t of a cottonwood, then ran again to the perilous work of fighting
the flame, stumbling midway over another prostrate form. "Both hands!
Both hands!" he yelled as again his blanket whirled in air; and so, by
dint of desperate work, the inner line of flame at last was stayed, but
every man of the gallant little squad of fire fighters had paid the
penalty of his devotion and felt the sting of hissing lead--Field the
last of all. Westward now, well nigh an hundred yards in width, a broad,
black, smoking patch stretched across the pathway of the swift-coming
wall of smoke and flame, a safeguard to the beleaguered command worth
all the soldier sacrifice it cost. In grand and furious sweep, the
scourge of the prairie sent its destroying line across the wide level to
the south of the sheltering grove, but in the blood and sweat of heroic
men the threatening flames of the windward side had sputtered out. The
little garrison was safe from one, at least, of its dread and merciless
foes, though five of its best and bravest lay dead or dying, and others
still sore stricken, in the midst of the smoking grove.

"Field, old boy," said Ray, with brimming eyes, as he knelt and clasped
the hand of the bleeding lad, while the Sioux fell back in wrath and
dismay from the low-aimed, vengeful fire of the fighting line. "This
means the Medal of Honor for you, if word of mine can fetch it!"

CHAPTER XIII

WOUNDED--BODY AND SOUL

To say the Sioux were furious at the failure of their second attempt
would be putting it far too mildly. The fierce charge from the northward
side, made under cover of the blinding smoke sent drifting by the gale
across the level flats, had been pushed so close to the grove that two
red braves and half a dozen ponies had met their death within sixty
paces of the rifle pits. There lay the bodies now, and the Indians dare
not attempt to reach them. The dread, wind-driven flame of the prairie
fire, planned by the Sioux to burn out the defence, to serve as their
ally, had been turned to their grave detriment.

Ray and his devoted men had stopped the sweep of so much of the
conflagration as threatened their little stronghold, but, ranging
unhampered elsewhere, the seething wall rolled on toward the east,
spreading gradually toward its flanks, and so, not only consuming vast
acres of bunch grass, but checking the attack that should have been made
from the entire southern half of the Indian circle. Later, leaping