And these were the tracks that Wallace found as he came hurrying back downstream.
Saturday again Fred Waller and his faithful horse spent on the open prairie, for in the darkness he found it impossible to make his way. The moon was gone by one o'clock, and her light had been all too faint before. But Sunday, just a little after noon, he had come in sight of the goal he had sought through such infinite pluck and peril—the Sidney road; and as he gazed at it from afar, peering at it as usual from behind a sheltering bluff, his heart sank into his boots. He had come too late; there on that distant trail were the tiny columns of blue smoke floating skyward which told of burning wagons, now in crumbling ruins. Worse than that, here close at hand, over on the other side of the long, shallow swale, were twoscore Indian warriors in all their barbaric finery, excitedly watching the coming of other victims.
With a moan of anguish Fred Waller marked, a mile beyond and rapidly approaching them, a four-mule ambulance with a single soldier cantering along behind.
"Oh, my God, my God!" he groaned aloud. "I am too late, after all."
But the wagon halted on the distant hills. The Indians, absorbed in their cat-like watch, were eagerly gesticulating and excitedly pointing to some object far beyond. Several of their numbers lashed their ponies into a tearing gallop and sped away in wide circuit to the southward, keeping the bluffs between them and the wagon. Others followed part of the distance. He knew the maneuver well; already they were planning the surround. In helpless agony he watched, for he was powerless to aid—powerless even to warn. He seized his ready carbine, loosened the cartridges in his belt, and looked eagerly to Jim's girths. Then once again he faced the southeast, and saw, far away across the waves of prairie, a little puff of dust and a little black dot—a rider—coming full tilt in the wake of the wagon.
"Who can it be?" he wondered. "Can he possibly know of this ambuscade?"
All too late! A sudden flashing signal from the leader, and all at an instant with trailing feathers, with war cry and the thunder of a hundred hoofs, the painted band has whirled across the ridge in front and is down in the dip beyond. Every Indian has vanished from his view and whirled into sight of the victims on the crest beyond.
In an instant, too, Fred Waller is in saddle, and spurring on to the ridge which they have just left, and then once more he reins in where he can just peer over the crest. He notes with a cheer of joy that the charge is checked—that the Indians have veered off and are now dashing in a great circle around the central point on the height beyond. He sees the wild stampede and tangle of the mules, the overthrow of the ambulance; the quick, cool, resolute reply of the attacked. He marks with a glow of mad delight, of reviving hope, that there is not a woman or child with the party.
"Thank God!" he cries aloud, "It isn't Mrs. Charlton." He waves his hat with exultation as he sees a pony stumbling in death upon the prairie, and his rider limping painfully away; he knows now that they are soldiers, holding their own for at least a time, and that all depends on getting aid for them before nightfall. Far up the valley on the other side he had marked at noon a dust-cloud sailing slowly toward him. It must be the Sorrels or the Grays, hastening back to clear the Sidney road. Here is the thing to do: gallop back, recross the river, meet and guide them to the rescue. There is still time to get them here before the sun goes down—if only the besieged can hold out that long.
