f dust. At the same time he saw the tie gang running in dozens
for their lives from the divide where they were working toward the
camp. The men beyond them on the grade had scrambled into the wagons,
dumped any ties they might contain helter-skelter to the ground, and
were clinging to the wagon boxes. In these, the drivers standing up,
lashed their horses with whip and line for life, and death, while
everywhere beside and behind them other men on foot were racing back
to safety.

New clouds of dust rose along the grade from the flying wagon wheels,
the horses tore madly on, and as the heavy wagons jolted over the
loose stones, the fugitives, yelling with excitement and alarm and
clinging to one another as they bounced up and down, looked anxiously
behind.

There was no uncertainty as to the cause of the panic. "Indians!" was
the cry everywhere. Every man in camp had dropped his working
implement and was moving somewhere on the double-quick. Every one, it
seemed to Bucks, was shouting and running. But above the confusion of
the surprise and the babel of voices, Bucks heard the sharp tones of
Jack Casement giving orders.

The old soldiers in the working gang needed no further discipline. The
timid and the skulkers scurried for the box-cars and the dugouts. On
the other hand, the soldiers ran for the dumps where the arms were
stacked, and seizing their muskets hurried back and, trained for the
emergency, fell into line under their foremen.

Casement, musket in hand, taking the largest company of men as they
formed in fours behind him, started forward at the double-quick,
yelling now for the moral effect, to protect the retreat of the
wagons. The men, scattering as they reached the edge of the camp,
dropped into every spot of shelter, and at the same moment Stanley,
mounted and alive with the vim and fire of the soldier, led a smaller
body of men rapidly back to guard the rear of the camp, deploying his
little force about the box-cars and flat cars as they hastened on. In
an instant the construction camp had become a fortress defended by a
thousand men.

It was none too soon. Stirring the yellow plain with the fury of a
whirlwind, a band of Sioux warriors rode the fleeing railroaders
furiously down. They appeared phantom-like out of every slip and
canyon, and rode full-panoplied from behind every hill. The horizon
that had shown five minutes before only the burning sunshine and the
dull glare of the alkali sinks, dan