and from Mr
Rawlings occasionally, to restrain the men from getting too flurried.--
He certainly showed himself worthy of the post of leader then!

"Steady, boys! Don't waste your fire. Aim low; and don't shoot too
quickly!"

"Ping! ping!" flew the bullets through the smoky medium with which they
were surrounded, while an occasional "thud" evinced the fact that one of
their assailants had fallen:--"ping, ping, ping!" it was a regular
fusillade;--and the miners delivered their fire like trained soldiers
from behind the breastwork that had so providentially been erected in
time!

Presently there was a rush of the redskins, and the besieged party could
hear the voice of Rising Cloud encouraging his warriors, and taunting
those he attacked.

"Dogs of palefaces!" cried the chief, "your bones shall whiten the
prairie, and your blood colour the buffalo grass, for your treatment of
Rising Cloud in the morn of the melting of the snow! I said I would
come before the scarlet sumach should spring again on the plains; and
Rising Cloud and his warriors are here!"

Then came the fearful war-whoop again, with that terrible iteration at
its end "Who--ah--ah--ah--ah--oop!" like the howl of a laughing hyaena.

The river alone interposed between the whites and their enemy, and gave
them a spell of breathing time, but in spite of this protection, the
odds were heavy against them; for what could even sixteen resolute men,
as the party now numbered--for one had been mortally wounded by a chance
shot, and although Josh the negro cook could tight bravely and did,
Jasper was not of much use--do in a hand-to-hand struggle with hundreds
of red-skinned human devils thirsting for their blood?

The river, however, was a great help, especially now that it had been
converted into a mill-race, and flooded beyond its usual proportions;
for, when the Indians rushed into the water to wade across and assault
the camp at close quarters, as the shallowness of the stream at that
season of the year would previously have easily enabled them to have
done, they found, to their astonishment, first that the current, which
they did not expect to be more than a foot deep, rose above their
waist-belts, then above their armpits, and finally above their heads,
as, pushed onwards by their companions behind, they were submerged in
the flood; while the miners, still sheltered by Ernest Wilton's trenched
rampart above, rained down a pitiless hail of bullets into t