"Drop that knife!" commanded Archie, and the bowie which the guide held in his hand fell to the ground instantly. "Look out there, Mike! I am watching you, and if you attempt to pick up a weapon it will be the last of you. Now, Frost," he added, waving one of his revolvers over the prairie in the direction he supposed the wagon train to be, "make tracks. Don't stop to talk, but clear out at once. Mr. Brecker and his money are safe while I am about. Why don't you obey orders? One——two——"
The guide did not wait to hear any more (he was afraid that when the "three" came out, a bullet would come with it), but hurried off at once, and without uttering a word. Archie kept one of his revolvers pointed at him as long as he remained in sight, and then turned to the teamster.
"Now, Mike, it's your turn," said he, giving emphasis to his words by pointing both his weapons at the man's head. "Jump down from that wagon, and follow your partner. When I count three, I am going to send two bullets over the seat on which you are now sitting."
Had Archie fulfilled this threat, the bullets would have passed through the empty air; for Mike, taking him at his word, leaped to the ground and walked off, shaking his head and muttering to himself. That part of the work was done, and now came a more difficult task, and that was to quiet the invalid, who seemed to be on the point of going into a fit of hysterics. Archie soothed him as best he could, assuring him that the danger was passed, and that there was nothing more to be apprehended from the would-be robbers, but his words seemed to have no other effect than to increase the invalid's agitation. The boy did not know what to do; and, while he was considering the matter, the reports of rifles suddenly rang out on the air, followed by a chorus of savage yells which made the cold chills creep all over him. The Indians had overtaken and attacked the train. As quick as thought Archie dismounted, and after tying his horse to the wagon, sprang into the driver's seat, and seized the reins and whip.
What happened during the next two hours Archie could scarcely have told. He tried many a time afterward to recall the incidents of that wild ride, but all that he could remember was that he clung to the reins with one hand, and swung the whip with the other, until his arm was so tired that he could hardly raise it to his shoulder; that the spirited horses never broke their mad gallop from the time they left the willows, until he checked them on the banks of a little creek, twenty miles from the base of the mountains, where he stopped to obtain a few minutes' rest; that the heavy wagon rocked and groaned like a vessel in a gale of wind, as the frantic horses dragged it over the prairie, up one swell and down another—bounding over buffalo wallows and gullies, which at any other time would have effectually checked its progress;—he remembered this as if it had been a dream; and when he came to himself, he was sitting on the ground beside the wagon, the horses were standing knee-deep in water, and the invalid was staring at him with a bewildered air, like a man just aroused from a sound sleep.
"Where are we?" asked the latter, in a scarcely audible voice.
"We seem to be in a grove of willows on the banks of a creek," replied Archie; "but how long we have been here, and how we came here in the first place, I scarcely know. What is that noise?"
Archie was himself now, and all his senses were on the alert. He heard the tramping of horses' feet on the other side of the willows, and, jumping up, he clambered, into the wagon and seized the whip; but the jaded horses refused to move. One of them lay down in the water, and before Archie could compel him to get upon his feet again, the willows on the bank were dashed aside, and a company of horsemen came into view. They were not Indians, however, but cavalrymen from Fort Benton.