He struck out fiercely but never blindly; each time his weapon was raised he selected his victim, and each time he crushed the life out of this victim with a terrible sweeping blow; for he had gone beyond fear, the dread of wounds and death, even the strong desire of man's strength in its prime, to live. A dozen guns blazed in his face; now he was down, now up; now down again; his footing slippery with his own blood and with that of his assailants; but now he was down, and for the last time; and the savages struggled fiercely among themselves, each intent on striking the body of this mighty fallen warrior. The Californian had kept on down the western slope of the hill. When Basil released his horse, the animal trotted off toward the cottonwoods, and before it had gone a hundred yards Rogers caught and threw himself astride of it, and fled out across the plain, while back to the hill making lessening head against the freshening wind was borne snatches of his song. He had covered a third of the distance to the cottonwoods, when a child's frightened voice reached him. “Pop! Pop! Come back! It's me—Benny!” He drew rein instantly, turned, and at a canter rode back toward the camp. There was absolute silence there now, save for the screams of the terrified child, who stood outside the barricade, clinging to the spokes of a wagon wheel. “Benny, where are you?” Rogers called, when he reached the foot of the hill, and his dull eyes lit up with a sudden sense of things. For answer there came a crashing volley; and out of the drifting patches of smoke a great bay horse appeared to spring, and stung with wounds dashed along the plain dragging the limp figure of a man whose heavy-booted foot had caught in a stirrup-iron. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE letters which the brothers and Walsh had written at Fort Laramie, and which they had entrusted to a party of returning emigrants, were the last that reached the town of Benson. They were poured over in secret; and afterward Colonel Sharp was permitted to print in the Pioneer such descriptive passages as were deemed of general public interest. They marked the end of what had seemed as permanent as anything can seem in this world; and all that remained in record of what three men in their varying ways had counted of supreme worth, was the yellowing paper with the many seals and the words that meant so little or so much. One month, then two, then three, dragged by in silence; a silence which Virginia, and Jane, and Anna, bore with differing degrees of fear and uncertainty, as they waited from day to day for some sign from the gold-seekers; but no word came. The trail and the campfire with the love that watched beside them had spoken for the last time.