Which way should he go? How should he avoid stepping on some recumbent form if he moved at all? For a moment he stood irresolute. Well, whatever he did he must do quickly, for the short summer night was far advanced. He had not a moment to lose. If he only dared take a pony! If he could drive them all off and leave his pursuers without a horse on which to follow him! It was a thought worthy of a Cheyenne scout, and Glen realized in a moment that, hazardous as the undertaking would be, it offered the only means of ultimate escape. He thought he knew where the horses were, and began to move with the utmost caution, feeling his way inch by inch, in that direction.
Twice he just discovered a motionless human form in time to avoid stumbling over it, and each time his heart seemed to leap into his mouth with the narrowness of his escape. Several times, too, he changed his course in order to avoid some real or fancied obstacle, until at length he was completely bewildered, and obliged to confess that he had no idea of what direction he was taking. Still he kept on, trembling with nervousness, until at length he felt certain that he must be at least well outside the circle of sleeping Indians, if not at a considerable distance from them. He began to move more rapidly, when suddenly a human figure rose up before him, so close that he could not avoid it. He sprang at it with a blind fury, hoping to overthrow it, and still effect his escape. Then there came a wild cry, a deafening report, and Glen found himself engaged in a furious struggle with an unknown antagonist.
Chapter XIX.
GLEN'S ESCAPE FROM THE INDIANS.
As Glen struggled desperately, but well-nigh hopelessly, with the assailant who had risen so unexpectedly to bar his escape, there came a crashing volley of shots, a loud cheer, and a rush of trampling feet through the willows and tangled undergrowth. The boy only dimly wondered at these sounds as he was flung to the ground, where he lay breathless, with his arms pinned tightly to the earth, and expecting that each instant would be his last. Then he became strangely conscious that his antagonist was talking in a language that he understood, and was saying,
"Yez would, would ye? An' yez tho't ye could wrastle wid Terence O'Boyle? Ye murtherin' rid villin! Bad cess to it I but oi'll tache ye! Phat's that ye say? Ye're a white man? Oh, no, me omadhoon! yez can't fool me into lettin' ye up that way!"
"But I am white!" cried Glen, half choked though he was. "Let me up, and I'll prove it to you. Can't you understand English?"
Very slowly and reluctantly the astonished Irishman allowed himself to become convinced that the assailant he had failed to shoot, but whom he had overcome after a violent struggle, was not an Indian. It was some minutes before he would permit Glen to rise from his uncomfortable position, and even then he held him fast, declaring that nothing short of an order from the captain himself would induce him to release a prisoner.
The explanation of this sudden change in our hero's fortunes and prospects is that, while the Cheyennes were engaged in their buffalo-hunt the evening before, they had been discovered by a Pawnee scout. He was attached to a company of cavalry who were on their way back to Fort Hayes, on the Smoky Hill, from an expedition against the Arrapahoes. The captain of this company had determined to surprise the Indians thus unexpectedly thrown in his way, at daybreak, and had made his arrangements accordingly. Their movements had been carefully noted by the scouts, and, having made a start from their own camp at three o'clock that morning, the troops were cautiously surrounding the place where they supposed their sleeping foes to be.