
 to do but eat and sleep and poke around the 
 camp. But after he was thoroughly rested 
 from his hard journey, the white man's im 
 patience and restlessness took possession of 
 him. 
 
 "Confound this lazy life," he muttered one 
 day as he lay kicking up his feet on the river 
 bank. "Indians surely don't know any time. 
 There's Old Bear! Just lies around all day. 
 Has as much time as the river and the hills. 
 He doesn't even talk. Why doesn't the old 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 227 
 
 fellow tell me where Burley and Ted are. 
 He knows I want to know. ' ' 
 
 Some women came by carrying firewood to 
 camp. 
 
 "Hang it all," Philip's thoughts ran on. 
 "I should like to chop and carry some wood 
 for the women. All my muscles are itching. 
 But if I did, the whole skin town would laugh 
 at me. That's the work of the squaws, and 
 they would resent my butting in on their 
 household affairs. A man must not do any 
 thing else but go on the warpath, hunt buf 
 faloes, steal horses and mules, and lie around. 
 
 "Hang this life! I'm going to find out 
 where Burley and Ted are and I am going 
 to find something to do. Wouldn't Uncle 
 Jethro laugh if he knew I was going to hunt 
 for a job in a Comanche village?" 
 
 The next morning, when Old Bear was 
 puffing his pipe in front of the tepee, Philip 
 made his first attempt to draw the old war 
 rior into conversation. After he had been 
 sitting near him for a little while he asked 
 
228 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 in a respectful way : "Ninahpuk, my father, 
 where is the white man and his small boyl" 
 
 It seemed to please Old Bear that Philip 
 called him father, and after he had drawn a 
 few more puffs out of his pipe, he answered, 
 11 Watch Comanche ponies. " 
 
 "My father," Philip began after a short 
 silence, "I am young and strong. I came 
 a long way and was very tired, but now I have 
 eaten and slept much and I am no longer 
 tired." 
 
 Philip had been very happy to find that 
 his keeper spoke some English ; but when Old 
 Bear did not reply, Philip made another at 
 tempt. 
 
 "I have rested now," he said, "I should 
 like to hunt buffalo or watch ponies." 
 
 "Go and see Bed Wolf," his keeper replied 
 now. "May be so, he say yes." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 DESPERATE PLANS 
 
 WHEN Philip saw Bed Wolf, 
 the old man was examining 
 Philip's gun and pistol with 
 much interest, and Philip keeping in mind 
 the advice of Captain Harley, made the chief 
 understand that he might keep both as a 
 present. 
 
 If Philip had really been a free guest of 
 the Comanches the chief would have made 
 him some present in return, but now he only 
 told him that he might go and watch the 
 ponies with the white man and his small son. 
 
 It may be imagined how happy Philip was 
 to have at last an opportunity to talk to Ted 
 and Burley and learn everything that had 
 happened to them, and to have something to 
 do. 
 
 229 
 
230 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Philip was surprised that the three white 
 men were left entirely to themselves herding 
 the ponies. 
 
 "If we rode away as fast as we could," he 
 asserted, "we might make twenty miles be 
 fore anybody knew we had left." 
 
 Jim Burley just laughed at this idea of 
 Philip's. 
 
 "Why, lad," he replied, "you don't know 
 Indians very well. I advise you not to try 
 it. If you think we are not watched, you 
 still have much to learn about Indian ways. 
 I am sure somebody is keeping an eye on us 
 this very minute. If we tried to escape, fifty 
 mounted men would pursue us in half an 
 hour. Those two scalps you saw belonged 
 once to two captive Mexican boys, who 
 thought as you do. They were set to herd 
 ing the ponies and they thought escape 
 would be easy, but the Comanche scouts 
 brought their scalps into camp before sun 
 set on the day they had run away." 
 
 This was indeed crushing news to Philip, 
 who had nursed the belief that if he had once 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 231 
 
 found Ted and Burley, they would all three 
 make their escape in a few days. 
 
 " Where are the scouts that are watching 
 us?" asked Philip. "Show them to me." 
 
 "I have never seen them," retorted 
 Burley, "but I know we are watched; I feel 
 it in my bones." 
 
 "Nobody watched me in the tepee and 
 when I walked around in the village," argued 
 Philip. 
 
 "Phil, don't be pig-headed," Burley came 
 back, a little impatiently. "The whole camp 
 was watching you, but they didn't think you 
 would be fool enough to try to hoof it back 
 home without arms or blankets, so they didn't 
 tie you up. 
 
 "No use, lads, no use! Didn't you ever 
 wish you could live with the Indians?" 
 
 Ted and Philip looked at each other with 
 out denying it. 
 
 "Well, boys, your wish has come true. 
 Just play Comanche with all your heart! 
 Get right into the game! The harder you 
 play Indians, the better you're off. 
 
232 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "And I'll tell you this: If you ever hike 
 off, I'll help to bring you back and see that 
 you get whipped good and hard. So don't 
 start any foolery." 
 
 A few days later as Burley and Philip 
 were leisurely riding around the herd of 
 nearly a thousand ponies, Burley said: 
 
 "Phil, ride along kind of carelessly and 
 squint over to that grove of walnuts about 
 half a mile east, but don't stop. I'll ride 
 around the herd the other way." 
 
 "I didn't see anything but a couple of logs 
 in the brush," Philip reported, when he met 
 Burley again. 
 
 "Pretty good scouting," Burley laughed. 
 "I saw one of those logs roll himself out of 
 the sun and into the shade, a little while be 
 fore I spoke to you. Do you believe now 
 that they are watching us?" 
 
 After this the boys stopped talking of 
 escape and just played Indian. They prac 
 ticed roping the ponies, they had races and 
 learned doing all kinds of tricks on horse 
 back, they killed prairie-dogs with stones and 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 233 
 
 sticks, they took many a swim in the river 
 and in the creeks, and when they had a 
 chance, they played and wrestled and raced 
 with the Comanche boys. 
 
 If they could only have had their guns 
 and pistols, they would have been quite 
 happy, but those the Indians had taken out 
 after buffaloes and they had soon used up all 
 the ammunition. 
 
 The boys wanted to ask the Indians for 
 bows and arrows, but Burley would not al 
 low it. 5 
 
 "They would at once be suspicious/' he 
 told them. "They are no longer watching us 
 very closely, so let them alone. If we stay 
 long enough they may invite us to go along 
 hunting. ' ' 
 
 In this way the summer wore away and the 
 days were getting much shorter. The boys 
 had both lost count of the days, but Burley 
 said it was about the middle of August. 
 
 About a week later some scouts reported 
 that there was a big herd of buffaloes about 
 ten miles east of camp, and the next day 
 
234 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 nearly all the men went on a big buffalo 
 hunt. 
 
 Burley and the boys were herding the 
 ponies west of camp, and a little before sun 
 set they slowly drove them over the ridge 
 about two miles from camp. 
 
 All three riders were up on the ridge 
 where they might be seen from camp. At 
 this place it occurred to Burley that some of 
 the ponies had strayed away among the trees 
 up the river and he asked the boys to come 
 along to look for them. 
 
 The boys thought nothing of this, because 
 it was not an unusual occurrence. However, 
 when Burley rode along slowly until it was 
 getting dark, Ted became uneasy and asked : 
 
 "Mr. Burley, hadn't we better look for 
 them in the morning. Old Bear will be 
 angry, if Philip comes home so late." 
 
 Burley did not really answer Ted's ques 
 tion. He just said rather absent-mindedly, 
 "We'll go a little farther to the next creek 
 before we turn." 
 
 When they reached the creek Burley gave 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 235 
 
 his horse a drink and told the boys to let their 
 horses drink. "And you had better take a 
 long drink yourselves, " he added. "This 
 creek has mighty good water. " 
 
 Then, when all three were in the saddle once 
 more he spoke in a low voice : 
 
 "Now, boys! Hang all the Comanches! 
 We've been their slaves long enough. May 
 God help us to get away! To-night we beat 
 it straight for Bent's Fort on the Arkansas. " 
 
 The boys wanted to shout, but Burley gave 
 them the sign of silence by putting his hand 
 over his mouth. 
 
 "We'll march right along in the brush," 
 he whispered, "as far as the ponies have 
 grazed, then we'll strike out for the 
 hard prairie! Good-by Comanches! Come 
 along, boys! We'll keep going till day 
 light." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A BAKING VENTURE 
 
 SO, at last, the captives had broken 
 away. It was a desperate venture, 
 and all three of them realized the 
 risk they were taking. 
 
 They had no arms of any kind, except their 
 knives, no food, and no blankets, but Burley 
 had brought with him flint and steel and a 
 piece of dry punk. 
 
 "I wanted awfully bad to take three extra 
 ponies," Burley told the boys. "The 
 rascals owe us a dozen ponies for the mules 
 and guns they have stolen from us, but I was 
 afraid some scout would see us catch them 
 and then the whole game would have been 
 off." 
 
 "Jim, what would you have done if we had 
 run into any of our friends before we got on 
 the way?" Philip asked. 
 
 "That's easy!" Burley laughed. "We 
 
 236 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 237 
 
 weren't trying to run then. We were looking 
 for ponies that had strayed away in the 
 brush up the river. I should have said some 
 thing strong about that bunch of stray 
 ponies and returned to camp with our friends 
 and waited for another chance. 
 
 "But it was time to make a break, for we 
 must reach Bent's Fort before the Santa Fe 
 trains return to the States. " 
 
 The boys wondered if the Indians would 
 try to follow them. 
 
