They lay in no order. The battle had been of the fiercest, and hand to hand. Here a trooper; there another—a redskin, an officer, a chief, a caparisoned steed, an Indian pony—all dead they lay and huddled together by the riverside in the tiny valley.
Upon this scene Buffalo Bill came suddenly, just as the sun was about to drop below the western hills. The sight shocked and sickened him. Man of iron heart and steel nerves that he was, the sight made him reel in his saddle. He reined in his good horse, until it rose upon its haunches, and covered his eyes with one gauntleted hand as though to shut out the awful sight.
An instant only did the scout show this weakness; then he scrutinized the red field which had flashed like some horrid vision on his sight.
White-faced as the dead, with eyes which scrutinized each form and feature of the white men, the scout counted the slain. Gradually his own orbs flashed with the fires of rage, and his lips became livid and quivering.
Suddenly, with a stifled cry, he leaped from his horse’s back and strode to one figure that lay stark at one side. It was in contact with a heap of slain on a knoll at the foot of a rock.
Here the end had evidently come. This spot was plainly the last act of the fearful drama. Here the curtain of doom had fallen upon the remnant of the gallant band, to rise no more for them in this life!
A groan issued from the scout’s lips, and he bowed his head in grief. There, with face upturned, lying in an attitude that showed he had died fighting to the last, lay Lieutenant Dick Danforth!
The boy’s left hand grasped the barrel of an empty revolver; he had used it as a club at close quarters. The right held his sword-hilt, the blade buried in the body of a painted chief, whose death was probably the last act of the dying leader of the slaughtered troops.
About him lay the foe, piled in heaps. Dick Danforth had sold his life at a dear price, indeed. And the fiends had run without scalping him!
“Danforth dead!” murmured the scout. “It cannot be possible.”