actised marksmen, could load and fire. In less
than sixty seconds nearly a score of savages dropped to the
death-dealing bullets, till the plain appeared strewn with dead bodies.

But the crisis had come--the time for a general charge of the whole
band; and now the dusky outside ring was seen gradually contracting
towards the corral--the savages advancing from all sides, some on foot,
others on horseback, all eager to secure the trophy of a scalp.

On they came, violently gesticulating, and uttering wild vengeful
shouts.

With the besieged it was a moment for despair. The waggons were on fire
all around them, and in several places flames were beginning to flicker
up through the smoke. They no longer thought of making any attempt to
extinguish them. They knew it would be idle.

Did they think of surrender? No--not a man of them. That would have
been equally idle. In the voices of the advancing foe there was not an
accent of mercy.

Surrender! And be slain afterwards! Before which to be tortured,
perhaps dragged at the horse's tail, or set up as a target for the
Tenawa sharpshooters to practise at. No! They would have to die
anyhow. Better now than then. They were not the men to offer both
cheeks to the insulter. They could resign sweet life, but death would
be all the sweeter with corpses of Indians lying thickly around them.
They would first make a hecatomb of their hated foes, and then fall upon
it. That is the sort of death preferred by the prairie man--hunter,
trapper, or trader--glorious to him as the cannon-furrowed field to the
soldier. That is the sort of death of which Walt Wilder spoke when he
said, "Let us die, not like dogs, but as men--as Americans!"

By this time the smoke had completely enveloped the waggons, the
enclosed space between, and a fringe of some considerable width around
them. But a still darker ring was all around--the circle of savage
horsemen, who from all sides were galloping up and dismounting to make
surer work of the slaughter. The warriors jostled one another as they
pressed forward afoot, each thirsting for a scalp.

The last throe of the conflict had come. It was no longer to be a duel
at a distance--no more a contest between rifle-bullets and barbed
arrows; but the close, desperate, hand-to-hand contest of pistol, knife,
spear, club, and hatchet.

The ten white men--none of them yet _hors de combat_--knew well what was
before them. Not one of them blanche