"Quick, men. Go!" yells Hunter, and darts headlong through the timber back to the stream. There is a sudden burst of shots and yells and soldier cheers; a mighty crash and sputter and thunder of hoofs up the stream-bed; a few of the men at the west end, yelling like demons, dash in support of the mounted charge in the bed of the stream. For a minute or two the welkin rings with shouts, shots (mainly those of the startled Indians), then there is as sudden a rush back to cover, without a man or horse hurt or missing. In the excitement and darkness the Cheyennes could only fire wild, but now the night air resounds with taunts and yells and triumphant war-whoops. For full five minutes there is a jubilee over the belief that they have penned in the white soldiers after their dash for liberty. Then, little by little, the yells and taunts subside. Something has happened to create discussion in the Cheyenne camps, for the crouching soldiers can hear the liveliest kind of a pow-wow far up-stream. What does it mean? Has Ray slipped through, or—have they caught him?
Despite pain and weakness, Wayne hobbles out to where Sergeant Roach is still watching and asks for tidings.
"I can't be sure, captain; one thing's certain, the lieutenant rode like a gale. I could follow the shots a full half-mile up the valley, where they seemed to grow thicker, and then stop all of a sudden in the midst of the row that was made down here. They've either given it up and have a big party out in chase, or else they've got him. God knows which. If they've got him, there'll be a scalp-dance over there in a few minutes, curse them!" And the sergeant choked.
Wayne watched some ten minutes without avail. Nothing further was seen or heard that night to indicate what had happened to Ray except once. Far up the valley he saw a couple of flashes among the bluffs; so did Roach, and that gave him hope that Dandy had carried his master in safety that far at least.
He crept back to the bank and cheered the wounded with the news of what he had seen. Then another word came in ere long. An old sergeant had crawled out to the front, and could hear something of the shouting and talking of the Indians. He could understand a few words only, though he had lived among the Cheyennes nearly five years. They can barely understand one another in the dark, and use incessant gesticulation to interpret their own speech; but the sergeant gathered that they were upbraiding somebody for not guarding a coulee, and inferred that someone had slipped past their pickets or they wouldn't be making such a row.
That the Cheyennes did not propose to let the besieged derive much comfort from their hopes was soon apparent. Out from the timber up the stream came sonorous voices shouting taunt and challenge, intermingled with the vilest expletives they had picked up from their cowboy neighbors, and all the frontier slang in the Cheyenne vocabulary.
"Hullo! sogers; come out some more times. We no shoot. Stay there: we come plenty quick. Hullo! white chief, come fight fair; soger heap 'fraid! Come, have scalp-dance plenty quick. Catch white soldier; eat him heart bime by."
"Ah, go to your grandmother, the ould witch in hell, ye musthard-sthriped convict!" sings out some irrepressible Paddy in reply, and Wayne, who is disposed to serious thoughts, would order silence, but it occurs to him that Mulligan's crude sallies have a tendency to keep the men lively.
"I can't believe they've got him," he whispers to the doctor. "If they had they would soon recognize him as an officer and come bawling out their triumph at bagging a chief. His watch, his shoes, his spurs, his underclothing, would all betray that he was an officer, though he hasn't a vestige of uniform. Pray God he is safe!"
Will you follow Ray and see? Curiosity is what lures the fleetest deer to death, and a more dangerous path than that which Ray has taken one rarely follows. Will you try it, reader—just you and I? Come on, then. We'll see what our Kentucky boy "got in the draw," as he would put it.