ose watchers and the guiding
fires, then trust to luck. Turning stealthily he brings Dandy around,
leads back down the ravine for some thirty yards, then turns to his
horse, pats him gently one minute, "Do your prettiest for your colors,
my boy," he whispers; springs lightly, noiselessly to his back, and at
cautious walk comes up on the level prairie, with the timber behind him
three hundred yards away. Southward he can see the dim outline of the
bluffs. Westward--once that little _arroya_ is crossed, he knows the
prairie to be level and unimpeded, fit for a race; but he needs to make
a _detour_ to pass the Indians guarding it, get way beyond them, cross
it to the west far behind them, and then look out for stray parties.
Dandy ambles lightly along, eager for fun and little appreciating the
danger. Ray bends down on his neck, intent with eye and ear. He feels
that he has got well out east of the Indian picket unchallenged, when
suddenly voices and hoofs come bounding up the valley from below. He
must cross their front, reach the ravine before them, and strike the
prairie beyond. "Go, Dandy!" he mutters with gentle pressure of leg, and
the sorrel bounds lightly away, circling southwestward under the guiding
rein. Another minute and he is at the _arroya_ and cautiously
descending, then scrambling up the west bank, and then from the darkness
comes savage challenge, a sputter of pony hoofs. Ray bends low and gives
Dandy one vigorous prod with the spur, and with muttered prayer and
clinched teeth and fists he leaps into the wildest race for his life.

Bang! bang! go two shots close behind him. Crack! goes his pistol at a
dusky form closing in on his right. Then come yells, shots, the uproar
of hoofs, the distant cheer and charge at camp, a breathless dash for
and close along under the bluffs where his form is best concealed, a
whirl to the left into the first ravine that shows itself, and despite
shots and shouts and nimble ponies and vengeful foes, the Sanford colors
are riding far to the front, and all the racers of the reservations
cannot overhaul them.

CHAPTER XV.

RESCUE AT DAWN.

The short July night wears rapidly away in the high latitudes of the
Northwest. It is barely dark at nine, and in six hours

"Morn, in the white wake of the morning star,
Comes furrowing all the Orient into gold."

Yet the night wears wearily, watchfully away in the bivouac down among
the cottonwoods south of the Black