th would be a welcome thing now that hope seemed dead. I
thought of O'mie, bound hand and foot in the Hermit's Cave, and like
him, I wished that I might go quickly if I must go. For back of my
stolid mental state was a frenzied desire to outwit Jean Pahusca, who
was biding his time, and keeping a surer watch on our poor
battle-wrecked, starving force than any other Indian in the horde that
kept us imprisoned.

The sunrise of the twenty-fifth of September was a dream of beauty on
the Colorado Plains. I sat with my face to the eastward and saw the
whole pageantry of morning sweep up in a splendor of color through
stretches of far limitless distances. Oh! it was gorgeous, with a glory
fresh from the hand of the Infinite God, whose is the earth and the
seas. Mechanically I thought of the sunrise beyond the Neosho Valley,
but nothing there could be half so magnificent as this. And as I looked,
the thought grew firmer that this sublimity had been poured out for me
for the last time, and I gazed at the face of the morning as we look at
the face awaiting the coffin lid.

And even as the thought clinched itself upon me came the sentinel's cry
of "Indians! Indians!"

We grasped our weapons at the shrill warning. It was the death-grip now.
We knew as surely as we stood there that we could not resist this last
attack. The redskins must have saved themselves for this final blow,
when resistance on our part was a feeble mockery. The hills to the
northward were black with the approaching force, but we were determined
to make our last stand heroically, and to sell our lives as dearly as
possible. As with a grim last measure of courage we waited, Sharp
Grover, who stood motionless, alert, with arms ready, suddenly threw his
rifle high in air, and with a shout that rose to heaven, he cried in an
ecstasy of joy:

"By the God above us, it's an ambulance!"

To us for whom the frenzied shrieks of the squaws, the fiendish yells of
the savage warriors, and the weird, unearthly wailing for the dead were
the only cries that had resounded above the Plains these many days,
this shout from Grover was like the music of heaven. A darkness came
before me, and my strength seemed momentarily to go from me. It was but
a moment, and then I opened my eyes to the sublimest sight it is given
to the Anglo-American to look upon.

Down from the low bluffs there poured a broad surge of cavalry, in
perfect order, riding like the wind, the swift, steady hoo