Keen eyes and ears were open, and as Martin fired his carbine in the direction from whence he judged the arrows had come, the sound of its report was caught up by the rattle and crash of the firearms in the hands of his men. It seemed to be a blind affair, in which luck would be apt to go further than judgment. Again came a flight of arrows, whistling into the ranks of the white men as they swept by, Martin now at their head, and the revolvers of the assailed cracked viciously as reply. In a moment more, the danger, for the present, was past, and the whole party passed out of the dangerous defile and galloped a few hundred yards upon the comparatively safe prairie.
Then they drew rein to inquire into the amount of the damage done.
Not a man was missing; but two or three sat but loosely in their saddles; while there were two men who had lost their horses and come out on foot. By good fortune the wounds of the injured men proved but slight, and with a little rude surgery they were both willing and able to proceed.
What injury, if any, had been inflicted upon the attacking party it was impossible to determine. All the firing on the part of the assailed, had been at random, even though one or two had thought, as they pulled the trigger of their revolvers, that they were marking down black shades that might be Indians. Whatever may have been their loss, the half-dozen, at which number Martin had estimated the size of the party, had done their best, and succeeded in inflicting a very fair amount of damage. Whatever was their loss, all remained noiseless in the late left ravine.
From his hunting-shirt one of the men drew an arrow. It had glanced along a leathern strap that he wore, and hung dangling by its feathered end. Handling it carefully he showed it to Martin. That worthy took it and looked at it with a thoughtful glance. By the relative position of head and feather he recognized it in a moment as a war-arrow, and by its make he could give a shrewd guess at the tribe to which its owner had belonged, and he turned to his men with:
"There's been some underhand work that I don't know any thing about between some of you boys and these red-skins, and this is what's come of it. I didn't think much of two or three of them being reckless enough to carry off the girl—there's lots of men that will gamble away their lives for the woman that takes their fancy—but there's too many of 'em in this thing not to have a little something else behind it all to urge them on. I ought to look it out and bring the matter straight, for we can't afford to be eternally mussing with the red-skins. However, it's too late now to bother, and, if every man does his duty, we'll let the matter rest when we get to camp. But, I tell you, it's got to be the last time that one of our men goes back on the copper-skins."
Having said this much, he turned to the serious work before him. Not for long was he at fault. Again he was on the trail. Scarcely had he followed for two hundred yards, when it took a sudden bend to the right, and began to run parallel with the creek. For perhaps a quarter of a mile it continued in that course, then, turning once more to the right, it was lost in the shade of the timber.
All came to a halt and looked around. From the taste they had had they were all in a fit frame of mind to act with prudence. Besides, there were two footmen in the party now.
Standing there, there suddenly appeared, away off on their left, a little clump of moving objects which had just emerged from the head of a ravine. "One, two, three—" the white men counted the number until it ended at seven.
"Seven durned, cussed, pisen red-bellies, by mitey! Them's the cusses that killed my hoss, I'll bet my brains!" exclaimed one of the footmen.