"The Sioux! The Sioux!" yells the driver, as he leaps from his box.
"Hang on to your mules!" shouts Cross. "Down with you, men! Fire slow! They'll veer when they get in closer. Now!"
Bang! goes Cross' piece. Bang! bang! the rifles of the nearest soldiers. The mules plunge wildly, and are tangled in an instant in the traces. Over goes the wagon with a crash. Bang goes Gaines' big Springfield as he coolly spreads himself on the ground. An Indian pony stumbles and hurls his rider on the turf, and Cross gives an exultant cheer. Yet all the same he knows full well that now it is life or death. The little party is hemmed in by a host of savage foes.
CHAPTER XII.
MYSTERIOUS HOOF-PRINTS.
IT was Saturday night that, from far up the Platte, the news came to Captain Wallace of the dash made by the Sioux for the Sidney road. For two days previous he had been hunting Indians upstream toward the Rawhide, and had found a perfect network of pony tracks and had had some very distant glimpses of flitting warriors. His scouts had told him that the Sioux and Cheyennes were swarming over the[136] country to the northwest of him, and that none had appeared to the east. It was his business, therefore, to move against them, and move he did, trusting that Forrest and the Grays would be alert along the southern verge of the reservations that no formidable parties could slip southward in his absence.
But this was simply part and parcel of the Indian scheme. Having lured him two days' march away from the Sidney crossing, these enterprising warriors kept him occupied, while their confederates, making a wide detour around Forrest, slipped across the Platte and swooped down upon the poor fellows with the freight wagons. Only one of their number managed to escape, and he, madly riding westward, came upon some herdsmen who promptly joined him in his flight. They had seen the cavalry going up the north bank a day or two before, and they never drew rein until they found them. Wallace at once sent couriers westward to Fort Laramie with the news, and at break of day started downstream with his whole troop. They had not marched five miles before they came upon the hoof-prints of a single horse, and just beyond the point where these hoofprints crossed their trail, the tracks of half a dozen Indian ponies met their eager eyes. One old sergeant, reining out of column to the right, followed the shod tracks over to the river bank, and a lieutenant spurred out and joined him when he signaled with his broad-brimmed scouting hat. The rest of the troop moved stolidly ahead.