JOHN LE BO YEN was an Indian half-breed; the son of a whisky-drinking white man and a slovenly whisky-drinking squaw. Fate, which decreed he should have a copper skin, lifted him into temporary and unsavory prominence only as the perpetrator of certain vulgar atrocities, yet because there had been peace on sea and land for a decade, history once paused to give him a brief paragraph. Balancing the books, after another decade, she dropped him out of her record of events.

As a boy, Le Boyen had been taken in hand by the government and sent to school, where he mastered a little reading and less spelling with infinite difficulty. Later he was turned back on his reservation, given land, together with a yearly allowance in supplies, and told to shift for himself.

Now the grazing lands of Le Boyen's reservation were particularly fine and the neighborhood ranchmen rented the range from the Indians for their cattle. All went well until the stockmen sent in a petition to Congress praying that virtuous body to remove the Indians, as they interfered materially with the cattle business. Congress despatched a commission to inquire into the matter.

The tribe had been given their land just fifteen years previous, with the solemn assurance that they should not be molested. They had before that been moved exactly three times. These moves had each involved a little war, and the government had shot a few of the rebellious tribesmen at a cost of several thousand dollars apiece, which was expensive, but had proved profitable in the long run, for, once dead, they cost nothing to maintain. This was indeed the cheapest mode of procedure.

The commissioners came upon the scene and they found the Indian very much in the way. He was dirty, wasteful and not to be tolerated. When they had seen these things, they returned to Washington to deliberate. This last consisted mainly in discussing the next election—the true essence of statesmanship. A month or so later the Indians were informed that the great white father, who had his home toward the rising sun and who was chiefly notable because of his insatiate appetite for land, desired their reservation. The tribe voiced a feeble protest, but the pressure brought to bear upon the white father was rather more than he had the moral backbone to withstand. Troops were massed in the vicinity preparatory to a summary dumping of the Indians farther west.

The threatened calamity had brought the savages together in one corner of the reservation. They buzzed like a swarm of angry bees. The young men danced strange dances, and chanted songs their fathers had chanted when there were buffaloes on the plains; but the old men, the men who had gone out in seventy-three with Captain Jack, shook their heads. They had known the white father to devour whole tribes, simply that he might call a few rods of sage brush and buffalo grass his own.

When night settled down the chiefs gathered around the council fire. After the weak and ineffectual manner of savages, they wished to test the forbearance of the dominant race; they might make a harmless little dash into the cow country and then, before the troops were fairly on their trail, slip back to the agency. Under similar circumstances the white father had been known to display a prodigal generosity in the matter of lean contract steers, which were turned out to be slaughtered and gorged on.

In the midst of these deliberations, a man strode into the circle of light. It was Le Boyen, who silently raised his arm high above his head. The reeking trophies his hand held brought the shadowy figures pressing close about him, while a sullen murmur grew up out of the tense stillness that had fallen on the tribe. The half-breed had precipitated an unexpected crisis. Already mounted men were spurring over the range spreading the news of another Indian outrage. As this sure knowledge took hold of the savages, the murmur swelled into a roar.

All in a second the group resolved itself into a sea of tossing arms and waving hands, and a portion of the straining mob became detached, wrenching and tearing itself away from the rest. In the center of the detached band was Le Boyen. About him were twenty or thirty men who were ready to put their fortunes to the hazard of war, and following them came their wives and children. These fell back unhindered upon the tents, struck camp, got together their horses and rode away. To state the case exactly, Le Boyen, with perhaps thirty men and an equal number of women and children, had taken preliminary steps to declaring war against the United States of America.

During the next ten days he and his followers were a fruitful source of newspaper interest. His experience had taught him, among other things worth remembering, that if you kill a man he is done for. Had his education taught him proportion he would have known it was wasted labor on his part to begin the extermination of sixty odd millions of human beings with the means and men he had at hand. Not appreciating this, he began his ambitious undertaking at once, moving across the plains with no fixed plan or destination, gathering in the settlers along his line of march; and the gathering in was attended by horrors not to be told. Then he took himself off toward the mountains with the most complete and extensive collection of scalps made in many years.

Through all these days of success his interest in the total destruction of the white race never flagged; but certain of his followers were not so constituted that they cherished a lofty ideal purely for the ideal's sake. These, after the first flush of war had paled its glow for them, began to think sadly of consequences. The hard life, the thirst and starvation of the foray, grew stale and tedious; they longed for the ease and sloth of the reservation, where water was plenty and rations had the noble quality of regularity.

