They well knew Blake,--almost as well as they did Ray. Many a year he had fought them through the summer and fed them through the winter. They, their squaws and pappooses, had fattened on his bounty when the snows were deep and deer were gone, and their abundant rations had been feasted or gambled away. Many of their number liked him well, but now they were at the war game again, and, business is business with the aborigines. Blake was a "big chief," and he who could wear at his belt the scalp of so prominent a pale face leader would be envied among his people. "Long Legs," as they called him, however, was no fool. Brave and zealous as he was, Blake was not rash. He well knew that unless he and his few men kept together they would simply play into the hands of the Indians. It would have been easy for him, with his big racer, to outstrip his little party and close with the Sioux. Only one of the troopers had a horse that could keep pace with Pyramus, but nothing he could gain by such a proceeding would warrant the desperate risk. Matchless as we have reason to believe our men, we cannot so believe our mounts. Unmatched would better describe them. Meisner's horse might have run with the captain's, until crippled by the bullets of the Sioux, but Bent's and Flannigan's were heavy and slow, and so it resulted that the pursuit, though determined, was not so dangerous to the enemy but that they were able to keenly enjoy it, until the swift coming of Kennedy and his captive comrade turned the odds against them, for then two of Blake's horses had given out through wounds and weakness, and they had the pursuers indeed "in a hole."