The flames were hissing and crackling, the blue smoke rolled in clouds around the burning cabin, and the loud yells close at hand told that the demons had closed up around the doomed dwelling.
A dozen bullets came crashing through the little window, and with an awful cry of agony, the brave wife sank down upon the floor, the blood welling slowly upward from a wound in her breast.
“My God! she’s killed,” gasped Dwight, and not daring to look at her, he slung his rifle over his back, picked up the two children, and dashed up the stairs, for the room was becoming choked with smoke, and the heat was intolerable.
His wife, wounded, but not dead, heard him leaping up the stairs with the two children, and with great difficulty she arose and staggered after him, and when she reached the room above, she gasped for breath and staggered feebly to the window, where, with her arms held forth in a supplicating attitude, she stood until another bullet put an end to her life.
Outside, the red fiends and their white brothers in crime were dancing up and down with devilish joy.
Dwight had clambered out upon the roof of the little log hut, and there he stood with a child on each side of him, until the whistling bullets from the fiends below struck down the poor children, laying them both dead at his feet.
He seemed to bear a charmed life, for, although some of the leaden missiles rent his clothing, he still stood there unwounded.
A loud whistle, shrill and piercing, rang in his ears, and looking over the plains he beheld the Steam Horse, making splendid time over the plains towards him.
The Indians scattered like chaff as the monster bounded towards them, very gradually reducing its speed; and as the prairie steed drew near, Jared Dwight made a leap from the roof of the house, landed safely upon the hard ground, and then bounded nimbly into the wagon as it passed by.
“Onward,” he cried, and Frank Reade increased his speed. “The rest are all gone.”