In a steamer chair, and other shipboard storiesBarr, Robert
General
In a steamer chair, and other shipboard stories
Barr, Robert
Ocean travel -- Fiction; Sea stories; Short stories
“What I have read you,” said the physician, folding up the paper again,
and placing it in his pocket-book, “is strictly and accurately true,
otherwise, of course, I would not have so reported to the Government.
Wolf Tusk was the chief of a band of irreconcilables, who were now in
one part of the West and now in another, giving a great deal of trouble
to the authorities. Wolf Tusk and his band had splendid horses, and
they never attacked a force that outnumbered their own. In fact, they
never attacked anything where the chances were not twenty to one in
their favour, but that, of course, is Indian warfare; and in this, Wolf
Tusk was no different from his fellows.
“On one occasion Wolf Tusk and his band swooped down on a settlement
where they knew that all the defenders were away, and no one but women
and children were left to meet them. Here one of the most atrocious
massacres of the West took place. Every woman and child in the
settlement was killed under circumstances of inconceivable brutality.
The buildings, such as they were, were burnt down, and, when the men
returned, they found nothing but heaps of smouldering ruin.
“Wolf Tusk and his band, knowing there would be trouble about this, had
made for the broken ground where they could so well defend themselves.
The alarm, however, was speedily given, and a company of cavalry from
the nearest fort started in hot pursuit.
“I was the physician who accompanied the troops. The men whose families
had been massacred, and who were all mounted on swift horses, begged
permission to go with the soldiers, and that permission was granted,
because it was known that their leader would take them after Wolf Tusk
on his own account, and it was thought better to have every one engaged
in the pursuit under the direct command of the chief officer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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