lift our
heads above our low entrenchment. Our position was in the centre of a
space open to attack from every arc of the circle. Caution counted more
than courage here. Whoever stood upright was offering his life to his
enemy. Our horses suffered first. By the end of an hour every one of
them was dead. My own mount, a fine sorrel cavalry horse, given to me at
Fort Hays, was the last sacrifice. He was standing near me in the brown
bushes. I could see his superb head and chest as, with nostrils wide,
and flashing eyes, he saw and felt the battle charge. Subconsciously I
felt that so long as he was unhurt I had a sure way of escape.
Subconsciously, too, I blessed the day that Bud Anderson taught O'mie
and me to drop on the side of Tell Mapleson's pony and ride like a
Plains Indian. But even as I looked up over my little sand ridge a
bullet crashed into his broad chest. He plunged forward toward us,
breaking his tether. He staggered to his knees, rose again with a lunge,
and turning half way round reared his fore feet in agony and seemed
about to fall into our pit. At that instant I heard a laugh just beyond
the bushes, and a voice, not Indian, but English, cried exultingly,
"There goes the last damned horse, anyhow."

It was the same voice that I had heard up on "Rockport" one evening,
promising Marjie in pleading tones to be a "good Indian." The same hard,
cold voice I had heard in the same place saying to me, as a promise
before high heaven: "I will go. But I shall see you there. When we meet
again my hand will be on your throat and--I don't care whose son you
are."

Well, we were about to meet. The wounded animal was just above our pit.
Morton rose up with lifted carbine to drive him back when from the same
gun that had done for my horse came a bullet full into the man's face.
It ploughed through his left eye and lodged in the bones beyond it. He
uttered no cry, but dropped into the pit beside me, his blood, streaming
from the wound, splashed hot on my forehead as he fell. I was stunned by
his disaster, but he never faltered. Taking his handkerchief from his
pocket, he bound it tightly about his head and set his rifle ready for
the next charge. After that, nothing counted with me. I no longer shrank
in dread of what might happen. All fear of life, or death, of pain, or
Indians, or fiends from Hades fell away from me, and never again did my
hand tremble, nor my heart-beat quicken in the presence of peril. By the
warm