"Shield--Raven Shield?" queried Blakely, still half dazed. "Shield was killed--at Sandy," and yet there was the memory of the voice he knew and heard in this very canon. "Shield, yes; and now his brother heads them. Didn't he send his card down to you, after the donicks, and be damned to him? You foregathered with both of them at the agency. Oh, they're all alike, Bugs, once they're started on the warpath. Now we must get you out into the open for a while. The air's better." And so, an hour later, his arm carefully dressed and bandaged, comforted by needed food and fragrant tea and the news that Wren was reviving under the doctor's ministrations, and would surely mend and recover, Blakely lay propped by the fire and heard the story of Stout's rush through the wilderness to their succor. Never waiting for the dawn, after a few hours' rest at Beaver Spring, the sturdy doughboys had eagerly followed their skilled and trusted leader all the hours from eleven, stumbling, but never halting even for rest or rations, and at last had found the trail four miles below in the depths of the canon. There some scattering shots had met them, arrow and rifle both, from up the heights, and an effort was made to delay their progress. Wearied and footsore though were his men, they had driven the scurrying foe from rock to rock and then, in a lull that followed, had heard the distant sound of firing that told them whither to follow on. Only one man, Stern, was able to give them coherent word or welcome when at last they came, for Chalmers and Carmody lay dead, Wren in a stupor, Blakely in a deathlike swoon, and "that poor chap yonder" loony and hysterical as a crazy man. Thank God they had not, as they had first intended, waited for the break of day.