arriors formed for a charge and it was evident
from the manner of their massing that they were going to ride down on
the buffalo wallow in one solid body. But while their ranks were
gathering there came up one of those sudden thunderstorms for which
the Staked Plains were famous. The rain fell in sheets; the lightning
blazed with scarcely an intermission between flashes. And the charge
was given up for the time being. The braves drew off beyond rifle-shot
and huddled up within their blankets.

Morris Rath seized the respite to go for ammunition. For Smith's
cartridge-belts were full. He came back from the knoll breathless.

"Smith's living," he cried.

"Come on," Billy Dixon bade him and the two went back to the summit.

"I can walk if you two hold me up," Private George Smith whispered. A
bullet had passed through his lungs and when he breathed the air
whistled from a hole beneath his shoulder-blade. They supported him on
either side and half-carried him to the buffalo wallow.

The thunder-shower had passed. Another was coming fast. The Indians
were gathering to take advantage of the brief interval. The agony
which had come from rough motion was keeping Smith from swooning now.
He saw his companions preparing to stand off the assault. Amos Chapman
was holding himself upright by bracing his body against the side of
the wallow. Private Smith whispered to the others,

"Set me up like Chapman. They'll think there's more of us fit to shoot
that way." And they did as he had asked them.

So he held his body erect while the life was ebbing from it; and the
rain came down again in sheets. The Indians fell back before the
charge was well begun. It was their last attempt.

The wind rose, biting raw. The savages melted away as dusk drew down
over the brown land. Some one looked at Smith. His head was sunk and
he was moaning with pain. They found a willow switch and tamped a
handkerchief into the wound. And then they laid him down in the
rain-water which had gathered in the wallow. His blood and the blood
of the others turned that water a dull red.

Some time near midnight he died. And several days later, when General
Miles's troops came to rescue them, the five others buried his body.
It was night-time. The fires of the troopers glowed down at the foot
of the slope. They made the grave with their butcher-knives by pulling
down the sand from the wallow's side upon the body. And then they went
to the camp-fires of the sold