Hark! A sudden spatter of shots sounded—a series of shouts and whoops—the whistle of the boarding-train was wide open—up the grade the graders were diving to cover like frightened prairie-dogs—and out from the sandhills not a quarter of a mile to the right there boiled a bevy of wild horsemen, charging full tilt to join with another bevy who tore down diagonally past the graders themselves.
Sioux? Or Cheyennes? The war had begun, for 1867!
CHAPTER II
A LITTLE INTERRUPTION
The Indians had chosen exactly the right time, for them. They had awaited the moment when the main body of track-layers were farthest separated from the boarding-train and the stacks of arms; they had seen that there were no soldiers on guard; and here they came, with a rush, at least 500 of them.
“Fall in, men! Lay down! Down wid yez!”
Terry tumbled off his yellow mule in a jiffy. Dropping spade and sledge, ducking and lunging, the men were scurrying along the roadbed, seeking shelter. Only the squad of tampers and ballasters following end o’ track to settle the ties were near the first gun stacks; Terry joined their flat line. The Springfield carbines were passed rapidly, but there were not enough.
“Stiddy, boys!” bawled Pat. He had been a top sergeant in the regular army before the war. “Hug the ground. The word from headquarters is ‘Niver retrate.’ Sure, if we haven’t guns we can foight wid picks. Wait for orders, now.”
Down dashed the Indians, at reckless speed: one party straight from the north, one party obliquing from the west. The engines of both trains were shrieking furiously. All up the grade the wagons were bunching, at a gallop, with military precision; the laborers were rushing in squads to corral in them and in the low dug-outs beside the roadbed.
The party of Indians from the westward split; one half veered in, and racing back and forth there, pelted the road embankment with a storm of bullets and arrows. The graders replied, but it was hard to land on those weaving, scudding figures.
The other half of the party tore on, heading to unite with the second party and cut off the boarding-train. That was it! The Indians wanted the boarding-train and supplies.