 "You may be sure they will," Burley told 
 them. "Buffalo-hunting gets very stale if 
 it is your regular business year in and year 
 out. A man-hunt will furnish the most wel 
 come excitement to every lazy buck in camp. ' ' 
 
 "What will they do to us, if they catch 
 us?" Philip asked. 
 
 " 'Do to us'?" repeated Burley. 
 "There'll be three dead men, Phil, and 
 they'll have a howling scalp-dance for a 
 whole night. They haven't had one since 
 they caught the runaway Mexican pony- 
 herders." 
 
238 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Gee!" whispered Ted, "my hair has 
 grown enough so that they could easily yank 
 it off." 
 
 "We must not be caught, boys! That is 
 our only salvation," Burley told them. 
 "Let's go to it. The ponies can run a few 
 miles now." 
 
 The night grew chilly, but the riders did 
 not feel it. They were riding for their lives. 
 
 About midnight Ted grew sleepy, and sev 
 eral times Philip poked him saying: "Don't 
 fall off, Ted, and break your bones. If you 
 don't keep awake we'll have to tie you to the 
 saddle." 
 
 When they crossed a small creek, they 
 stopped a few minutes to let the horses 
 drink and Burley advised the boys to dis 
 mount and rest their muscles a few minutes 
 and to walk out on a log for a drink. 
 
 "But don't step on bare, soft ground," he 
 warned them. "We must not leave any man- 
 tracks at this creek. It is only about twenty 
 miles from camp and the scouts may be here 
 by noon." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 239 
 
 Very soon they were in the saddle again 
 and traveled without stopping till dawn, when 
 they came upon a maze of deep buffalo-trails. 
 
 Burley stopped and looked around at the 
 lay of the land. "Boys," he suggested, "I 
 think we '11 cross the river on these trails and 
 go into camp on the south side." 
 
 A suitable place was soon found in low 
 timber on a small creek between rugged 
 banks, where no trail ran up the ravine. 
 
 "Now for some breakfast!" Burley 
 laughed. "We stay in this hole till dark un 
 less they drive us out." 
 
 The boys looked for fruit and berries on 
 the trees and bushes, and they found great 
 clusters of wild grapes. Burley wasted no 
 time in that way, he looked for their break 
 fast in the creek. 
 
 "Here, boys," he called after a few 
 minutes, "is a hole full of suckers and other 
 fish. Now close the hole down-stream with 
 brush, and then we'll each push a bundle 
 of brush up the hole and drive them out on 
 the riffles." 
 
240 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Much to the surprise of the lads the plan 
 worked wonderfully, and fish enough for two 
 meals were soon thrown out on the grass. 
 
 "Now clean them," Burley told the boys. 
 "I will scout around a hit on the hills." 
 
 The fish were cleaned when Burley came 
 back. "Build a fire, Philip," Burley re 
 quested. ' i I don J t see any Reds, so let 's have 
 breakfast." 
 
 A person who has never tasted any other 
 but home- and hotel-cooked meals might 
 not have relished the fish, which Burley and 
 the boys fried on green sticks over_a bed of 
 coals without salt, bacon, or butter. 
 
 Burley and the boys had become used to 
 eat their meals without salt or any kind of 
 seasoning, for in those days salt was seldom 
 used by the Plains Indians, butter was un 
 known, and bacon was a rare luxury. The 
 Indians, however, did not eat raw meat, un 
 less necessity compelled them. 
 
 After breakfast Burley stood guard till 
 noon, when Philip took his place for the rest 
 of the day. Neither of the guards saw any 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 241 
 
 signs of Indians on either side of the river. 
 At dark they again started in a general west 
 erly direction on the south side of the river, 
 after they had caught enough fish to supply 
 them the next day. This proved a wise pre 
 caution, for their second camp was made in a 
 brushy arroyo, where no food but disgust 
 ing snakes and lizards could have been se 
 cured. 
 
 Burley now began to hope that they had 
 really outwitted the Comanches. 
 
 "I struck out west," he told the boys, "be 
 cause I figured that they would naturally 
 think we had either gone straight north to 
 hit the Santa Fe Trail by the shortest route, 
 or that we were traveling toward the Cim- 
 maron Crossing. The only thing I am really 
 afraid of now is that we fall in again with 
 some small band of marauders. If we do, it 
 is likely to be the end of us, unarmed as we 
 are." 
 
 In the afternoon, while Ted was on guard, 
 a new idea struck Burley, and he and Philip 
 cut down three small, smooth cherry-trees. 
 
242 THE SILVEE CACHE 
 
 To these war-clubs, as Philip called them, 
 they affixed by means of rawhide thongs a 
 kind of butt, and then they made the barrels 
 shine like dark metal by rubbing fish-oil on 
 them. When the war-clubs were ready, 
 Philip sneaked up on Ted and called out, 
 "Look here, Ted, see the gun I found in the 
 brush. " 
 
 "Gee!" exclaimed Ted, "it's a brand-new 
 one ! Don 't you point it at me ! ' ' 
 
 "Wake up, Ted," laughed Philip, "I'm 
 not pointing any gun at you. You're asleep 
 on sentry duty. Come along! I'm the of 
 ficer of the day and arrest you ! ' ' 
 
 "Phil, are you crazy, or am I? You're 
 sure pointing that gun at me," exclaimed 
 Ted, growing angry. 
 
 Not until Philip had approached within a 
 few paces of him did Ted discover that he 
 had been fooled by a fake gun. 
 
 "Here," said Philip, handing the wooden 
 gun to his brother, "let me see how it looks 
 in your hands." 
 
 Burley and Philip had done their work 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 243 
 
 thoroughly. Every knot and white spot on 
 the wood had been smeared with mud and 
 charcoal and then rubbed over with fish-oil, 
 so that the resemblance to a real gun was 
 quite deceiving. 
 
 "Well," mused Philip, standing off a dozen 
 paces and looking at the armed sentry, "if 
 the Indians have no better eyes than you 
 and I, these wooden clubs may fool them. 
 But I hope we won't have to try them." 
 
 As soon as it was dark, the three men left 
 their camp. For several hours they traveled 
 on the south side of the Canadian. When 
 they came to the next buffalo ford, they 
 crossed back to the north side and struck out 
 in the direction of Fort William, a well- 
 known trading-post on the upper Arkansas; 
 which later became known as Bent's Fort. 
 It was located in the present State of 
 Colorado about a hundred miles west of the 
 Kansas line and was built in 1828 by William 
 Bent, his two brothers and Ceran St. Vrain. 
 
 For about twenty years Bent's Fort was 
 the most important trading-post on the 
 
244 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 plains; and for many years it was the first 
 buildng west of Council Grove, a distance of 
 about five hundred miles. 
 
 What the distance was from the Comanche 
 camp to Bent's Fort, Burley did not know. 
 
 "I think it must be between two hundred 
 and three hundred miles," he explained to 
 the boys. "If our ponies don't play out or 
 get sore feet, we ought to make forty or fifty 
 miles a night and reach Bent's Fort in about 
 a week." 
 
 Ted was worried how Burley could find the 
 fort, if he had never been over the country 
 through which they were traveling. 
 
 "Well, sonny, that's easy enough," ex 
 plained Burley. "You see I have a sort of 
 a big map of the country in my head. I 
 know the Arkansas is the first large river we 
 strike by going north or northwest. I have 
 traveled along that river from Walnut 
 Creek, near its great bend, clear to the 
 mountains. I know that the fort lies east of 
 the mountains, and I know the Arkansas 
 Eiver when I see it. You will know it, too. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 245 
 
 All the other streams we have to cross are 
 just creeks, and I'm afraid we shall find some 
 of them bone-dry at this season. " 
 
 "Do you think we can learn anything of 
 Father at Bent's Fort?" asked Ted. 
 
 "That is just the place where we ought to 
 find out about him. All the Indians of the 
 plains trade there, and the white trappers 
 and mountaineers also go there to sell their 
 furs and buy their provisions. 
 
 "Boys, I shouldn't be much surprised if we 
 find your father there." 
 
 "Won't the Indians get us there?" asked 
 Ted wistfully. 
 
 "No, sonny," laughed Burley, "if we get 
 into Billy Bent's fort you can make faces at 
 all the Indians on the plains." 
 
 Burley 's fear that many of the smaller 
 creeks might be dry proved to be well- 
 founded. The farther west they traveled, 
 the drier the country became and the more it 
 appeared deserted of all game. 
 
 The boys began to wonder what they would 
 eat, when the fish were all consumed; but 
 
246 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Burley said lie was not worried about secur 
 ing enough food. 
 
 "Do you see that prairie-dog town?" he 
 asked, pointing up a dry creek on which they 
 had made their camp. "Run over and kill 
 half a dozen of them with sticks or clubs. 
 That will give us meat for another day. It's 
 a poor plainsman who cannot find food on the 
 prairie in summer; only you don't want to be 
 too particular. It's a case of eating what you 
 can get." 
 
 The lads looked a little squeamish when 
 Burley roasted three of the animals over a 
 fire of buffalo chips. 
 
 "Ugh," remarked Ted, "they look like 
 cats. I can't eat them, even if I do feel half- 
 starved." 
 
 "Never mind what they look like," ob 
 served Burley, as he began his meal; "they 
 taste like chickens, and they live on grass and 
 roots just like rabbits. If you fellows wish 
 to fast a day, I'll eat your share, so it won't 
 spoil on us." 
 
