,
litter, _travois_, wounded and prisoner, was clutched and seized by
stalwart hands, and Blake, panting not a little, found himself bending
staring over the prostrate form flung from the splintered wreck of the
litter, a form writhing in pain that forced no sound whatever from
between grimly clinching teeth, yet that baffled effort, almost superb,
to rise and battle still--a form magnificent in its proportions, yet
helpless through wounds and weakness. Not the form Blake thought to see,
of shrinking, delicate, dainty woman, but that of the furious warrior
who thrice had dared him on the open field--the red brave well known to
him by sight and deed within the moon now waning, but, only within the
day gone by, revealed to him as the renegade Ralph Moreau,--Eagle Wing
of the Ogalalla Sioux.

Where then was Nanette?

"Look out for this man, corporal!" he called, to a shouting young
trooper. "See that no harm comes to him." Then quickly he ran on to the
huddle of _travois_. Something assured him she could not be far away.
The first drag litter held another young warrior, sullen and speechless
like the foremost. The next bore a desperately wounded brave whose
bloodless lips were compressed in agony and dumb as those of the dead.
About these cowered, shivering and whimpering, two or three
terror-stricken squaws, one of them with a round-eyed pappoose staring
at her back. A pony lay struggling in the snow close by. Half a dozen
rough soldier hands were dragging a stricken rider from underneath. Half
a dozen more were striving to control the wild plungings of another
mettlesome little beast, whose rider, sitting firmly astride, lashed
first at his quivering flank and then at the fur gauntleted hands,--even
at the laughing, bearded faces--sure sign of another squaw, and a game
one. Far out to the front the crackle of carbine and rifle told that
Webb was driving the scattered braves before him,--that the comrade
squadron was coming their way,--that Bear Cliff had been sought by the
Sioux in vain,--that Indian wiles and strategy, Indian pluck and staying
power, all had more than met their match. Whatever the fate of Lame
Wolf's fighting force, now pressed by Henry's column, far in the
southward hills, here in sight of the broad Big Horn valley, the white
chief had struck a vital blow. Village, villagers, wounded and prisoners
were all the spoil of the hated soldiery. Here at the scene of Blake's
minor affair there appeared still