The surprise was complete; the demoralisation perfect. Utterly panic-stricken, helpless with dismay, men allowed themselves to be cut down without offering a shadow of resistance. Apart from the terror inspired by the suddenness of the onslaught, there was literally not a minute of time wherein to mass together and strike a blow in defence. Even the privilege of selling their lives dearly was denied these doomed ones. The waggon train, pulled out at its full length, offered an easy prey, and along this line, after the first and fatal charge, the warriors, breaking up into groups, urged their fleet ponies; shooting down the wretched emigrants with their revolvers, and ruthlessly spearing such few who, being wounded, instinctively tried to crawl away. Whooping, yelling, whistling, brandishing their weapons, they strove to increase the terror of the maddened teams, who, unable to break loose, upset the vehicles wholesale. They goaded the frenzied animals with their lance-points, laughing like fiends if the wheels passed over the bodies of any of the inmates thrown out or trying to escape; and once when a whole family, driven wild with terror, instinctively flung themselves from the creaking, swaying vehicle, which, upsetting at that moment, crushed mother and children alike in a horrible mangled heap beneath the splintering wreckage, the glee of the savages knew no bounds. It was all over in a moment. Not a man was left standing--not a man with power in him to strike another blow. All had been slain or were lying wounded unto death. All? Stay! All save one. Winthrop, alone out of all that outfit, was untouched. But he had better have been dead. His wife! Oh, good God! For her to fall into the power of these fiends! There was the light horse waggon; but between himself and it already surged a crowd of skimming warriors. Many a piece was aimed at him-- many a bullet sang about his ears, but still he went unscathed. Spurring his horse, straight for the waggon he went--straight into the thick of the yelling, whirling crowd. Already, searing his ears like molten lead, rose the piercing shrieks of miserable women writhing beneath the scalping-knife, or struggling in the outraging grasp of the victorious barbarians. He sees a number of small bodies flung high into the air--even marks the piteous terror in the faces of the wretched little infants as they fall, to be caught dexterously on the bright lance-points extended to receive them, and the laughing yells of the painted fiends as the warm blood spurts forth and falls in jets upon their hands and persons. All this passes before his eyes and ears as a vision of hell, and more than one of those fierce and ruthless assailants deftly turns his horse away rather than face the awful fury of despair blazing from his livid countenance. One after another falls before his revolver. A moment more and he will reach his wife. Then they will both die together by his own hand.