 The lads soon found that Burley was right. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 247 
 
 "If somebody had not tagged a 'dog' to 
 their name they would be excellent game. 
 Just call them ground- rabbits and they'll 
 taste fine," Burley told them while he was 
 finishing his meal. 
 
 To find water at this camp was more diffi 
 cult, but the ponies gave them a hint where 
 it might be discovered by digging with their 
 forefeet in a low place in the sandy bottom 
 of the creek. The three men at once fell to 
 digging with their hands and in a short time 
 had dug a well, which furnished enough water 
 for both horses and men. 
 
 The hardest part of the trip was sleeping 
 without blankets or extra clothing and stand 
 ing guard. 
 
 However, standing guard was absolutely 
 necessary. Several times they saw parties 
 of Indians at a distance, but the travelers 
 were never discovered until one afternoon 
 when according to Burley 's reckoning they 
 were camping within fifty miles of the 
 Arkansas. At this place Ted saw four 
 mounted Indians riding directly toward their 
 
248 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 camp in a ravine ; the Indians being evidently 
 in search of water. 
 
 Ted gave the alarm, and Burley and Philip 
 at once agreed that it was impossible to avoid 
 discovery, so all three at once mounted and 
 started north. 
 
 The Indians no sooner saw the three travel 
 ers than they started in pursuit at full speed. 
 The white men did not dare to put their 
 horses to the test at once for fear that they 
 might give out; moreover, Burley said, if 
 they showed fear, the Indians would dog 
 their trail till they overtook them. 
 
 To the great relief of the white men the 
 reds were armed only with spears and bows 
 and arrows. 
 
 "Lads, we'll have to try the guns on 
 them," Burley decided. "They'll run us 
 down if we don't." 
 
 So they halted and Burley signaled the 
 savages not to approach, but they paid no at 
 tention to his signal. Then Burley pointed 
 his gun at them, and the savages slackened 
 their speed. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 249 
 
 "At them, fellows!" ordered Burley. 
 "Act as if you could blow them to hell." 
 And with these words the three rode forward 
 a few paces, then stopped and boldly pointed 
 their wooden guns. 
 
 That bold maneuver brought the Indians 
 to a stop at a hundred yards. 
 
 "Who are you?" signaled Burley. 
 
 "Comanche," came the answer. "Who 
 are you?" 
 
 "Hunters," Burley replied. "Don't come 
 near!" and then he turned his horse and he 
 and the boys rode slowly away. 
 
 When they crossed over a rise of ground, 
 they saw some scattered timber near the head 
 of a creek about a mile away and rode 
 toward it at an easy gallop. 
 
 The Indians, who had been following them 
 at a distance they thought safe, stopped when 
 the white men entered the timber. 
 
 "Are they going to attack us?" asked Ted 
 much excited. 
 
 * * No, they will not come near. Our wooden 
 guns did the trick." 
 
250 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 For a while red and white man watched 
 one another, then the Indians rode slowly 
 away, believing the whites too well armed. 
 
 As soon as the Comanches were out of 
 sight, the white travelers continued their 
 journey and soon found that they were nearer 
 the Arkansas than they had reckoned. 
 About midnight they crossed the big river by 
 taking hold of the tails of their horses as the 
 animals swam the deep water in mid-stream. 
 
 The water was bitterly cold, and for sev 
 eral hours the three men trotted along beside 
 their horses to keep themselves warm. 
 
 At dawn they could see the adobe walls 
 and the bastions of the big fort. Just as the 
 sun rose like a big red ball out of the prairie 
 they knocked with their wooden guns at the 
 gate of the fort, shivering, ragged, and ex 
 hausted, but jubilant of heart. They had 
 escaped from the Comanches and crossed 
 safely over three hundred miles of wild 
 prairie with nothing but the sun and the 
 stars to guide them, and with no arms but 
 their knives and the pretended guns. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 AT THE GREAT ADOBE FOET 
 
 NO sooner had they entered the fort, 
 than the boys saw that from the bas 
 tions and through the port-holes of 
 this stronghold they could indeed laugh at all 
 the Indians on the plains. The walls of sun- 
 dried brick were three feet in thickness, and 
 Colonel William Bent, one of the owners, had 
 a force of twenty-five well-armed and fear 
 less men under him, while the two cannons 
 in the bastions alone would have thrown the 
 whole Comanche nation into a panic. 
 
 Captain Harley's train had not yet re 
 turned from Santa Fe, but it was known in 
 the fort that three of his men had been cap 
 tured or killed by Comanche raiders. But 
 more welcome to the boys than anything else 
 was the news Colonel Bent told them of their 
 father. He had in some way escaped from 
 
 251 
 
252 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 the Pawnees and had joined some trappers 
 in the foothills and Colonel Bent felt sure 
 that before winter set in he would come to 
 the fort with them. 
 
 "I knew they wouldn't get Father, I knew 
 they wouldn't get him," Ted exclaimed, 
 wildly throwing up his arms and almost 
 choking on a big mouthful of cornbread. 
 "He'll come back or we'll go and find him. 
 Can't we, Mr. Burley?" 
 
 "We need some rest and sleep," Burley 
 tried to calm the excited boy, "after that we 
 can talk about going to the mountains." 
 
 For several days Burley and the lads did 
 nothing but eat and sleep; for the boys had 
 been almost exhausted with cold, fatigue, and 
 loss of sleep. 
 
 "I was mighty glad," Burley explained to 
 Colonel Bent, "that we were nearer the river 
 and the fort than I thought we were. Both 
 the boys and the horses were beginning to 
 play out, although the boys, especially the 
 little fellow would not acknowledge that they 
 were used up." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 253 
 
 About going to the mountains in search of 
 their father, the boys were disappointed. 
 Burley would not listen to it. Colonel Bent 
 also said it would be a hare-brained plan, and 
 if the lads were in any hurry to get killed, 
 they could stand up in front of his big 
 cannon. 
 
 "A brave plainsman," he continued, "like 
 Burley sometimes saves his hair out of a 
 desperate scrape, but he does not go and ask 
 the Indians to scalp him. Burley is right, 
 you fellows stay right here. I don't know 
 where your father is. He may be a hundred 
 or three hundred miles from the fort. If he 
 is alive, he will come in some day; for In 
 dians and trappers for five hundred miles 
 around come to this fort to trade. You were 
 all-fired lucky that Burley brought you into 
 the fort with nothing but wooden clubs. I 
 won't sell you any guns. You stay here till 
 your father comes in or till you go home with 
 a train from Santa Fe. ' ' 
 
 Another talk with Burley convinced the 
 boys that leaving the fort would be foolish, 
 
254 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 and they submitted to the inevitable with as 
 good grace as possible. 
 
 They worked in the fort, helped the men 
 with the big buffalo-skin press, or went with 
 them on short hunting-trips after deer and 
 buffalo near the fort. There was plenty to 
 do and to see. Indians came to the fort to 
 trade and to be fed, and several parties of 
 hunters and trappers of Colonel Bent came 
 and went ; but none brought any more news of 
 Silas Benson. 
 
 Time wore on slowly for the boys. The 
 month of September passed, the days grew 
 short and the nights very cold; for Bent's 
 Fort lay about eight thousand feet above sea 
 level. 
 
 One morning early in October a small train 
 of pack-animals was reported approaching 
 the fort from the north. The boys with 
 Burley and Colonel Bent at once climbed into 
 one of the bastions, from which a good view 
 could be gained. 
 
 "Are they Indians or white trappers !" 
 the boys asked anxiously. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 255 
 
 There were four horsemen and seven or 
 eight pack-animals, mules, or horses. 
 
 When the train had approached within a 
 mile, hoth Burley and Colonel Bent said: 
 "They are white men. A party of trappers 
 coming from the foothills or the mountains 
 with a big haul. All their animals can carry, 
 or they would not come in till spring. ' ' 
 
 "May we ride out to meet them?" asked 
 the boys, and within a few minutes the boys 
 galloped out of the gate, while Colonel Bent 
 and Burley remained in the bastion. 
 
 There seemed to be some kind of commo 
 tion when the two parties met. The train 
 stopped, but the two men in the tower could 
 not see exactly what happened. There were 
 some wild yells apparently coming from the 
 whole party and then Ted seemed to tumble 
 off his horse and began to dance and jump 
 wildly around on the prairie. Then he yelled 
 something toward the fort. Now he jumped 
 on his horse again and raced like mad to the 
 fort yelling at the top of his shrill voice, 
 "He's come, he's come! Father's here!" 
 
256 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 To tell how Benson had escaped from the 
 Pawnees and how he had lived almost a year 
 with the trappers in the mountains and the 
 foothills would make too long a story. In 
 his flight from his captors he had lost his 
 horse, had himself been wounded, but had 
 killed a pursuing Pawnee. His captors, he 
 knew, would expect him to strike out for 
 Bent's Fort, so he went almost in the op 
 posite direction, struck boldly out for the 
 mountains, knowing that on foot and weak 
 from loss of blood he could not hope to reach 
 Bent's Fort. He knew that several parties 
 of white trappers were working west of the 
 Pawnee camp, and he had followed the head 
 waters of the Eepublican River until he 
 reached the camp of the men with whom he 
 had now come to the fort. He had dropped 
 exhausted upon reaching the trappers' camp, 
 and these rough but withal chivalrous 
 knights of the wilderness had nursed him 
 back to life and health. After the things 
 that had happened he did not dare to cross 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 257 
 
 the Pawnee country alone, for he knew that 
 if the Indians captured him a second time, 
 they would not give him an opportunity to 
 escape. 
 
