one was quite prepared for the events which followed. Followed
even so swiftly that the women left their porridge cooking in their
kettles and their cows half-milked; while the men of the village
promptly seized the nearest weapon, and rushed to the hopeless
defence.

The rude sound that had startled every dweller in that pretty
settlement was the report of a gun. Then came a galloping troop of
cavalry--more firing--incessant, indiscriminate!

There was a babel of shrieks as the women and little ones fell where
they stood, in the midst of their work or play. There were the
blood-curdling war-whoops of the savages, answering the random shots.
Above and through all, one cry rang clear to Wahneenah's
consciousness.

"The horses! The horses! Ride--ride--ride--as I have taught you! For
your lives--Ride!"

It was but an instant. Wahneenah and her children were amount and
afield. But as, in an anguish of fear for his friends, and no thought
of himself, once more the Snake-Who-Leaps shouted his warning, the
whistle of a death-dealing bullet came to him where he watched, and
struck him down across the threshold of Wahneenah's happy home.

CHAPTER X.

THE CAVE OF REFUGE.

Three abreast, the chestnut in the middle, the fugitives from the
doomed village of Muck-otey-pokee rode like the wind in a straight,
unswerving line across the prairie. After they had left a considerable
distance behind them, Wahneenah turned her stern face backward, and
scanned the route over which they had passed; and when her keen vision
detected something like a group of glistening bayonets--to ordinary
sight no larger than a point against the horizon--she abruptly doubled
on her course, then made a sharp detour westward. She had early
dropped her own bridle, and had since guided her horse by her low
spoken commands, while in either hand she clutched a bit-ring of the
Snowbird and Tempest. Her change of direction must have brought her
all the more plainly into view of the pursuing soldiers, but in a few
moments she had gained the shelter of a group of trees.

These sprang, apparently, out of the midst of the plain, but she knew
that they really concealed the entrance to the underground pathway to
the cave; and once within their shelter, she paused to breathe and
gaze upon the startled faces of her children.

That of the Sun Maid was pale, indeed, with the excitement of this mad
ride, but showed no fear; while Gaspar's, alas! wore an exp