The slow hours of the night dragged endlessly. Dawn came softly and Tad called, "Pa." "Yes?" "There's the wagon." Joe peered past his son's shoulder. Far up the valley, hopelessly out of rifle shot, the wagon's canvas top was sharply white in the lightening morning. Mounted Indians were pulling it with ropes, and Joe felt sick to his stomach. This was the wagon that had brought them all the way from Missouri, over prairie, hills, rivers and mountains. This was the wagon that had been their home. Now it was stuffed full of hay from the haystack, and the raiders must have worked all night to get where it was. Now all they had to do was drag it up the slope, find a position directly behind the house, set the hay on fire and send the wagon rolling down. Without exposing a man they could burn the house, and its defenders would be at their mercy. Winterson and Ellis came to stand beside Joe, and they looked at this thing that could not be but was. The wagon turned and stalled sidewise and Joe's heart gave a great leap. But the Indians righted it again, kicking savage heels into their mounts' ribs as they forced them to pull. Slowly the wagon moved up the hill. Joe swallowed a hard lump in his throat. He looked at Emma and the children, and at Martha Winterson, and strode grimly to the rear of the house. The wagon did not appear, and for a moment he cherished the wild hope that it had broken a wheel or become snagged in the trees, and that the Indians would be unable to move it. The sun rose, warming the meadow, and still Joe stared up the hill. After an eternity he saw what he had prayed he would not see. The upper third of the wagon's canvas top was silhouetted against the trees, and smoke was pouring from it. Joe turned to find Winterson and Ellis at his elbow. He said vaguely, "It might miss the house." But he knew that it would not. The besiegers had their one great opportunity and they would not waste it. Joe's hand tightened around the breech of his rifle, and for a second he thought he must have shot. But the shot came from the top of the hill, near the wagon, and it was followed by a volley that was in turn followed by the barking of revolvers. They waited, wondering, and after fifteen minutes, while the burning wagon continued to smoke, they saw the horsemen come down the hill. They were nine men, riding at a walk, and they herded Joe's mules and Ellis's and Winterson's horses ahead of them. Joe breathed, "God Almighty!" It was a prayer, not a curse, and he flung the door open to go out and meet these horsemen who had appeared so providentially. "Told you I'd come!" Sergeant Dunbar called. "Told you I'd come as soon as my hitch was up! I brought a wagon train through with me and they told us at Camp Axton that you were here. We smelled smoke and figured the rest."