. They were afraid that the roof might
be falling, so they piled out to fix it. Their noise aroused the men
in the wagons and on the ground; and all together they worked. By the
time they were done, sunrise was showing in the east, and Billy Dixon
thought that it was not worth while to go to bed again.

He prepared to set out for his buffalo-camp. Pretty soon he sent one
of his men down to the creek bottoms, to bring in the horses. The man
came running back, shouting and pointing.

"Injuns!"

A solid line of feathered heads, sharply sketched against the reddening
sky, was charging in across the bottoms, directly for the store and
saloon and corral. The drum of galloping hoofs began to beat in a long
roll, and a tremendous war-whoop shattered the still air.

"Look out for the horses!" Scout Dixon yelled, He tied his own
saddle-horse short to the wagon and grabbed his Sharp's buffalo-gun.
He thought that this was a raid for a stampede. But instead of
scattering to round up the grazing stock the Indians rode straight
on--in all his experience as scout and hunter they were the boldest,
best-armed "bunch" that he had ever seen; and they meant business.
They were here to wipe out the whole place; had warriors enough to do
it, too.

From one hundred yards bullets spattered. Without waiting longer he
dived for the saloon and shelter. There were six other men in the
saloon, mostly jerked from slumber in all kinds of undress. Firing
right and left and whooping, the Indians poured through among the
buildings like a torrent; from the saloon windows the white men and
Mexicans replied.

Chief Quana Parker's cavalry had high hopes. He led. Last night
I-sa-tai's medicine had been strong. This morning a foolish Cheyenne
had killed a skunk--a reckless thing to do, for a skunk was a medicine
animal. Whether this broke the medicine, I-sa-tai did not say. They
were to find out.

Had the ridge-pole not cracked and got the hunters up; or had the
Indians arrived only fifteen minutes earlier, while the hunters were
busy with the ridge-pole, they truly would have captured Adobe Walls
and killed everybody in it. The medicine almost worked, but not quite.
Just the killing of the skunk had broken it.

For a brief space the seven men in the saloon were hard beset. They
appeared to be the only defenders of the settlement. The heavy
sleepers in the store and the house were not yet enough awake to know
what had occurred. O