but exultant. "Look
sir," he added, as he pointed along the range. "They are signalling
now."

From the wooded height ten hundred yards away, curious little puffs of
smoke, one following another, were sailing straight for the zenith, and
Blake, screwing his field glasses to the focus, swept with them the
mountain side toward the five-mile distant cliff, and presently the
muscles about his mouth began to twitch--sure sign with Blake of
gathering excitement.

"You're right, sergeant," he presently spoke, repressing the desire to
shout, and striving, lest Winsor should be moved to invidious
comparisons, to seem as _nonchalant_ as Billy Ray himself. "They're
coming back already." Then down the mountain side he dove to plan and
prepare appropriate welcome, leaving Winsor and the glasses to keep
double powered watch on the situation.

Six-fifty of a glorious, keen November morning, and sixty troopers of
the old regiment were distributed along a spur that crossed, almost at
right angles, the line of the Indian trail. Sixty fur-capped,
rough-coated fellows, with their short brown carbines in hand, crouching
behind rocks and fallen trees, keeping close to cover and warned to
utter silence. Behind them, two hundred yards away, their horses were
huddled under charge of their disgusted guards, envious of their fellows
at the front, and cursing hard their luck in counting off as number
four. Schreiber had just come sliding, stumbling, down from Winsor's
perch to say they could hear faint sound of sharp volleying far out to
the eastward, where the warriors, evidently, were trying to "stand off"
Webb's skirmish line until the _travois_ with the wounded and the escort
of the possible prisoners should succeed in getting back out of harm's
way and taking surer and higher trail into the thick of the wilderness
back of Bear Cliff. "Some of 'em must come in sight here in a minute,
sir," panted the veteran sergeant. "We could see them plainly up
there--a mule litter and four _travois_, and there must be a dozen in
saddle."

A dozen there were, for along the line of crouching men went sudden
thrill of excitement. Shoulders began to heave; nervous thumbs bore down
on heavy carbine hammers, and there was sound of irrepressible stir and
murmur. Out among the pines, five hundred yards away, two mounted
Indians popped suddenly into view, two others speedily following, their
well-nigh exhausted ponies feebly shaking their shaggy, protesting
h