Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, but they closed in constantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows, succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose from the circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. Stanley, wheeling like a flash, gave chase to the incendiary. The Sioux rode for his life, but his pony’s pace was no match for the springing strides of Stanley’s American horse.
For an instant the attention of the whole fight in the rear of the camp was drawn upon the rash brave and his pursuer. Bucks, with straining eyes and beating heart, awaited the result. He saw 125 Stanley steadily closing the gap that separated him from his fleeing enemy. Then the revolver was thrown suddenly upward and forward, and smoke flashed from the muzzle. The echo of the report had hardly reached Bucks’s ears when the revolver, swung high again to balance the rhythm of the horse’s flight, was fired again, and a third time, at the doomed man.
The Indian, bending forward on his horse, caught convulsively at his mane, then rising high in his seat plunged head-foremost to the ground, and his riderless horse fled on. His pursuer, wheeling, threw himself flat in his saddle to escape the fire bent upon him from behind as he rode back. At that moment Dan Casement and his men hurried up on the double-quick. With him came Bucks, who had secured a rifle and fallen in. Some men of the welcome reinforcement were set at putting out the fire. Others strengthened Stanley’s scattered skirmish line.
Convinced by the determined front now opposed to him of the impossibility of rushing the camp, the Sioux chief gave the signal to retire.
As if the earth had opened to swallow them up, the warriors melted away, and as suddenly as the plain had borne them into life it now concealed their disappearance. In twenty minutes they had come and gone as completely as if they had never been. But in that short interval they had left death and consternation in their wake.
CHAPTER X
Stirred by the increasing boldness of the Indians, Stanley returned with his party to Medicine Bend to take further measures for the defence of the railroad men.