“They are dancing our scalps,” said Rogers. “That's premature,” said Stephen. Rogers moved off toward the wagons. A moment later he had stretched himself on the ground at Benny's side. CHAPTER SIXTEEN STEPHEN fell to pacing about the wagons as Rogers had done. He saw the fires of the Indians die down until they became mere specks of living colour that seemed to glare steadily at him out of the distance. As the fires died, so did all sound until at last a mighty silence held the plain in its spell; and with the silence came a tormenting loneliness. But for the black outline of the mountain peaks against a lighter sky he might have been looking off into infinite space. The night wind sinking to a murmur, sighed about the wagons, softly flapping their bullet-torn canvases. It seemed to hold the very soul of that lone land. He turned his face to the east; somewhere there beyond the night, in the new day that was breaking, was Benson. With a gulp of sudden emotion he saw the valley as he had seen it on a thousand summer mornings, with no special realization of its beauty; dawn, the day's beginning; here and there a lantern flashing in and out among barns and outbuildings; the darkness growing always greyer, always toward the light, until the sleek cattle could be seen in the fields, newly risen from the long wet grass and with the dew yet sparkling on flanks and sides, crossing slowly to pasture bars to be fed and tended; and then far down the valley a touch of glowing colour that crept above the low hills to become fixed in a narrow luminous rim which changed swiftly to a great flaming quadrant of light that grew into the level sun. Regret, terrible because it was unavailing, lay hold of him. Virginia was there. Was it possible that by any gift of divination she could know of their danger? She had told him more than once that no evil would ever befall him and she be wholly unconscious of it, no matter what the distance that separated them. He hoped this was so. He prayed that if the coming day closed on a tragedy, she might learn at once of the destruction of the train; but who would there be left to tell her of the end? None of his companions would survive, he was sure of this, if Basil and Raymond were responsible for the attack; indeed, it would be the merest chance if she ever knew. He would not go back to her—that would be all; this alone she would know, that he had not returned; the rest would be conjecture. He recalled how they had passed in indifference the graves by the trail side; they had not once been moved to curiosity, even the most idle; for what were these little tragedies in the supreme selfishness of that rush across the plains, and who would stop or turn aside to unravel the small mystery of their last stand? What man would care who they had been, or whence they came, when the certain hand of death had done its work? Their very bones might bleach there for a hundred years before another white man climbed that hill.