Nevertheless, that was a long, long shot, for boy or man; and a _good_ shot. The charge split again; and not daring even to pick up Lame Buffalo, who was crawling painfully and pressing a hand to his side, it circled around and around the mule fort, as before. As Lame Buffalo had said, the “little one” shot the straightest of any. II THE HERO OF THE MULE FORT Cut Nose signalled his band to council again. Four warriors had fallen, and two ponies. Now at a safe distance from that venomous, spit-fire little fort, they all dismounted, except for a few scouts, and squatted for a long confab. “Kill! Kill!” implored the two squaws. “Shut up!” rebuked Cut Nose; and they only wailed about the dead. On the outskirts of the council, and annoyed by the wailing of the squaws, Dave could not hear all the discussion. Cut Nose asked the sub-chiefs for their opinion what to do; and one after another spoke. “There is no use in charging white men behind a fort,” said Bear-Who-Walks. “We lose too many warriors, any one of whom is worth more than all the white men on the plains. It is not a good way to fight. I like to fight, man to man, in the open. If we wait long enough, we can kill those three whites when their hearts are weak with thirst and hunger.” “They have medicine guns,” declared Yellow Hand. “They have guns that are never empty. No matter how much they shoot, they can always shoot more. The great spirit of the white people is helping them. It is some kind of magic.” At this, Dave wanted to laugh. The two white men and the white boy were shooting with revolvers that held six loads each, and the Cheyennes could not understand. The only guns that the Indians had were two old muskets which had to be reloaded after every shot. “We will wait,” said Cut Nose. “We have plenty of time. The whoa-haws in front will travel on, leaving these three whites. We will wait, and watch, and when they have eaten their fort and their tongues are hanging out for water, we will ride to them and scalp them before they die. That is the easiest way.” Some of the warriors did not favor waiting; the two squaws wept and moaned and claimed that the spirits of the slain braves were unhappy because those three whites still lived. But nobody made a decisive move; they all preferred to squat and talk and rest their ponies and themselves. Meanwhile, in the mule body triangle the two men and the boy had been busy. They did not waste any time, talking and boasting. It was to be seen that they were digging hard with their knives, and heaping the dirt on top of the mule bodies, and between them. An old warrior noted this. “See,” he bade. “The fort is stronger than ever. But by night the wind will change and we can make the whites eat fire. That is a good plan.” “Yes,” they agreed. “Let us wait till dark. White men behind a fort in daytime are very hard to kill. There is no hurry.”