It was impossible for me to forget my past experience, and I mentally resolved, if I were able to do so, that I would sell my life in square fight, rather than undergo a second time the torture to which I had then been subjected. At last, there seemed a chance for doing so. We had been compelled to move along at a smart trot for some six or seven hours, so far as I was able to measure time, when, from what cause I cannot say, although it was probably the continual friction, I felt that the ligature round my wrists was sensibly looser. My hands were able to slip through the thongs. I dared not tell either of my companions what I had done, and ask them whether or not they might be able to do the same. Some of the red rascals might understand English. One or more of them might even be renegade whites. What could I do to release them? The idea came to me like a flash of lightning. Pretending to stumble, I pitched forward, and recovering myself, got a blow on my face from one of our captors. It was apparently from one of the same thongs with which our wrists had been bound. Then, I uttered a shrill and prolonged cry as if of pain. After this, I found myself the last of the three. Two minutes had scarcely passed, and Bill's hands had been freed. Mine had untied the thongs which bound them. He would have wit enough to loose Butch'. Life on the Plains and in the great West, sharpens man's mother-wit wonderfully. Day was not yet breaking. That heavy darkness was upon us, which so generally precedes dawn. At this very moment we came to some low foot-hills, where the timber was dense and thick. We were obliged to move more slowly. My friends had just crossed a log, and the Indian on the left of me was stepping over it, when I fetched him with my clenched fist a violent blow under his ear. At any rate, I felt that was the place in which I struck him. As he reeled and fell, I wrenched the gun from his hands, shouting out, "Now's your time, boys." The brute instinct of self-preservation answered for their closely following, without knowing that they did so, my action. In another instant we were clubbing right and left, and so soon as we could change our guns for some that had not been injured by such an employment, we commenced shooting. Scarcely had I heard the report of my first shot than I felt two vigorous arms thrown around my waist. They were lifting me from the ground, probably for the purpose of dashing me to the earth, when they suddenly relaxed their grip. A madly wild yell broke from the lips of that Indian, mingled with a ringingly fierce growl which I at once recognized, although I had never before heard it so savagely shapen, as Charley's voice. My pet had followed on our track, and was actually assisting us in rescuing ourselves. [Illustration: "My pet had followed in our track, and was actually assisting us to rescue ourselves."--_Page 154._]