 About a week later Captain Harley's train 
 drew into the fort, and that night there was 
 a great feast and a dance, although there 
 were only two white women and a few Indian 
 women in the whole fort. 
 
 Burley's story of the wooden guns the men 
 would not believe. "Burley," drawled 
 Shawnee Pete, "you were always a devil 
 of a fellow, all right. I'll admit that. But 
 you are also the biggest liar I ever seen." 
 
 But when a minute later, Burley and the 
 boys marched solemnly into the room with 
 their fishy-smelling guns, a howl of delight 
 went up from the men. 
 
 A mock court was at once convened and 
 Shawnee Pete was with great solemnity con 
 demned to be led out into the corral of the 
 fort, there to be roasted alive by three 
 savage-looking Cheyennes, who with a stolid 
 
258 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 face, grunted their approval of the sentence 
 of the court and their willingness to carry it 
 into effect. 
 
 Ted had been breathlessly watching the 
 trial. "Phil, are they going to burn him?" 
 he asked, as two men led the prisoner away. 
 But much to Ted's relief they did not lead 
 him into the corral, but into the big dining- 
 room where Shawnee Pete was allowed to 
 pay in a manner agreeable to the court, the 
 jury, and the spectators for insulting 
 Truthful Jim. 
 
 When, after a day of rest and visiting, 
 Captain Harley's train pulled out for Inde 
 pendence, Burley and the three Bensons 
 joined the train. Silas Benson had made a 
 good catch of fur, which he exchanged for 
 guns, pistols, ammunition and sundry other 
 goods packed in suitable boxes and bales. 
 
 "You could buy these goods much cheaper 
 at Independence than I can sell them to 
 you," Colonel Bent suggested. 
 
 "That is true, Colonel," Benson admitted, 
 "but I expect to use them before I get there. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 259 
 
 I'm not through with this trail and the all- 
 blasted Pawnees. I saw three Pawnee 
 thieves ride away with all I made by hard 
 dangerous work in three years. The Com- 
 anches jumped the bunch of Pawnees before 
 they could get away. Two fellows carrying 
 the coin were overtaken and killed. Two 
 others had me bound and tied to the horse. 
 We got away. I think a third Pawnee also 
 got away. The Comanches did not get my 
 silver, or Burley and the boys would have 
 seen indications of it. I know that the 
 Pawnees haven't got it, or I should have 
 noticed it. 
 
 " Where is it? Who has it? Have any 
 Indians shown silver or gold chains in the 
 fort?" 
 
 Colonel Bent had not seen any gold or 
 silver with any of the Indians that had 
 traded at his fort. 
 
 "Then where is it!" Benson repeated. 
 "The stuff was in two bags weighing about a 
 hundred pounds each, and about half of it 
 was gold. Their ponies couldn't make time 
 
260 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 with such loads, so they jumped off and 
 chucked it, cached it somewhere in the woods 
 on Pawnee Fork. 
 
 "Now you know why I bought a lot of 
 artillery and a few, well, a few mining-tools. 
 But keep it dark, it's not a good story to pass 
 around. 
 
 "Good-by, Colonel! and if you ever lose 
 any boys or get into a tight fix, I'll do for 
 Colonel Bent what he did for me and mine. 
 So help me God!" 
 
CHAPTEE XXVI 
 
 A KNOTTY PROBLEM 
 
 CAPTAIN BARLEY'S caravan left 
 Bent's Fort in high spirits. They 
 had done well at Santa Fe. The 
 trip had certainly not been monotonous, but 
 their lost men had safely returned. The 
 caravan was traveling light, and in spite of 
 the short days was making good time. The 
 weather was delightfully cool, so that neither 
 men nor animals suffered from heat. Their 
 route led down the Arkansas River as far as 
 the Great Bend, so they knew that good grass 
 and water would be plentiful. 
 
 Every evening there were great gatherings 
 around the camp-fires ; for the evenings were 
 long now and the men had many stories to ex 
 change. Benson's experiences amongst the 
 Pawnees and the trappers would alone have 
 filled a book. 
 
 261 
 
262 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Benson had arranged with the wagon- 
 master to have the train camp at Pawnee 
 Fork, whenever they should reach that 
 creek. 
 
 Captain Harley was glad to spend a day 
 with Burley and Benson looking over the 
 scene of the Pawnee attack on Benson and his 
 partner. 
 
 "Every plainsman is caught off his guard 
 once, ' ' said Benson, relating the story of the 
 hold-up. "This is the spot where Jack 
 Fridley and I were caught napping. We 
 had not seen an Indian or a white man since 
 we left Bent's Fort. I proposed to travel 
 over this dangerous stretch from Pawnee 
 Fork, past Pawnee Eock and across the 
 Walnut at night, when the red thieves are 
 seldom about, but Jack was in a great hurry 
 to get home, for he had not seen his wife and 
 children in St. Louis for two years, so I let 
 him have his way. 
 
 " 'You are clean bughouse on Indians,' 
 he railed at me, laughing. * Believe me, they 
 are denned up like the gophers and prairie- 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 263 
 
 dogs. Moreover, not a soul knows we are 
 going to pass here! 
 
 " ' Don't tell me/ he laughed, 'that those 
 two Pawnees who saw us at the fort would 
 ride three hundred miles over a cold wintry 
 prairie to tell the tribe that they might catch 
 two white men and four mules.' 
 
 " 'They wouldn't tell the tribe/ I argued 
 with him; 'they would just get three or four 
 rogues to join them, that would be plenty to 
 make it hot for us.' 
 
 "Well, here is the spot. The mules were 
 going at a walk. All at once they stopped. 
 Five or six Indians just rose out of the brush. 
 One stopped the mules, one fired at Fridley 
 and pulled him off the wagon, and two men 
 poked their guns into my face, before I saw 
 there was any Indian on my side. 
 
 "Two men hustled Fridley off toward the 
 river. Two others put me on a horse, tied 
 my hands in front of me and tied my feet 
 with a rope passed under the pony's belly. 
 
 "Fridley fired his pistol and I think killed 
 or wounded one man. I never had a chance 
 
264 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 even to grab my pistol and don't know what 
 became of it. 
 
 "Well, all I can say is they got us right, 
 found us napping like a couple of green kids. 
 Phil and Ted couldn't have made a poorer 
 showing. It makes me mad every time I 
 think of it." 
 
 Benson was silent as if overcome anew with 
 chagrin at having been trapped by Indians. 
 
 "I swear," he began again, "if I hadn't 
 seen the Pawnees with my own eyes, I would 
 have vowed the whole affair was a well- 
 planned hold-up by white cut-throats. It 
 wasn't done in the Indian way. It was too 
 bold, absolutely reckless, and all over before 
 you could say Jack Robinson. I believe to 
 this day that the thing was planned by a 
 white road-agent, but, if a white man had a 
 hand in it, he was dressed and painted like 
 an Indian. Oh, but give me a chance to draw 
 a bead on some of my Pawnee friends!" 
 
 The three men went over to the copse 
 where Burley and the boys had found the 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 265 
 
 bones and the piece of a coat. Benson gave 
 one look at the piece of cloth. 
 
 "It's a piece of the coat," he spoke in a 
 low voice now, "that Fridley wore on that 
 last ride. The brutes murdered him right 
 here." 
 
 "What did you do with your coin-bags ?" 
 asked Harley. "Show us where you saw 
 them last." 
 
 ' * Two men took a bag each, and two others 
 told me to come along with them. We all 
 rode west along the south side of the creek. 
 When we had gone a few rods, one of the men 
 with the coin-bag called, 'Comanche!' I 
 looked back and saw about a dozen Indians 
 coming after us full tilt, and I saw three men 
 with the coin-bags. Then my two captors 
 jabbed their spears into my pony and into my 
 back and called, 'Run,' and away we all tore 
 for the heavy timber. 
 
 "The three of us got away and rode all 
 night. The two men who carried the bags 
 I never saw again. Who the third man was, 
 
266 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 I don't know, but an Indian known as Spotted 
 Crow joined us a day before we reached the 
 Pawnee camp on the Eepublican Eiver and 
 had a long talk with my captors. I was lying 
 bound at the foot of a tree too far away from 
 them to hear what they said. 
 
 4 ' That's all I can tell you. How I broke 
 away a month later I have already told you. 
 
 " There can't have been more than seven 
 or eight in the whole party. How many the 
 Comanches killed, and what became of the 
 mules and the wagon I don't know." 
 
 The three men now went and carefully 
 searched the woods, where Benson and his 
 captors had crossed the creek. They walked 
 up and down the stream which was very low, 
 but they found no traces of dead Indians and 
 not a sign of coin-bags. 
 
 "Here is my theory," Benson began when 
 they had dismounted to rest a while. "The 
 two fellows who had the coin realized they 
 could not escape with the bags and they 
 cached them somewhere in the timber. But 
 this delayed them long enough so that the 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 267 
 
 Comanches overtook them and killed them. 
 The Comanches did not find the coin, but they 
 took the mules, our wagon, guns, and every 
 thing else. They also killed the Pawnees 
 who had captured Fridley. 
 
