"Jim's hit!" cried a voice from the wagon. "He's hit bad."
"Alf'll look after him," called Nick, thrusting a new clip of cartridges into his gun. "Th' rest o' you keep on shootin'. Keep a watch on the side slopes. Some of 'em's liable ter sneak past."
Some of the dismounted Indians now tried to work round to the flanks, crawling like snakes through the grass and taking shelter behind bush and boulder. But the sharp-eyed frontiersmen quickly detected them, and none got through.
Kiddie saw this new danger, however, and, taking Nick's advice, he leapt on his waiting pony and rode back to the rear, to assure himself that Rube and the horses were safe.
Rube was faithfully at his post, minding the horses and watching the back trail, but fretting sorely at being kept away from the excitement of the fighting.
"All right," nodded Kiddie, riding up to him. "Drive the horses back there, to the shelter of the ravine, where the stream comes down. Give them a drink. They'll be glad of it. And—stop there with them. I'll give you a sign when I want you to bring them along."
It seemed to Rube then that Kiddie wanted to get him out of the way, and he wondered at Kiddie's reasons for keeping him from participating in the battle.
Young though he was, and he was only fourteen, Rube considered himself quite capable of handling a gun and looking after himself. And he wasn't a coward. Why could he not be allowed even to look on from a safe shelter?
Kiddie's reasons, nevertheless, were good. He was thinking less of the boy, whom he implicitly trusted, than of his horses, and of a new peril which at this moment seemed to threaten the whole of his company.
Just as he had halted beside Rube he had turned his glance back along the narrow valley. Far off in the blue distance he had seen a thin film of dust rising; or was it smoke? He was not certain at first, but when Rube had gone he looked again in the same direction, and he said to himself in his old drawling Western way—