Walnut at a full gallop.[68]

"Hold on!" said Booth to Hallowell when he understood the latter's
movement; "maybe it's part of our escort."

"No! no!" replied Hallowell. "I know they are Indians; I've seen too
many of them to be mistaken."

"Well," rejoined Booth, "I'm going to know for certain"; so, stepping
out on the foot-board, and with one hand holding on to the front bow,
he looked back over the top of the wagon-sheet. They were Indians, sure
enough; they had fully emerged from the ravine in which they had hidden,
and while he was looking at them they were slipping off their buffalo
robes from their shoulders, taking arrows out of their quivers, drawing
up their spears, and making ready generally for a red-hot time.

While Booth was intently regarding the movements of the savages,
Hallowell inquired of him: "They're Indians, aren't they, Booth?"

"Yes," was Booth's answer, "and they're coming down on us like a
whirlwind."

"Then I shall never see poor Lizzie again!" said Hallowell. He had been
married only a few weeks before starting out on this trip, and his young
wife's name came to his lips.

"Never mind Lizzie," responded Booth; "let's get out of here!" He was
as badly frightened as Hallowell, but had no bride at Riley, and, as he
tells it, "was selfishly thinking of himself only, and escape."

In answer to Booth's remark, Hallowell, in a firm, clear voice, said:
"All right! You do the shooting, and I'll do the driving," and suiting
the action to the words, he snatched the whip out of Booth's hand,
slipped from the seat to the front of the wagon, and commenced lashing
the mules furiously.

Booth then crawled back, pulled out one of his revolvers, crept, or
rather fell, over the "lazy-back" of the seat, and reaching the hole
made by puckering the wagon-sheet, looked out of it, and counted the
Indians; thirty-four feather-bedecked, paint-bedaubed savages, as
vicious a set as ever scalped a white man, swooping down on them like a
hawk upon a chicken.

Hallowell, between his yells at the mules, cried out, "How far are they
off now, Booth?" for of course he could see nothing of what was going on
in his rear.

Booth replied as well as he could judge of the distance, while Hallowell
renewed his yelling at the animals and redoubled his efforts with the
lash.

Noiselessly the Indians gained on the little wagon, for they had not as
yet uttered a whoop, and the determined driver, anxious to know how far
t