The lieutenant now put spurs to his steed and raced madly after the brave little woman in advance.
“Six more and then—then they’ll have to come nearer for their medicine,” murmured the lieutenant, as he lovingly patted his carbine.
Bullets now sprinkled plentifully about them, and without pausing in his headlong flight, Avery responded, now and then, by dropping a red man from the saddle.
How long could his wife’s horse hold out at this killing pace? That was uppermost in his mind. His own noble animal was fast becoming winded.
He knew that only half the distance to the fort was covered. If he only could hold the fiends in check until she was beyond their reach, it was all he would ask.
He wondered if the clatter of the rifles behind and rain of bullets had sent terror to her heart.
She held the same poise and she had not once looked back. If he could only offer her a few words of comfort.
And then came the final catastrophe! Even as he gazed lovingly at the trim little figure in the saddle her horse plunged into a prairie dog’s hole and fell with a broken leg.
The fair rider struck the ground and lay as if dead.
Lieutenant Avery threw himself from the saddle and his horse dashed on. His wife’s animal was thrashing about pitifully and threatening momentarily to flounder upon that beloved form.