Charge with me the moment the leaders yell. You men to the right," he added, slightly raising his voice, "be ready to jump with me. Don't shoot anybody that doesn't show fight. Nab everything in sight." [Illustration: "CHARGE WITH ME THE MOMENT THE LEADERS YELL."] "Whoo-oop!" All in a second the mountain woke, the welkin rang, to a yell of warning from the lips of the leading Sioux. All in a second they whirled their ponies about and darted back. All in that second Blake and his nearmost sprang to their feet and flung themselves forward straight for the startled convoy. In vain the few warriors bravely rallied about their foremost wounded; the unwieldy litter could not turn about; the frantic mules, crazed by the instant pandemonium of shouts and shots,--the onward rush of charging men,--the awful screams of a brace of squaws, broke from their leading reins; crashed with their litter against the trees, hurling the luckless occupant to earth. Back drove the unhit warriors before the dash of the cheering line. Down went first one pony, then a second, in his bloody tracks. One after another, litter, _travois_, wounded and prisoner, was clutched and seized by stalwart hands, and Blake, panting not a little, found himself bending staring over the prostrate form flung from the splintered wreck of the litter, a form writhing in pain that forced no sound whatever from between grimly clinching teeth, yet that baffled effort, almost superb, to rise and battle still--a form magnificent in its proportions, yet helpless through wounds and weakness. Not the form Blake thought to see, of shrinking, delicate, dainty woman, but that of the furious warrior who thrice had dared him on the open field--the red brave well known to him by sight and deed within the moon now waning, but, only within the day gone by, revealed to him as the renegade Ralph Moreau,--Eagle Wing of the Ogalalla Sioux. Where then was Nanette?