d with women and children, and there was a very small force
of soldiers to defend it. For five days they had been continually
attacked by the enemy, and unless reinforcements arrived quickly the
fort would probably be captured.

The Riggs and their fellow fugitives decided, therefore, to hurry on to
some other place, fully aware of the danger they were running in
travelling through a neighbourhood which abounded with the
scalp-seeking Indians. One of Mary Riggs' daughters wrote of this
period in their flight: 'Every voice was hushed, except to give
necessary orders; every eye swept the hills and valleys around; every
ear was intensely strained for the faintest sound, expecting
momentarily to hear the unearthly war-whoop, and see dusky forms with
gleaming tomahawks uplifted.'

[Illustration: EVERY EAR WAS STRAINED ... EXPECTING MOMENTARILY TO HEAR
THE UNEARTHLY WAR-HOOP.]

Hour after hour the tired and footsore fugitives trudged on without
being discovered. Then four of their number, believing the danger was
passed, bade adieu to the remainder of the party and proceeded in a
different direction; but before they had gone far they were killed by
the Indians. The Riggs and their party heard the fatal shots, but the
tragedy was hidden from their sight by the bush. Fortunately, the
proximity of the larger party of fugitives was not discovered by the
Sioux; and at last, after a long, weary journey, the Riggs and their
friends arrived at the town of Henderson, where their appearance
occasioned considerable surprise, as their names had been included in
the list of massacred.

Over a thousand settlers were killed during the rising, and there were
many people who escaped death, but never recovered completely from the
horrors of that terrible time. Mary Riggs returned with her husband to
the work among the Sioux; but her health grew slowly worse, and when,
in March, 1869, an ordinary cold developed into pneumonia she had not
the strength to battle against it. She died on March 22, 1869, in
Beloit, Wisconsin, worn out with her thirty-two years' work in the
mission-field.

[1] _Mary and I; Forty Years with the Sioux_. By Stephen R. Riggs.
Philadelphia, 1887.

III

BRAVE DEEDS OF WOMEN IN WAR-TIME

MARY SEACOLE, THE SOLDIERS' FRIEND

Florence Nightingales's noble work among the sick and wounded in the
Crimean War is known to everyone; but very few people are aware that
there was another woman, workin