urderous avalanche, from every hillslope. Their ponies'
tails, sweeping the ground, lengthened by long horse-hair braids, with
sticks thrust through at intervals by way of ornament; their waving
blankets, and streamered lances held aloft; the savage roar from ten
hundred throats; the mad impetus of their furious charge through clouds
of dust and rifle smoke--all made the valley of the Prairie Dog seem but
a seething hell bursting with fiendins shouts, shot through with
quivering arrows, shattered by bullets, rocked with the thunderous beat
of horses' hoofs, trampling it into one great maelstrom of blood and
dirt.

All day, with neither food nor water, amid bewildering bluffs and
gorges, alive with savage warriors, the cavalrymen had striven
desperately. Night fell, and in the clear moonlight they forced their
way across the Prairie Dog, and neither man nor horse dared to stop to
drink because an instant's pause meant death.

And the evening and the morning were the first day. And the second was
like unto it, albeit we were no longer a triangle, made up of
wagon-train here and main command there, and our twenty-nine--less two
lost ones--under Captain Jenness, at a third point. Before noon, our
force was all united and we joined hands for the finish.

Beverly and I rode side by side all day. Everywhere around us the
half-breed, Charlie Bent, dashed boldly on his big, white horse calling
us cowardly dogs and taunting us with lack of marksmanship.

"I'm getting tired of that fellow, Gail. I'll pick his horse out from
under him pretty soon, see if I don't." My cousin called to me as
Bent's insolent cry burst forth:

"Come out, and let me show you how to shoot."

Beverly leaped out toward the Indian horde surrounding Bent. He raised
his carbine, and with steady aim, fired far across the field of battle,
the cleanest shot I ever saw. Years ago my cousin had urged Uncle Esmond
to let him practise shooting on horseback. He was a master of the art
now. Charlie Bent's splendid white steed fell headlong, hurling its
rider to the ground and dragging him, face downward, in the dirt.

I cannot paint that day's deeds with my pen, nor ever artist lived whose
brush could reproduce it. If we should lose here, it meant the turning
of the clock from morning back to midnight on the Kansas plains.

Between this and the safety of the prairies stood fewer than a hundred
and fifty men, against a thousand warriors, led by cunning half-bre