 "Spotted Crow was the third Indian with 
 the coin-hags. He got away, but he returned 
 and buried the bodies of the two dead 
 Pawnees. The man whom Fridley shot was 
 a white man, who had planned the robbery. 
 He was carried off and killed by the 
 Comanches, or if he escaped, he left the 
 country and is keeping mum about his bloody 
 work. If one could search the valley, he 
 would probably find our wagon on a sand-bar 
 of the Arkansas. And the mules, I would 
 not be surprised to find in a corral at Inde 
 pendence. ' ' 
 
 Harley could suggest no other solution of 
 the mystery, but he also expressed his belief 
 that a white man had planned the robbery; 
 but he did not think that Benson had much of 
 a chance to recover the bags. 
 
 "You might as well hunt for a carpet-tack 
 
268 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 on the prairie as search for your bags in this 
 timber along Pawnee Fork, and you are 
 likely to have some more trouble with the 
 Beds." 
 
 "Nothing would suit me better," declared 
 Benson whose fighting blood was up. "Man, 
 we have an armful of guns and pistols, and 
 ammunition enough to fight the whole 
 Pawnee tribe. Nothing would please me 
 better than a chance to let the sun shine 
 through a few of my Pawnee friends. That 
 scar on my side still hurts, and I can still feel 
 that infernal rawhide around my ankles. 
 
 "No, I'm not going home till I find that 
 Pawnee cache. You send the letter I gave 
 you to my wife and tell her that we are safe 
 and well, and that no Indians can touch us. 
 
 "There are four of us, and we have a regu 
 lar arsenal of guns. Why, man, I bought out 
 Colonel Bent's stock of shooting-irons that 
 were worth taking away. It will be a bad 
 day for the Pawnees if any of them come 
 this way." 
 
 The next morning Captain Harley's train 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 269 
 
 started east, but Benson and Burley and the 
 two boys pitched their camp in a grove of 
 hackberry trees on Pawnee Fork a mile west 
 of the crossing of the Santa Fe Trail. 
 
CHAPTER XXVH 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF THE PAWNEE CACHE 
 
 WHAT kind of a camp to put up 
 was a serious problem for the 
 four men. 
 
 A tepee would be the quickest to build. 
 They had brought enough skins for it, and 
 the necessary poles could be cut in a few 
 minutes; but it would afford no protection 
 against an attack from Indians. 
 
 Benson suggested a sod-house, such as the 
 Pawnees built in those days. It would be 
 warm and comfortable, but the building of it 
 would involve a great deal of work; more 
 over, an Indian could crawl up on the roof of 
 such a house and fire his gun or shoot his 
 arrow through the smoke-hole. 
 
 It was true, as Burley suggested, that they 
 might not see an Indian till spring, but it 
 was also true, as Benson pointed out, that 
 
 270 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 271 
 
 they might be attacked by one of those small 
 roaming parties almost any day. 
 
 After talking the matter over and consid 
 ering it from all angles, they decided to put 
 up a tepee and build a palisade of posts 
 around it. 
 
 The grove of hackberry trees, where 
 they had camped the first night they found 
 not suitable for a permanent camp. It was 
 surrounded by too many trees and bushes 
 that would afford hiding-places for lurking 
 Indians, although it was well sheltered from 
 cold winds and was close to water. 
 
 They finally selected a level open meadow 
 far enough away from any timber and brush, 
 so that the bullets and arrows of any attack 
 ing Indians could do no harm. In this spot 
 they set up their skin tepee. Then they dug 
 a trench enclosing a square of about twenty 
 feet. In this trench they planted the pali 
 sade, making it about ten feet high and using 
 logs from six to ten or twelve inches thick. 
 
 Burley and Benson were good axmen and 
 they made the chips fly lively from tall 
 
272 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 straight haekberries, cottonwoods, and other 
 trees, while to Philip and Ted fell the duty of 
 digging the trench about three feet deep. 
 The ponies also came in for their share of 
 the work. They proved very useful for 
 dragging the logs to the fort, thus speeding 
 up the work and relieving the men of much 
 hard and tedious labor; for the logs had to 
 be cut at some distance from the fort. 
 
 The men all entered upon the work in the 
 spirit of a game, and they were surprised 
 themselves when the whole fort, as the boys 
 had at once called it, was completed in two 
 days. 
 
 "If Colonel Bent could see us at work/' 
 Benson remarked, as they were setting the 
 poles in the trench, "he would know what I 
 wanted to do with all the lumbering and min 
 ing-tools." 
 
 Four small logs they had tied together to 
 serve as a door; and at the four corners and 
 in the four walls of the palisade they had 
 cut portholes. These portholes were about 
 seven feet above the ground, so that no 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 273 
 
 Indian, although he might have crawled up to 
 the fort under cover of darkness, could poke 
 his gun through the portholes and fire at 
 the inmates from the outside. On the inside 
 the men had built a running-board of two 
 flattened logs about three feet above the 
 ground. Thus they could conveniently look 
 through the portholes and pour a raking fire 
 all around their stronghold. 
 
 They had now built a comfortable and safe 
 camp, where they might stay all winter and 
 defy almost any number of savages. The 
 stockade was large enough so that, in case 
 of need, they could take their ponies into it. 
 
 4 'Well, boys," Benson remarked with a 
 chuckle when all was finished, "this place 
 isn't quite as strong as Colonel Bent's fort, 
 but I think we could stand off quite a bunch 
 of them." 
 
 "There is one thing more to be done," 
 Burley suggested. "We ought to dig a well 
 inside the fort. If a band of them should 
 shut us in here for several days, it would be 
 very disagreeable. If we had water inside we 
 
274 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 could laugh at them and tell them to stick 
 around as long as they liked. " 
 
 The plan seemed a good one, and they 
 spent half a day in digging a well in the 
 corner opposite the tepee. They found water 
 at a depth of only five or six feet; and to 
 prevent the sand from coming in, they lined 
 the well with dry poles from which the bark 
 had been carefully removed. They avoided 
 green poles because their sap would have 
 given a bad taste to the water. 
 
 A safe camp having been established, the 
 search for the cache began in earnest. Both 
 Benson and Burley were experienced plains 
 men and had a good deal of knowledge of 
 Indian ways, and they tried to reason out 
 some clew as to the place where the Pawnees 
 had most likely cached the silver. 
 
 The Pawnees were hard pressed by the 
 Comanches, and there was certainly no time 
 to bury the coin-bags. 
 
 They did not just drop the money; for if 
 they had done that, they could have made 
 their escape. They hid the silver somewhere 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 275 
 
 which delayed them long enough so their pur 
 suers overtook them and killed them. Spot 
 ted Crow who did not carry a bag did make 
 his escape. 
 
 After trying their best to get some clew, 
 the men made a thorough search in Pawnee 
 Fork. While one man guarded the ponies, 
 the other three, with sharp poles probed 
 every likely place in the creek. In every 
 deep hole, under every overhanging bank, 
 under piles of driftwood and in sand-banks 
 they did not miss a square foot. For a mile 
 above and below the place where Benson had 
 crossed with his captors, they searched the 
 bed and the bank of the stream, until Burley 
 declared: "If anybody ever lost a rat-trap 
 on this whole blooming stretch of creek, we 
 would have found it. I would swear in court 
 that there is no silver cached in these 
 waters." 
 
 Benson had felt so sure that they would find 
 the treasure in the creek that he was com 
 pletely mystified, when it became certain that 
 they had been following a wrong plan. 
 
276 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 But the four treasure-hunters were not dis 
 couraged. They were sure that neither the 
 Comanches nor the escaping Pawnees had 
 carried away the treasure, consequently it 
 must be cached somewhere within a mile of 
 Benson's crossing place. 
 
 When they had given up finding it in the 
 creek, they looked in every dense clump of 
 brush and in every hollow tree with a cavity 
 large enough and close enough to the ground 
 so that a heavy bag might quickly have been 
 thrust into it. 
 
 They did find some remains of the killed 
 Pawnees, but not a sign did they discover of 
 the bags, not a single coin did they rake up 
 under the dead forest leaves. After two 
 weeks of the most painstaking search they 
 were completely baffled. 
 
 "Boys, we are beaten at the game," Ben 
 son acknowledged one evening as they were 
 sitting around the fire in the tepee. "I don't 
 know what to do next or where to look next. 
 I don't know but that we had better pack up 
 and go home." 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 277 
 
 But Burley and the boys would not hear 
 of giving up. 
 
 11 We had better do some hunting, " Burley 
 proposed, "or I won't be cook much longer. 
 An elk and a few deer would keep us going 
 for a while, and possibly while we are hunt 
 ing deer we might stumble on that Pawnee 
 cache. ' ' 
 
 They followed Burley 's advice, and spent 
 a week in hunting and scouting all along 
 Pawnee Fork from its mouth at the Arkansas 
 as far as ten or twelve miles west. They se 
 cured plenty of game, elk, deer, and wild tur 
 keys. Grouse and quail they could have se 
 cured in any quantity if this game had not 
 been too small for their expensive ammu 
 nition; for powder at Bent's Fort cost fifty 
 cents a pint cup. 
 
 Generally they traveled all four together 
 on horseback, but often they dismounted, and 
 while two men stayed with the horses, the 
 other two crossed back and forth over the 
 valley of the creek like timber cruisers who 
 had instructions to make a complete census 
 
278 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 of every tree. They found stone arrow 
 heads, stone axes, clubs and knives, Indian 
 graves and battle-fields, for in this very re 
 gion war-parties of many tribes had met in 
 bloody combat for ages. 
 
