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This man from the West, cunning in woodcraft and plainscraft, with eyes and ears open, tense and suspicious, did not know that under the table, close to her foot, was the push button of an electric bell. He had never heard of such a contrivance, and his keenness and wariness went for naught. "It's like this, Miss," he began, in response to her urging.
He laughed and said that the mountain was fully five miles distant by actual measurement. I had unwittingly taken my first lesson in plainscraft and prudently refrained thereafter from making another sure guess. The deception was due to the rarefied atmosphere, which is peculiar to the arid region. It not only deceives the eye as to distance, but also as to motion.
To think that he who so prided himself on plainscraft should have been so utterly hoodwinked by Captain Differs, of all men, was worse to him than gall and wormwood, but he came now fairly snapping with righteous indignation, fresh from another study of the famous field over which he rode with the last man to part with Lieutenant Davies the night of the tragedy of Antelope Springs, Devers's long-missing sergeant, McGrath.
It soon grew easy to handle the regiment in all the simpler forms of close and open order. When they had grown so that they could be handled with ease in marching, and in the ordinary manoeuvres of the drill-ground, we began to train them in open-order work, skirmishing and firing. Here their woodcraft and plainscraft, their knowledge of the rifle, helped us very much.
He had nothing to aim toward, yet sturdy confidence in his expert plainscraft yielded him sufficient sense of direction. He had noted the bark of the cottonwoods, the direction of the wind, and steered a course accordingly straight northward, alert to avert any variation. The girl rode easily, although in a man's saddle, the stirrups much too long.
His fine horsemanship, his kind, courteous manner to them, his soldierly bearing toward their irascible captain, had appealed to them at the start and held them more and more toward the finish. They saw the second day out that he was no novice at plainscraft.
The whole Sioux nation seemed in arms. Ogallalla and Brulé, Minneconjou, Uncapapa, Teton and Santee, Sans Arc and Black Foot, leagued with their only rivals in plainscraft and horsemanship and strategy, the Cheyennes, thronged to that wild and beautiful land once the home of the Crows.
His plainscraft tells him that by keeping in the water-course he will be less apt to be seen, but will surely come across some lurking Indians. That he expects. The thing is to get as far through them as possible before being seen or heard, then mount and away. After another two minutes' creeping he peers over the western bank.
Then, with teeth grimly locked, bending lower and lower, he crept across the rutted trail, and past the dead body of the Indian. Not until then did he dare to breathe naturally or to stand upright; but now, the gully, bending to the right, led away from danger, every step gained adding to their safety. He was confident now, full of his old audacity, yet awake to every trick of plainscraft.
Sighting this little detachment of soldiers venturing on down the valley instead of hurrying back, they had signalled all over the country calling in war-parties to their aid, and formulated their scheme to ambuscade and "corral" it at the narrows of the valley; but Ray's vigilance and plainscraft had defeated that scheme; though they had good chances yet, if they only knew where the regiment had gone.
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