“Ten, eleven, twelve!” and the scout had begun to understand the situation. “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen!” Standing waist-deep in the muddy water, the scout suddenly realized that four shining rifles were aimed at his heart, and a sonorous voice was saying: “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen!” Two seconds more and those leaden messengers would pierce his body. In his hazy struggle to reclaim his mind the scout had dropped his hands helplessly into the water at his sides. Now both came up suddenly, sending a shower, and at the same instant he threw himself sidewise with a great splash. Four rifles cracked as one, and as many bullets cut the spray where the scout had stood. The marksmen had been startled and confused by the manoeuvre, and blazed away together at the spot they were holding on. But the scout was not there, and before they had recovered from their surprise he was bounding up the bank like a deer. Two other shots went wild, and then Buffalo Bill’s revolvers got busy from somewhere in the underbrush along the bank, and the four riflemen and the one who had pronounced the death sentence ducked for cover. In spite of their wetting the scout’s revolvers were in working condition. “One! two! three!” he shouted, sending as many bullets into the bushes after the tumbling, panicky thugs, who had heard Buffalo Bill’s reputation as a shot. “Here, Bear Paw, lively now!” called the scout to his horse, as he darted into a dense thicket. The intelligent animal hastened after his master. As the scout was swinging into the saddle an Indian appeared before him and said: “Come, Pa-e-has-ka.” The scout recognized White-man-runs-him, the friendly trailer who was destined, within a few months, to play a prominent part in one of the most thrilling dramas in the history of conflicts with American Indians. The Indian sprang across a little open space, with Bear Paw at his heels. After many devious turns and manoeuvres among the rocks the Indian emerged upon the plain and pointed a little to the south of the setting sun. “Bozeman is there; white bad men here; Pa-e-has-ka have care.” The scout reached his hand, and for a moment solemnly clasped that of the red brother; then, pulling a beautiful pearl-handled hunting knife from his own belt, he passed it hilt foremost to the Indian. “Never soil it with innocent blood, brother,” he said, and rode away. The Indian stood with the handsome knife in his hand, looking first at it and then after the figure of a horseman that was rapidly disappearing in the swiftly falling night. If the red lips formed a vow there was none to hear, but in swiftly following events that knife figured, and was in the famous battle in which General Custer and nearly three hundred brave men fell. * * * * *