"He wasn't a large man, one hundred and sixty or seventy pounds," said Scout Amos, afterward, "but I declare he seemed to weigh a ton. Finally I lay down and got his chest across my back, and his arms around my neck, and then got up with him. It was as much as I could do to stagger under him, for he couldn't help himself a bit. By the time I'd made twenty or thirty yards, about fifteen Indians came for me at full speed on their ponies. They all knew me [he had been on their reservation], and yelled, 'Amos! Amos! We got you now, Amos!' I pulled my pistol, but I couldn't hold Smith on my back with one hand, so I let him drop. The boys in the buffalo wallow opened up just at the right time, and I opened too, with my pistol. There was a tumbling of ponies and a scattering of Indians, and in a minute they were gone. I got Smith again and made my best time in, but before I could reach the wallow another gang came for me. I had only one or two ca'tridges left in my pistol, so I didn't stop to fight, but ran for it. When I was in about twenty yards of the wallow a little old scoundrel that I'd fed fifty times rode almost on to me and fired. I fell, with Smith on top of me; thought I'd stepped into a hole. The Indians didn't stay around there a minute; the boys kept it red-hot; so I jumped up, picked up Smith, and got safe into the wallow." There-- "You're hurt, Amos! You're hurt bad, man!" That was Billy Dixon. "No, I'm not. Why?" panted Amos. "You aren't? Why, look at your leg!" Sure enough! One leg was shot in two at the ankle joint, and Scout Chapman had run twenty yards, with Private Smith pick-a-back--dragging his loosened foot and stepping at every stride on the end of the leg-bone! "I never knew it," he said. And strange to add, from that day onward he never felt any pain. The six were together again. Private Smith was conscious, but couldn't handle himself. He was fatally wounded. That didn't daunt his courage. "Prop me sitting, boys," he begged. "Put me up where I'll do some good. You can shoot from behind me and I'll stop a few bullets, anyway." "We'll not use you like a dead horse." But he insisted on sitting with a pistol in his lap. He would have sat on top of the wallow, if they had let him. Amos Chapman tried to conceal his broken ankle; not a man there gave out a sign of wounds, to the enemy. While Billy Dixon dug with his knife and tin cup, the four others hastened hither-thither, serving the carbines. The Indians circled closer, swerving in and out, firing. It looked like a combat to the death. But the earth had been dug out and piled up, and just before sunset the Indians suddenly wheeled and raced away. Pretty soon distant shooting was heard. Troops were coming? Rescue was due! No; for the darkness gathered, and although the Indians did not appear, no soldiers appeared, either.