sing. Then he
slid off his horse close to the gap, now; piled high with goods and
gear.

A boy's high quaver rose.

"You can't say nothing this time! You didn't shoot at all now!"

An emigrant boy was jeering at his father.

But by that time no one knew or cared who shot. The fight was on. Every
rifle was emptied in the next instant, and at that range almost every
shot was fatal or disabling. In sudden panic at the powder flare in
their faces, the Crows broke and scattered, with no time to drag away
their wounded.

The fight, or this phase of it, was over almost before it was begun. It
all was one more repetition of border history. Almost never did the
Indians make a successful attack on a trading post, rarely on an
emigrant train in full corral. The cunning of the Crow partisan in
driving in a prisoner as a fence had brought him close, yes--too close.
But the line was not yet broken.

Firing with a steady aim, the emigrants added to the toll they took. The
Crows bent low and flogged their horses. Only in the distant willow
thickets did they pause. They even left their dead.

There were no wounded, or not for long. Jackson, the pistol in his hand,
his face gray with rage and pain, stepped outside the corral. The Crow
chief, shot through the chest, turned over, looked up dully.

"How, cola!" said his late prisoner, baring his teeth.

And what he did with this brave he did with all the others of the
wounded able to move a hand. The debt to savage treachery was paid,
savagely enough, when he turned back to the wagons, and such was the
rage of all at this last assault that no voice was raised to stay his
hand.

"There's nothing like tobacker," asserted Jackson coolly when he had
reentered the corral and it came to the question of caring for his arrow
wound. "Jest tie on a good chaw o' tobacker on each side o' that hole
an' 'twon't be long afore she's all right. I'm glad it went plumb
through. I've knowed a arrerhead to pull off an' stay in when the sinew
wroppin's got loose from soakin'.

"Look at them wrists," he added, holding up his hands. "They twisted
that rawhide clean to the bone, damn their skins! Pertendin' to be
friends! They put me in front sos't you'd let 'em ride up clost--that's
the Crow way, to come right inter camp if they can, git in close an'
play friends. But, believe me, this ain't but the beginnin'. They'll be
back, an' plenty with 'em. Them Crows ain't west of the Pass fer only
one thing