 November had passed and December opened 
 with cold north winds and light snow 
 flurries. For a few days the white crystals 
 made of woods and prairie a slate on which 
 were minutely recorded all the doings of the 
 wild folk, from elk, deer, and wolf to quail, 
 weasel, and wild mice. 
 
 But the mystery they were trying to solve 
 was growing deeper. They felt that they 
 knew every square rod of the valley of Paw 
 nee Creek for five miles above the crossing 
 of the Santa Fe Trail, and yet of the stolen 
 treasure they had found neither trace nor 
 clue. 
 
 "Benson," declared Burley one evening, 
 "I believe you made up this story of the 
 Silver Cache. You have lived among liars 
 so long that your morals have become cor 
 rupted. I don't believe you had a dollar in 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 279 
 
 your wagon. You blew it all in at the fan 
 dangoes in Santa Fe." 
 
 "Well, Jim/' replied Benson with a smile. 
 "It is true I have knocked about with you 
 and the likes of you for a number of years, 
 and if I hadn't lifted those bags into the 
 wagon with my own hands, you could almost 
 make me believe that I had had a romantic 
 pipe-dream. 
 
 "It beats me what has become of those 
 bags. Maybe the Comanches got hold of 
 them, anyhow, and buried them among the 
 sand-hills of the Arkansas. In that case, 
 they are gone ; lost for good. ' ' 
 
 "The Comanches did not get them, or the 
 boys and I would have seen some gold and 
 silver coins in the Comanche camp. The 
 Pawnees did not get them, or you would have 
 seen indications of it amongst the Pawnees," 
 Burley came back at once. 
 
 "So where are they? They are here, 
 somewhere on Pawnee Fork, because they 
 cannot be anywhere else. Hang it, Benson, 
 I believe you hid them yourself and now you 
 
280 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 have forgotten the spot where you salted 
 them down." 
 
 Again Benson smiled with a far-away 
 look. 
 
 "Jim, I wish I had had a chance to salt 
 them down, but those Eeds had too much the 
 drop on me." 
 
 There was one other thing that puzzled 
 Benson and Burley, and that was the entire 
 absence of Indians from the region. No In 
 dians or signs of Indians had been seen on 
 Pawnee Fork since the four whites had put 
 up their tepee stockade. 
 
 A novice on the plains would probably have 
 laughed at the men's caution and careful 
 preparation, but Benson and Burley knew 
 only too well that the time to prepare against 
 Indians is when there are no signs of Indians. 
 They also knew that by this time the Indians 
 had gathered in their customary winter quar 
 ters. The Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Chey- 
 ennes at Big Timber on the upper Arkansas 
 near Bent's Fort, where wood for their fires 
 and cottonwood brush and bark for their 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 281 
 
 ponies was plentiful; the Pawnees in their 
 pole-and-sod houses on the Republican 
 River, north of the Arkansas ; and the Com- 
 anches on the Canadian and in the foothills 
 of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 But what had become of the frequent small 
 war parties? The weather had not been se 
 vere, and game was plentiful on Pawnee 
 Fork, on Walnut Creek, and on the Arkan 
 sas. 
 
 Every day the men roamed about scouting 
 for Indian signs and picking up such game 
 as they came across. It was on one of these 
 hunting and scouting trips west of their camp 
 that quite by accident, as Burley had pre 
 dicted, they almost stumbled upon a clew of 
 the vanished treasure. 
 
 Philip had wounded a turkey, which flapped 
 out of the tree-tops and hid in the tangled 
 branches of a fallen elm. While the young 
 hunter was looking for his game he discov 
 ered one of the coin-bags apparently thrown 
 hurriedly under the prostrate branches and 
 all but covered with dead leaves. 
 
282 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 "Oh, Father and Burley," the boy called, 
 ' ' come quick ! Here is one of the bags ! ' ' 
 
 It was indeed one of the bags, still bear 
 ing the names of Benson and Fridley, but 
 the top had been cut off and every piece of 
 silver was gone. 
 
 "Ah, I see," murmured Burley, "Indian 
 took scalp and insides of bag. Indian had 
 sharp scalping-knife and was in a heap big 
 hurry. Let Indian keep scalp, but where 's 
 the insides?" 
 
 For a hundred feet around they searched 
 for the "insides" on their hands and knees, 
 raking over the dead leaves with their hands, 
 but not a coin did they find. 
 
 However, their discovery put new spirit 
 into them and made them feel that, at last, 
 they were hot on the trail of their game. 
 
 "If we just stick around and don't give 
 up, we'll find that cache yet," Burley in 
 sisted. 
 
 About a week later they were again look 
 ing for signs. It was a cool sunny morning, 
 and during the night weeds and brush had 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 283 
 
 been covered with delicate crystals of hoar 
 frost. It was on the frosted grass and leaves 
 that they discovered a track, not a deer-track 
 or wolf -track, but moccasin tracks, tracks of 
 real Indians. At last some Indians had 
 come to the battle-haunted region. 
 
 "Look here, men," Benson pointed out, 
 "It isn't them. There's only one. Don't 
 get his track mixed with ours. Why is there 
 only one? An Indian seldom goes alone far 
 from the main camp." 
 
 The trail led past the fallen elm, but the 
 maker of it had not stopped there. He had 
 gone straight to a small level spot near the 
 creek, where he had stirred the leaves with 
 his feet and had poked in the ground with 
 a stick. The trail and the signs were all 
 fresh, perhaps an hour or two old. The In 
 dian had come from the south side of the 
 creek, and after examining the small level 
 spot had leisurely crossed the creek and had 
 slowly walked up the steep bluffs north of 
 the creek. 
 
 The men hurried to their cabin and re- 
 
284 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 turned with picks and spades, their miners' 
 tools as Colonel Bent had called them. 
 
 "Here we do some digging," Benson told 
 them; "but first let us clear away the dead 
 leaves. I have a hunch, boys: That lone 
 Indian was the honorable Spotted Crow, 
 Pawnee medicine-man and cut-throat, and he 
 was looking for the buried treasure. That's 
 why he came all alone. ' ' 
 
 When the leaves were cleared away 
 the men saw that the creek had flooded the 
 piece of ground in spring and had covered 
 it with a foot of mud. If the treasure was 
 buried here, Spotted Crow had gone back to 
 bring his squaw and daughters to dig it out 
 with their hoes. 
 
 For half an hour the men picked and dug 
 up the ground as if they were fishermen 
 digging for angle-worms. The wilderness 
 has no angle-worms, nor did it yield any 
 silver, for not a coin did they find. 
 
 "Best a minute!" Burley called. "Here, 
 Benson, let us take a smoke and do a little 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 285 
 
 thinking. I believe we are hot, but we are 
 going it blind again. 
 
 " Those Pawnees did not scatter the silver 
 on the ground, and they did not have time to 
 dig a hole. The only way to hide it quickly 
 was to shove it into a ready-made hole. The 
 creek has covered and closed that hole and 
 it's up to us to find it." 
 
 All four went to work probing and sound 
 ing with picks and poles for a covered hole. 
 
 4 * Here is one ! Here it is !" exclaimed Ted 
 as he ran his sharp stick into a buried wood- 
 chuck-hole under, a stump. 
 
 With great care Philip dug away the loose 
 soil and mulch. Now the entrance was clear. 
 Philip lay down and reached in as far as he 
 could. For a few seconds he felt around 
 quietly, then he jumped up as if bitten by 
 a rattlesnake. 
 
 11 Catch them! Catch them!" he cried as 
 he threw a handful of silver into the air. 
 "The hole is full of them, chuck-full of them. 
 It's all there!" 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 HOMEWABD BOUND 
 
 THEY had at last found the Cache of 
 the Pawnee. The hole was as full 
 of silver as a squirrel's hoard is of 
 nuts or pine cones. And below the silver 
 stuck the smaller bag intact, filled with gold 
 coins. The second bag had been too large 
 for the hole, so the Pawnee had skillfully 
 " scalped " the bag, poured the contents into 
 the hole, and thrown away the empty bag. 
 
 That evening there was a big feast in the 
 stockade. The men and boys feasted on 
 coffee and sugar, hardtack, elk-tongue, and 
 choice venison. 
 
 In the morning the treasure was packed on 
 Benson's and Burley's ponies, while the boys 
 carried blankets and food. Each one had his 
 gun and pistol loaded and carried his share 
 of ammunition. The stockade, the tepee, and 
 
 286 
 
THE SILVER CACHE 287 
 
 the mining-tools they left behind, together 
 with a handful of silver. 
 
 "The squaw and daughters of Spotted 
 Crow should be rewarded for their long trip. 
 If they found nothing at all, the old scoundrel 
 would beat the poor girls." Burley re 
 marked with a laugh : l ' There is more silver 
 than they ever set eyes on." 
 
 The party did not expect to be pursued, 
 but when night came Burley, Benson and 
 Philip changed standing guard, and the 
 ponies were staked out close to the sleeping 
 men. 
 
 "They caught me napping once," Benson 
 admitted, "but they will never catch me 
 again." 
 
 On account of the heavy loads on the 
 ponies, the travelers had to proceed slowly, 
 for two ponies carried each about a hundred 
 pounds of the Pawnee's cache. 
 
 It was now late in December and the 
 weather turned bitterly cold. When they 
 reached the camping-place at Walnut Creek, 
 a violent storm with sleet and snow was 
 
288 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 raging, while the temperature suddenly 
 dropped many degrees. 
 
