mutilation by the dash of Brannan and his squad, "C" Troop
was once more wearily retiring toward the timber along the Wakon, and
Truman deploying his dismounted skirmishers to their relief.

And then, as the horses were huddled at last under the bank, and the
wounded were tenderly lowered to the shade of the willows, and the dead,
with soldier reverence, laid, blanket covered, under a spreading tree,
the captains met to compare notes and sum up the losses. Grave indeed
were their faces, for two of the best sergeants were killed as well as
five veteran troopers, and nearly a dozen were more or less severely
wounded. Davies, unscarred by bullet, lay faint from loss of blood, and
dizzy and dazed from the blow from his horse's hoof. The knife wound,
Red Dog's treacherous work, had reopened as a result of his violent
throw to earth, and there was no surgeon nearer than Chrome's battalion,
now out of sight far up the Ska. "Thank God! they've got few ponies
left," said Cranston, fervently. "We can hold them here until help
comes."

And help was coming, hard and fast,--harder and faster than Cranston
dreamed, but not to them. Within the next quarter hour, greeted by
frantic acclamations from the hostile village, there rode into view on
the opposite bluff, and came shouting their war-song, brandishing
feathered lance or gleaming rifle, more than a hundred red
warriors,--Ogallallas, Brules, Minneconjous all, with Red Dog himself,
escaped from durance at the agency, madly revelling in their midst.

CHAPTER XXXI.

It was barely sunrise when Chrome's battalion struck the hostile camp
this hot June day, and two hours later the situation was comfortless
enough--for the strikers. Hampered with their wounded and having lost a
dozen horses killed, the two troops of the Eleventh on whom had devolved
the harsher share of the work had been compelled to halt in the timber
and stand off the now exultant Indians. With a hundred mounted warriors
at his back and as many more afoot in the village, Red Dog promptly took
the offensive, sent his yelling braves in big circle all around the
clump of timber in which Truman and Cranston had posted their men, cut
off communication with Chrome's party, now "doing herd guard duty half a
dozen miles up the Ska," as some of Cranston's men derisively said, and
then, little by little, established the dismounted braves in every
hollow, behind every little ridge or mound, and soon had a complete
circ