shots a full half-mile up the valley, where
they seemed to grow thicker, and then stop all of a sudden in the midst
of the row that was made down here. They've either given it up and have
a big party out in chase, or else they've got him. God knows which. If
they've got him, there'll be a scalp-dance over there in a few minutes,
curse them!" And the sergeant choked.

Wayne watched some ten minutes without avail. Nothing further was seen
or heard that night to indicate what had happened to Ray except once.
Far up the valley he saw a couple of flashes among the bluffs, so did
Roach, and that gave him hope that Dandy had carried his master in
safety that far at least.

He crept back to the bank and cheered the wounded with the news of what
he had seen. Then another word came in ere long. An old sergeant had
crawled out to the front, and could hear something of the shouting and
talking of the Indians. He could understand few words only, though he
had lived among the Cheyennes nearly five years. They can barely
understand one another in the dark, and use incessant gesticulation to
interpret their own speech; but the sergeant gathered that they were
upbraiding somebody for not guarding a _coulee_, and inferred that some
one had slipped past their pickets or they wouldn't be making such a
row.

That the Cheyennes did not propose to let the besieged derive much
comfort from their hopes was soon apparent. Out from the timber up the
stream came sonorous voices shouting taunt and challenge, intermingled
with the vilest expletives they had picked up from their cowboy
neighbors, and all the frontier slang in the Cheyenne vocabulary.

"Hullo! sogers; come out some more times. We no shoot. Stay there: we
come plenty quick. Hullo! white chief, come fight fair; soger heap
'fraid! Come, have scalp-dance plenty quick. Catch white soldier; eat
him heart bime by."

"Ah, go to your grandmother, the ould witch in hell, ye
musthard-sthriped convict!" sings out some irrepressible Paddy in reply,
and Wayne, who is disposed to serious thoughts, would order silence, but
it occurs to him that Mulligan's crude sallies have a tendency to keep
the men lively.

"I can't believe they've got him," he whispers to the doctor. "If they
had they would soon recognize him as an officer and come bawling out
their triumph at bagging a chief. His watch, his shoes, his spurs, his
underclothing, would all betray that he was an officer, though he hasn't
a ve