Two Indians in particular wished to be taken back into the fold; and as the days came full of effort and hunger, this wish thrived apace, and they agreed that the white father would doubtless pay well for a little information as to Le Boyen's whereabouts. To furnish him with the coveted knowledge it would be necessary for one to remain with the band, while the other deserted. Their plan was no sooner perfected than it was acted upon, and Le Boyen, suspecting the meaning though not the extent of the disaffection, put his people on forced marches. For four days they toiled into the mountains, while the traitor in their midst left his fatal marks on every rod of land they crossed. On the fourth day the band went into camp, that Le Boyen might have time in which to mature plans for the future.

Day had scarcely dawned again when the traitor stole out to inspect his surroundings. All the warriors slept, even to the guards, who, as they sat about the ashes of the fires, nodded over the guns in their laps. The only ones astir were a few Indian mothers, who were already lashing their babies to the travaux strapped to their lean dogs. The traitor had mounted a rugged bluff that overhung the canyon leading back into the valley where the temporary encampment was made, and straining his eyes to the farthest distance he saw what he yearned to see, a long line of mounted men. Rations were destined to be regular and his heart was glad. Without a backward glance toward the camp he started on a run in the direction of the approaching horsemen.

In the valley the band slumbered on. The fagged ponies nipped the grass. The squaws moved quickly to and fro among the tents. Then one of the dozing sentries awoke with a start and stood erect. Black against the crimson disk of the rising sun he saw the solitary figure of a man; and even as he gazed another and another filed into view. He knew they were mounted men, though a rise in the ground hid the horses from his sight. While he stood looking at them in stupid and speechless amazement, they wheeled over the intervening hillock with the sharp clang of steel on stirrup iron, and with a wild hurrah raced down the hill upon the camp. What the savages first knew, roused from their sleep, was that a hundred men were riding furiously among the tents with blazing carbines. The surprise was so complete that the Indians offered no resistance; those who could, men, women and children, rushed toward the ponies, stimulated by a vague hope that they might escape; and as they ran they were shot down.

Foremost among those who strove to reach the horses was Le Boyen. His war pony, saddled and bridled in constant readiness for alarms, grazed apart from the tired mounts of his party. He reached and threw himself astride of it, and with a yell whirled through the ranks of the slaughtering whites. In the stupendous strain of the few short seconds while he was flying through their midst he was absolute master of himself, and in a cloud of dust and smoke, a score of men firing at his half-naked figure, he dashed up the trail unscathed, away from the horror of total annihilation that lurked in the valley.

Ahead of him the trail dipped into a narrow bottom. Crossing this it wound up a steep ascent and disappeared in a rocky gorge. Le Boyen gained the bottom and the partial cover of its timber, when his horse stumbled. He drew it up with a savage jerk. The next instant it collapsed in a heap under him. He cleared his feet from the stirrups and leaped from the saddle, and with his cartridge belt in one hand and his rifle in the other, plunged through the brush toward the ascent. At his back the mounted men came crashing through the timber, and as Le Boyen sprang out of the cover and bounded up the ascent, the bullets of his pursuers flecked up the earth at his feet; but he gained the entrance of the gorge in safety, and threw himself down behind the first shelter that offered, a great square of granite.

He had his revolvers to fall back upon, so he emptied the magazine of his repeater. When the smoke cleared away he saw that his fire had been eminently successful. Two men lay dead at the base of the ascent, and a third, wounded, was endeavoring to crawl away. Le Boyen knew that his case was hopeless. He wondered what was back of him, if it were not possible to enter the gorge farther along. In fancy he saw his own hurried rush for a fresh cover. It would be the last episode in the clenching of a victory destined in point of conclusiveness to be little short of a massacre.

A medley of sounds came from the camp. He heard the voices of the white men; an occasional order given; the piteous yelping of the dogs; now and then a stray shot. A glance in the direction of the valley told him what this last meant: the soldiers were shooting the dogs, who, faithful to their tiny charges, would not allow the white men to approach them. Wary and thoroughly frightened, they circled about the camp, stopping at intervals to howl dismally. An officer had suggested the expedient of shooting the dogs as the only means of saving the babies; but this was not proving successful, for sometimes the dogs moved at the wrong moment or the soldier's aim would prove uncertain, and the baby and not the dog would be shot.

In the timbered bottom a gray-haired colonel was listening to the reports of several soldiers, who, according to the fertility of their imagination, variously estimated that there were from ten to twenty Indians secreted among the rocks.

