Morris Rath seized the respite to go for ammunition. For Smith’s cartridge-belts were full. He came back from the knoll breathless.
“Smith’s living,” he cried.
“Come on,” Billy Dixon bade him and the two went back to the summit.
“I can walk if you two hold me up,” Private George Smith whispered. A bullet had passed through his lungs and when he breathed the air whistled from a hole beneath his shoulder-blade. They supported him on either side and half-carried him to the buffalo wallow.
The thunder-shower had passed. Another was coming fast. The Indians were gathering to take advantage of the brief interval. The agony which had come from rough motion was keeping Smith from swooning now. He saw his companions preparing to stand off the assault. Amos Chapman was holding himself upright by bracing his body against the side of the wallow. Private Smith whispered to the others,
“Set me up like Chapman. They’ll think there’s more of us fit to shoot that way.” And they did as he had asked them.
So he held his body erect while the life was ebbing from it; and the rain came down again in sheets. The Indians fell back before the charge was well begun. It was their last attempt.
The wind rose, biting raw. The savages melted away as dusk drew down over the brown land. Some one looked at Smith. His head was sunk and he was moaning with pain. They found a willow switch and tamped a handkerchief into the wound. And then they laid him down in the rain-water which had gathered in the wallow. His blood and the blood of the others turned that water a dull red.
Some time near midnight he died. And several days 295 later, when General Miles’s troops came to rescue them, the five others buried his body. It was night-time. The fires of the troopers glowed down at the foot of the slope. They made the grave with their butcher-knives by pulling down the sand from the wallow’s side upon the body. And then they went to the camp-fires of the soldiers.