HE TOOK A LONG LOOK THROUGH HIS GLASSES.
Everybody turns to look and listen. Those were days when such a thing as a single horseman following in pursuit had a meaning that is lacking now.
Three, four minutes they wait in silence; then the colonel suddenly exclaims:
"I have him—a mere dot yet!"
Presently he lowers his glasses, and dusts the lenses with his handkerchief. His face is graver.
"Whoever that is, he is riding for all he is worth," he says. "I half believe he wants to catch us."
Another long look. Utter silence in the party. A mule in the wheel team gives an impatient shake of his entire system, and chains, tugs, and swing-bars all rattle noisily.
"Quiet there, you fool!" growls the driver angrily, and with a threatening sweep of his long whip-lash. Then the silence becomes intense again, and every man strains his eyes over the prairie slopes shimmering in the heat of the July sun. Suddenly an exclamation bursts from two or three pairs of bearded lips. Far away, but in plain sight in that rare atmosphere, a speck of a horseman darts into view over a distant ridge, sweeps down the slope at full gallop, and plunges out of sight again in a low dip of the rolling surface.
"No man rides like that unless there is mischief abroad," mutters Cross, as he swings out of the wagon to the ground. "Give me my rifle, Murray."
Then, sudden as thunderclap from summer sky, with wild, shrill clamor, with thunder of hoofs, and sputter of rapid shots; with yell and taunt and hideous war cry, from the very ground itself, from behind every little ridge; up from the ravines, down from the prairie buttes; hurling upon them in mad, raging race, there flashes into sight of their startled eyes a horde of painted savages.