“Then they are very saving of their ammunition,” commented the colonel dryly. He turned to the-officer at his side: “What do the scouts say, Captain? Is there any way of getting at the rear of the redskins?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“How long will it take?”

“About two hours.”

“Very well. Detail Lieutenant Brookes and twenty of our men to make the ditour. We'll keep the volunteers here.” The colonel looked annoyed. “I don't like this, Gordon,” he said. “I wish it might have come six months hence, when I shall be retired and growing roses in California with my wife on that bit of a ranch I've told you of.... Do be careful about those dogs; detail two or three of the best shots for that work.”

A bullet from Le Boyen's Winchester cut a leaf from just over the colonel's head.

“Better fall back, Colonel,” suggested Gordon, on the point of turning away.

There was another report from among the rocks, and the colonel sat down very stiffly on the trunk of a fallen tree, the expression of his face one of utter astonishment.

“Are you hit?” cried Gordon.

“I believe I am,” said the colonel in a whisper. He raised his hand to his breast as he spoke; then he coughed, and Gordon saw that there was blood on his lips. Before he could reach him, the colonel had fallen and lay quite still among the tangled underbrush.

They made a place for him on the edge of the timber, and Gordon covered him with his own coat.

“Poor old colonel!” he said sadly to his lieutenant. “He always wanted to grow a garden, poor fellow, and in six months he would have been free to amuse himself in his own way.” There was a pause. “Well, make up the ditour party and get it started; I'll give those redskins something to think of while Brookes is getting to their rear.”

During the next half-hour, from his place of concealment, the half-breed did much excellent shooting, now and again changing his position, while the bullets of the command flattened themselves on the rocks that hid him.

When the lieutenant rejoined his superior after Brookes' departure, he found that Gordon had taken up his station near the spot where the colonel had been killed. It overlooked the edge of the timber where he had stationed his men. The lieutenant, who was fresh from the East, was palpably nervous; while the captain's manner indicated long familiarity with just such affairs as the one in hand.

“Brookes has gone?” he queried, without waiting for the lieutenant to speak.

“Yes, half an hour ago.”

“And there's nothing stirring in the camp back of us? That was a pretty clean sweep. How about Sergeant Porter and the dogs?”

“He thinks he's got them all, sir.”

“That's good; that's very good!”

Gordon took the young man by the arm, and side by side they fell to pacing back and forth. The captain was well pleased with the situation.

“Brookes and his party will soon be behind the redskins,” he observed; “and when they break for fresh cover we shall have a good chance to test the new guns and ammunition.”

The lieutenant smiled. It was not a mirthful smile; but then he was between the captain and the gorge, and anything like enthusiasm over gunshot wounds was beyond him.

“Do you count on the home talent standing if the Indians try for this cover?” he asked.

“Certainly. The cowboys don't have much of an open season in which to shoot Indians. We'll wind 'em up in the open.” Levelling his field-glass, the captain took a hasty survey of the gorge. “I guess they are coming now. Yes, it's Brookes and his men!”

Le Boyen, among the rocks, was also aware of the approach of Brookes. He was also aware that the captain was getting his men in hand. He had found time to roll a boulder or two to the rear of the position he had originally assumed, and now, on the top of one of these, he placed his two revolvers. On the whole, he was not particularly desirous of living since the destruction of his band; but he was desirous of doing as much hurt to his enemies as he could.

The volleys of the men from below and the volleys of the men in his rear now swept his hiding-place. It would have been fatal to expose a hand or an arm even. He would wait until the two parties had advanced so close that they must discontinue their fire, then there would be a brief second or two in which one who was really indifferent about living could do much harm. And so it happened that Brookes and his men were face to face with the rest of the command, scarcely fifty yards separating them, when Le Boyen picked up a revolver in each hand and rose from his lair. Before the startled troopers knew what he meant to do, he was emptying them in their faces.

The captain had been the last man up the ascent, owing to the shortness of his legs. He found Brookes and his men clustered about a solitary figure on the ground, a figure riddled and torn with bullets.

“Humph!” with a glance at the half-breed. “Where are the rest, men?” he added.

“That's all, sir,” said Brookes.

“Nonsense; you don't mean that he stood us off alone?”

The lieutenant looked at the figure on the ground.

“It's just about the right proportion, don't you think?” he ventured.

“Well, I wouldn't say that for the credit of the race,” said the captain. “Poor old colonel; think of getting shot in an affair of this kind!”