t cool on it.

"That afternoon the Captain, who was in council with the two officers
who remained, sent for Rube and me, and asked us our opinion as to what
was best to be done. We says at once that there weren't nothing. 'You
have lost nigh a third of your force,' says I, 'and have got little over
forty left. If we were to go up into the Dacota country we should get
ambushed to a certainty, and should have a thousand of them, perhaps two
thousand, down on us, and the odds would be too great, Captain; it
couldn't be done. Besides, even if you licked them--and I tell you as
your chance of doing so would be mighty small--they would disperse in
all directions, and then meet and fight you agin, and ye wouldn't be no
nearer getting your daughter than you war before.

"'If you ask my advice, it would be that you should send back to the
nearest fort for more men, and that you should at once get up the
stockade where it has been burnt down, for there is no saying when you
will be attacked again. I tell you, Captain, that to lead this party
here into the Dacota country would mean sartin death for them.'

"Mad as the Captain was to go in search of his daughter, he saw that I
was right, and indeed I concluded he had made up his mind he could do
nothing before he sent for us, only he hoped, I suppose, as we might
give some sort of hope. 'I am afraid what you say is true,' says he. 'At
any rate we must wait till Dick, the scout, returns; he will tell us
which way they have gone, and what is their strength.'

"By nightfall the soldiers had buried all the dead just outside the
stockade, and had built a temporary wall--for there wasn't a stick of
timber within miles--across the gaps in the fence.

"At nightfall Rube and me, whose horses war fresh, started for the
nearest fort, and four days afterwards got back with forty more
horse-soldiers. We found that Dick had not come back, and we made up our
minds as he had gone under. When we were away we had heard that the
redskins had attacked the settlements in a dozen different places, and
that there was no doubt a general Injin war had broken out. The officer
at the fort where I went to was a major; it was a bigger place than Fort
Charles, which was a sort of outlying post. I had, in course, told him
about the Captain's daughter being carried off.

"He sent up a letter with the soldiers to the Captain, saying how sorry
he was to hear of his loss, and he sent up forty men; but he ordere