 It was still forenoon and the travelers had 
 heen on the way only a few hours. They 
 could have gone on in the face of the storm, 
 but they feared to exhaust or even lose their 
 horses, and in that case one or more men 
 would be compelled to travel on foot, so they 
 decided to camp till the storm had passed. 
 
 They built a rude brush shelter for them 
 selves and a similar shelter for the ponies. 
 Under the lee of their own shelter they kept 
 a fire going day and night. Of course, they 
 slept Indian-fashion with their heads under 
 cover, and during the first night, when the 
 snow was coming down thick, Ted and Philip 
 were so warm that Ted put his hand through 
 the snow to let in some fresh air under their 
 buffalo robe. 
 
 How the storm roared through the tree- 
 tops, and how the branches cracked and 
 groaned they scarcely heard; for they had 
 become accustomed to sleep anywhere as long 
 as they were warm. 
 

 OP THE PAWNEE 289 
 
 The ponies also were very comfortable. 
 They were sheltered from the cutting blast, 
 the men had cut them a liberal supply of 
 cottonwood browse, and they had not become 
 heated by an attempt to travel against the 
 storm. 
 
 The cold did not trouble them, for their 
 hair had grown long and thick and they were 
 used to living in the open the year round 
 like the wild and half -wild ponies of Pawnees 
 and Comanches. As long as they had plenty 
 of grass or brush and water or snow, they did 
 not suffer. Bancroft Library 
 
 The only thing that made the men feel un 
 easy at their camp fire on the Walnut was 
 the fact that straight north of them on the 
 Republican River was located a big Pawnee 
 village. If Spotted Crow came back after 
 his cache, or if any Pawnees happened to re 
 turn to their village, their trail would lead 
 them close by the white men's camp. Al 
 though it was not likely that any Indians 
 would be traveling, while the storm lasted, 
 the white travelers kept one man on guard 
 
290 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 duty during every hour of the night. They 
 had learned the wisdom of watchfulness. 
 
 When on the third day the storm had spent 
 itself, they broke camp at daylight and late 
 in the evening reached Cow Creek, where 
 they were less likely to fall in with any roam 
 ing Pawnees. 
 
 About midnight on Christmas Eve they 
 reached Council Grove, which ended their 
 journey through the country of savage and 
 hostile Indians, but they did not relax their 
 watchfulness, for white criminals had already 
 begun to infest the east end of the Santa Fe 
 Trail. 
 
 From now on both men and horses were 
 anxious to travel as fast as possible over the 
 last hundred and fifty miles of the trail, 
 Ted's pony setting the pace and the other two 
 following. 
 
 On New Year's Eve, before Mrs. Benson 
 and Uncle Jethro blew out their candles, they 
 reached the home farm. 
 
 The mother of the boys was speechless with 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 291 
 
 joy, while old Uncle Jethro fairly bubbled 
 over with gladness and wonder. 
 
 No word had been received from the trav 
 elers since Captain Harley had brought the 
 letter and news to them, and while the 
 boys' mother had anxiously hoped and 
 prayed for their return from week to week, 
 Uncle Jethro had secretly made up his mind 
 that all three of them were lost. 
 
 "I always said," he frequently mumbled 
 to himself when he was doing chores about 
 the barn, "that Silas would come to a bad 
 end. Silas was always too much of a dare 
 devil. 
 
 "Marian should not have let the boys go 
 on the trail, but mothers no longer control 
 their boys as they did when I was young. ' ' 
 
 Silas Benson and his boys compelled Jim 
 Burley to accept a liberal share of the Paw 
 nee Cache. Truthful Jim took it with a 
 strong protest, saying: "A single man 
 doesn't need a lot of money. I'm going back 
 
292 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 on the trail to lift a few scalps of our Coman- 
 che and Pawnee friends. 
 
 "You stay at home, Silas, and use your 
 dough for your family; a married man has 
 no business on the trail." 
 
 When spring came, however, Benson as 
 well as Burley was much tempted to join one 
 of the long trains; but by the earnest en 
 treaties of Mrs. Benson and the advice of 
 Uncle Jethro, they were enabled to resist all 
 temptations and all offers. 
 
 "You should never tempt the devil more 
 than once," Uncle Jethro preached in a high 
 voice and with slyly winking eyes: "for he 
 gets you sure the second time. ' ' 
 
 When about a dozen years later, the war 
 with Mexico broke out, Philip and Burley 
 joined General Kearney's troops, and at the 
 close of the war remained on the Pacific 
 Coast. 
 
 Ted followed his youthful ambition and 
 became a Santa Fe trader, until the railroad 
 replaced the old wagon trail. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 293 
 
 Early in the seventies, Ted with a long car 
 avan of wagons camped for the last time on 
 Pawnee Fork. The railroad had reached the 
 famous creek. Long construction trains 
 loaded with ties and rails were creeping west 
 ward like gigantic snakes. Crews of white 
 men strung out the clanging rails, and men 
 with long steel hammers spiked them to the 
 ties, and the clank, clank, of the iron trail, 
 the trail of a new era, was heard for the 
 first time on Pawnee Fork and the Upper 
 Arkansas. Among the sand-hills, south of 
 the river, buffaloes and Texas cattle were 
 grazing together. A herd of antelopes were 
 watching the caravan from the Arkansas 
 bottom. The prairie was dotted with sod- 
 houses and cabins of white settlers, and 
 under the trees on Pawnee Fork, stood the 
 tepees of some Indians on their way to their 
 reservations in Indian Territory. 
 
 The Red Man was leaving the great stage 
 of the Plains and the White Man was taking 
 the Indian's place. 
 
294 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 Much had happened since the four adven 
 turers recovered the Silver Cache of the 
 Pawnee. 
 
 The Mexican War and the long bitter 
 struggle of the Civil War were matters of 
 history. The railroad and telegraph had 
 come. The Indians of the Plains had begun 
 to feel the strong arm of the United States 
 Government, but they were not really sub 
 dued until the buffaloes became extinct in 
 the early eighties, when the once proud and 
 warlike tribes had no choice left them but 
 submission to the white race, or starvation. 
 
 It was Ted's last trip over the long trail. 
 In 1880 the railroad reached Santa Fe, and 
 the trail and the long trains of canvas-cov 
 ered wagons drawn by big long-horned oxen 
 passed into the world of history and romance. 
 
 Years before this event, Kansas City at 
 the mouth of the Kaw or Kansas Eiver had 
 wrested the Santa Fe trade from Indepen 
 dence, while Fort Leavenworth had become 
 the headquarters for the United States mil 
 itary operations against the Indians. 
 
OF THE PAWNEE 295 
 
 Where years ago the ox-trains needed three 
 months to creep over the prairie trail from 
 the Missouri Eiver to Santa Fe, the rumbling 
 cars and shrieking engines of the steel trail 
 cover the distance in thirty-six hours, running 
 in many places over the very ground and 
 fords of the old ox trail. 
 
 In a few spots the deep ruts of the ox 
 wagons are still visible among the tall wild 
 sunflowers, but most of the old trail has been 
 leveled and buried by the white man's plow. 
 
 The white man's plow, his highways and 
 railroads, have leveled the old Santa Fe 
 Trail, the Indian villages and the Indian 
 graves. 
 
 Thousands of Indians are to-day citizens 
 of the United States in the State of Okla 
 homa, and some of them have crossed the 
 ocean to fight side by side in the trenches of 
 Europe with the descendants of the old 
 traders and trappers and the Indian fighters 
 of the old United States Army. 
 
 A new age has come. Gone are the buffalo 
 herds, the war chiefs, and the Santa Fe 
 
296 THE SILVER CACHE 
 
 traders, never to return to earth. But in 
 history and romance the buffaloes and the 
 red warriors and the men of the Santa Fe 
 trail will live forever. 
 
 THE 
 
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX 
 
 The Adventures of Two Boy Scouts on 
 the Minnesota Frontier 
 
 By D. LANQE 
 
 Illustrated izmo Cloth Price, Net, $1.25 
 
 THIS story was written by a prominent 
 educator to satisfy the insistent demand of 
 active boys for an " Indian Story," as well as 
 to help them to understand what even the young 
 endured in the making of our country. Vhe story 
 is based on the last desperate stand of the brave 
 and warlike Sioux tribes against the resistles? 
 tide of white men's civilization, the thrilling 
 scenes of which were enacted on the Minnesota 
 frontier in the early days of the Civil War. 
 
 " It is a book which will appeal to young and ola 
 alike, as the incidents are historically correct and 
 related in a wide-awake manner." Philadelphia 
 Press. 
 
 " It seems like a strange, true story more than 
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 it can be commended to all bo reader* and to maty 
 <* their elders." Hartford Times. 
 
 THE SILVER ISLAND OF 
 THE CHIPPEWA 
 
 By D. LANQE 
 
 Illustrated i2mo Cloth Price, Net, $1.25 
 
 HERE is a boys' book that tells of the famous 
 Silver Island in Lake Superior from which 
 it is a fact that ore to the value of $3,089,000 
 was taken^ and represents a youth of nineteen 
 and his active small brother aged eleven as 
 locating it after eight months of wild life, dur 
 ing which they wintered on Isle Royale. Their 
 success and escape from a murderous half-breed 
 are due to the friendship of a noble Chippewa 
 Indian, and much is told of Indian nature and 
 ways by one who thoroughly knows the subject. 
 
