The noonday sun was staring hotly down, an hour later, on a stirring picture of frontier warfare, with that clump of cottonwoods as the central feature. Well for Ray's half hundred, that brilliant autumn morning, that their leader had had so many a year of Indian campaigning! He now seemed to know by instinct every scheme of his savage foe and to act accordingly. Ever since the command had come in sight of the Elk Tooth the conviction had been growing on Ray that Stabber must have received many accessions and was counting on the speedy coming of others. The signal smokes across the wide valley; the frequent essays to tempt his advance guard to charge and chase; the boldness with which the Indians showed on front and flank; the daring pertinacity with which they clung to the stream bed for the sake of a few shots at the foremost troopers, relying, evidently, on the array of their comrades beyond the ridge to overwhelm any force that gave close pursuit; the fact that other Indians opened on the advance guard and the left flankers, and that a dozen, at least, tore away out of the sandy arroyo the moment they saw the line start at the gallop;--all these had tended to convince the captain that, now at last, when he was miles from home and succor, the Sioux stood ready in abundant force to give him desperate battle. To dart on in chase of the three warriors would simply result in the scattering of his own people and their being individually cut off and stricken down by circling swarms of their red foes. To gather his men and attempt to force the passage of the Elk Tooth ridge meant certain destruction of the whole command. The Sioux would be only to glad to scurry away from their front and let them through, and then in big circle whirl all about him, pouring in a concentric fire that would be sure to hit some, at least, exposed as they would be on the open prairie, while their return shots, radiating wildly at the swift-darting warriors, would be almost as sure to miss. He would soon be weighted down with wounded, refusing to leave them to be butchered; unable, therefore, to move in any direction, and so compelled to keep up a shelterless, hopeless fight until, one by one, he and his gallant fellows fell, pierced by Indian lead, and sacrificed to the scalping knife as were Custer's three hundred a decade before.