During the next five minutes Pandy had the hottest little scrimmage that ever fell to his lot.
On every side nothing met his eye but a mass of red faces, bearing the most devilish looks he could imagine, and the owners of which were trying their best to stab or shoot the rider.
Boldly he plunged into the thick of them.
Nancy trampled many under her feet, and bore her inevitable wounds with the air of a martyr, than which she could not well do otherwise, belonging as she did to such a renowned hero.
Guns cracked about him, bullets whistled close to his head, and cut into his flesh; lances, knives and tomahawks were thrust up at him with vengeful intent, and yet this veteran urged his horse forward, armed only with a knife as a serviceable weapon, with which he seemed to keep himself surrounded by a wall of steel through which it was next to impossible to force a passage.
How many men he and his horse killed between them during that five minutes' fearful ride, Pandy could not even guess after it was over, for his mind was in a whirl, and he did mechanically the work that was needed, just as a set machine might have done; but it must certainly have been dozens.
Some men might have deemed it impossible to force a way on horseback through that mass of excited redskins. Colonel Yates had deemed it so, but to Pandy nothing was accepted as beyond the power to do, until an attempt had been made, and Yates' last words to him proved that the officer must have either placed more confidence in the ranger's dash than his own, or else had resolved to die with his brave boys at any risk.
It was over at last, this brief but exciting ride of the prairie man's, encompassed on all quarters by death.
As horse and rider burst out of that maddened throng as a strong swimmer buffets the billows of the mighty deep, Pandy drew a long breath.
Not that the danger was over by any means. Here were dozens of Sioux braves outside of the melee, and these seeing an enemy emerge from the mass of struggling combatants, made a rush at him. Pandy uttered a taunting laugh and dashed away like a bird, for although Nancy was breathing hard from her exertions, she was equal to what the occasion demanded.