 There is no call to buy cheap, impossible stuff 
 for boys' reading while there is such a book as this 
 available." Philadelphia Inquirer, 
 
 Por tale by mil booksellers or seat postpaid on receipt 
 of price by the publishers 
 
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 THE SILVER ISLAND 
 OF THE CfflPPEWA 
 
LOST IN THE FUR COUNTRY 
 
 By D. LANGE 
 
 Illustrated I2mo Cloth $1.25 net 
 
 MR. LANGE is the superintendent of 
 schools, St. Paul, Minn., and is famed 
 for his knowledge of both natural and 
 political history. He is also an expert in the 
 very difficult art of interesting boys profitably*, 
 and has proved it to a very wide circle by his 
 previous books. His third book, also an In 
 dian story, has the elements of popularity: 
 mystery, peril, and daring, told in graphic 
 style, and presenting Indian nature and the 
 general life of the great wild regions in the 
 North with both charm and authority. 
 
 ' It is a thrilling story of Indian life. The 
 author knows his subject thoroughly and writes 
 with admirable simplicity and directness." Ex 
 aminer- Watchman. 
 
 IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH 
 By D. LANGE 
 
 Illustrated by W. L. HOWES I2mo Cloth 
 Price, $1.25 net 
 
 THE story opens at a Hudson Bay trading 
 post, where the father of a sturdy 
 Scotch lad, Steve McLean, is in charge. 
 Wishing a home of their own, Steve and 
 his father, with a faithful Indian as guide, 
 make a five-hundred-mile canoe trip to Red 
 River, and join in one of great historic 
 buffalo hunts, after which they make a thrill 
 ing escape from the hostile Blackfeet Indians 
 Then comes a most adventurous trip down 
 the Arkansas River to the Mississippi and 
 thence to St. Louis, where the story closes 
 happily. It gives a stirring, accurate and 
 fascinating account of pioneer life as the 
 hardy men and boys of earlier days knew it. 
 
 " Mr. Lange's volume gives a faithful account of early pioneer days and 
 hardships, introducing much valuable knowledge of Indian craft and wild life." 
 Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt 
 of price by the publishers 
 
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 IN THE GREAT 
 WILD NORTH 
 
U. S. SERVICE SERIES 
 
 By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 
 
 fliusirations from photographs taken in work for U. S. Govtrnmeci 
 Large 12mo Cloth $1.50 each, net 
 
 "There are no better books for boys than if 'rands Rolt- Wheeler's 
 *U. S. Service Series.' " Chicago Rcsord-Herald. 
 
 THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY 
 
 THIS story describes the thrilling advent. 
 -- ~ . - - ii ^es of members of the U S. Geological 
 
 Survey, graphically woven into a stirring 
 narrative that both pleases and instructs. The 
 author enjoys an intimate acquaintance with 
 the chiefs of the various bureaus in Washing, 
 ton, and is able to obtain at first !>and the 
 material for his books. 
 
 "There Js abundant charm and vigor In the 
 narrative which is sure to please the boy leaders 
 and will do much toward stimulating their patriot 
 isrn by making them alive to the needs of conser 
 vation of the vast resources of their country." 
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 THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS 
 
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 * mighty representative of our country's government, though young in 
 years a youthful monarch in a vast domain of forest: Replete with 
 information, alive with adventure, and inciting patriotism at every step, 
 this handsome book is one to be instantly appreciated. 
 
 " It is a fascinating romance of real life in our country, and wHlprov* a great 
 pleasure and inspiration to the boys who read it." The Continent t Chicago. 
 
 THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS 
 
 "PH ROUGH the experiences of a bright American boy, the author shows 
 A how the necessary infoimation is gathered. The securing of this of 
 ten involves hardship" and peril, requiring journeys by dog-team in the 
 frozen North and by launch in the alligator-filled Everglades of Florida, 
 while the enumerator whose work lies among the dangerous criminal 
 classes of the greater cities must take his life in his own hands. 
 
 " Every young man should read this story from cover to cover, thereby getting 
 a clear conception of conditions as they exist to-day, for such knowledge will have 
 a clean, invigorating and healthy influence on the young growing aad thinking 
 mind," Boston Globe. 
 
 For f&le by all booksellers or seat postpaid on receipt ot 
 price by the publishers 
 
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U. S. SERVICE SERIES 
 
 By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 
 
 Many illustrations from photographs taken in work for U.S. Government 
 Large 12m o Cloth Net $1.50 per volume 
 
 41 There are no better books for boys than Francis Rolt- Wheeler's U. S. 
 Service Series.' " Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES 
 
 VITITH & bright, active American youth as 
 * a hero, is told the story of the Fisheries, 
 which in their actual importance dwarf every 
 other human industry. The book does not 
 lack thrilling scenes. The far Aleutian Islands 
 have witnessed more desperate sea -fighting 
 than has occurred elsewhere since the days of 
 the Spanish buccaneers, and pirate craft, which 
 the U. Se Fisheries must watch, rifle in hand, 
 are prowling in the Behring Sea to-day. The 
 fish-farms of the United States are as inter 
 esting as they are immense in their scope. 
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 attractively written and illustrated as to fascinate 
 the reader into staying up until all hours to finish 
 it." Philadelphia Despatch. 
 
 THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS 
 
 T^HIS book tells all about the Indian as he 
 * really was and is; the Menominee in his 
 birch-bark canoe; the Iroquois in his wigwam in 
 the forest; the Sioux of the plains upon his war- 
 pony; the Apache, cruel and unyielding as his 
 arid desert; the Pueblo Indians, with remains of 
 ancient Spanish civilization lurking in the fast 
 nesses of their massed communal dwellings; the 
 Tlingit of the Pacific Coast, with his totem-poles. 
 With a typical bright American youth as a central 
 figure, a good idea of a great field of national 
 activity is given, and made thrilling in its human 
 idebythe heroism demanded by the little-known 
 adventures of those who do the work ol " Uncle 
 Sam." 
 
 " An exceedingly interesting 1 Indian story, because it is true, 
 ft dramatic and picturesque incident of Indian life." N. Y. Times. 
 
 THEBOYIWITUTHE 
 .U.S.FISHERIES 
 
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 U.S.INDIANS 
 
 and not merely 
 
 44 It tells the Indian's story in st way that will fascinate the youngster.**** 
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 For */e by 'all booksellers or sent postpaid oa receipt 
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 By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 
 
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 keep up, through a visit to Washington which results in making the 
 place a kind of temporary experiment station. Wonderful facts of plant 
 and animal life are brought out, and the boy wins a trip around the world 
 with his friend, the agent. This involves many adventures, while 
 exploring the Chinese country for the Bureau of Agriculture. 
 
 " Boys will be delighted with this story, which is one that inspires the readers 
 with the ideals of industry, thrift and uprightness of conduct." Argus-Leader- 
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 * this book, heroism and the gallant facing 
 of peril are wrought into its very fabric, and 
 the Coast Guard has endorsed its accuracy. 
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 trapped on a burning ship, and the pluck of 
 the men who built the Smith's Point Light 
 house are told so vividly that it is hard to 
 keep from cheering aloud. 
 
 "This is an ideal book for boys because it is 
 natural, inspiring, and of unfailing interest from 
 cover to cover." Marine Journal. 
 
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 THE U. S. MAIL 
 
 [OW much do you know of the working of the vast and wonderful 
 Post Office Department? The officials of this department have, as 
 in the case of all other Departments covered in this series, extended their 
 courtesy to Dr. Rolt-Wheeler to enable him to tell us about one of the 
 most interesting forms of Uncle Sam's care for us. 
 
 " Stamp collecting, carrier pigeons, aeroplanes, detectives, hold-ups, tales of 
 the Overland trail and the Pony Express, Indians, Buffalo Bill what boy would 
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 THE BOY WITH THE 
 U.S.LIFESAVE 
 
THE BOY ELECTRICIAN 
 
 Practical Plans for Electrical Toys and Apparatus, with an 
 Explanation of the Principles of Every-Day Electricity 
 
 By ALFRED P. MORGAN 
 
 Author of "Wireless Telegraphy Construction for Amateurs" and 
 
 " Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony" 300 illustrations 
 
 and working drawings by the author Net, $2.00 
 
 Postpaid, $2.25 
 
 THIS is the age of electricity. The most 
 fascinating of all books for a boy must, 
 therefore, be one dealing with the mystery of 
 this ancient force and modern wonder. The 
 best qualified of experts to instruct boys has 
 in a book far superior to any other of its kind 
 told not only how to MAKE all kinds of 
 motors, telegraphs, telephones, batteries, 
 etc., but how these appliances are used in 
 the great industrial world. 
 
 "Of all books recently published on practical electricity for the youth. 
 ful electricians, it is doubtful if there is even one among- them that is more 
 suited to this field. This work is recommended to every one interested in 
 electricity and the making of electrical appliances." 
 
 Popular Electricity and Modern Mechanics 
 
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 under the spell of experimenting and "tinkering" with electrical apparatus. 
 Simple explanations of the principles involved make the operation readily 
 understandable." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " Any boy who studies this book, and applies himself to the making and 
 operating of the simple apparatus therein depicted, will be usefully and happily 
 employed. He will, furthermore, be developing into a useful citizen. For this 
 reason we recommend it as an excellent gift tor all boys with energy, appli- 
 cation, and ambition." Electrical Record, N. Y. City, 
 
 "A book to delight the hearts of ten thousand perhaps fifty thousand 
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 Any boy who has even a slight interest in things eiectrical, will kindle with 
 enthusiasm at sight of this book." Chicago News, 
 
 For sale by mil booksellers or seat postpaid on receipt of 
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