a loud cheer, and a rush of trampling feet
through the willows and tangled undergrowth. The boy only dimly wondered
at these sounds as he was flung to the ground, where he lay breathless,
with his arms pinned tightly to the earth, and expecting that each
instant would be his last. Then he became strangely conscious that his
antagonist was talking in a language that he understood, and was saying,

"Yez would, would ye? An' yez tho't ye could wrastle wid Terence
O'Boyle? Ye murtherin' rid villin! Bad cess to it I but oi'll tache ye!
Phat's that ye say? Ye're a white man? Oh, no, me omadhoon! yez can't
fool me into lettin' ye up that way!"

"But I am white!" cried Glen, half choked though he was. "Let me up, and
I'll prove it to you. Can't you understand English?"

Very slowly and reluctantly the astonished Irishman allowed himself to
become convinced that the assailant he had failed to shoot, but whom he
had overcome after a violent struggle, was not an Indian. It was some
minutes before he would permit Glen to rise from his uncomfortable
position, and even then he held him fast, declaring that nothing short
of an order from the captain himself would induce him to release a
prisoner.

The explanation of this sudden change in our hero's fortunes and
prospects is that, while the Cheyennes were engaged in their
buffalo-hunt the evening before, they had been discovered by a Pawnee
scout. He was attached to a company of cavalry who were on their way
back to Fort Hayes, on the Smoky Hill, from an expedition against the
Arrapahoes. The captain of this company had determined to surprise the
Indians thus unexpectedly thrown in his way, at daybreak, and had made
his arrangements accordingly. Their movements had been carefully noted
by the scouts, and, having made a start from their own camp at three
o'clock that morning, the troops were cautiously surrounding the place
where they supposed their sleeping foes to be.

The attack would undoubtedly have proved successful, and the Cheyennes
would have sprung from their grassy couches only to fall beneath the
fire from the cavalry carbines, had not Glen Eddy run into trooper
Terence O'Boyle and been mistaken for an Indian by that honest fellow.
Upon the alarm being thus prematurely given, the soldiers fired a volley
and charged the Cheyenne camp, only to find it deserted. With one
exception, the Indians had made good their escape, and it was never
known whether any of them were even