This command was delivered to the boy in a manner calculated to impress him with the earnestness of the threat, although it was not our intention to harm Stephenson, and yet the muzzle of a Winchester close to his head caused him to earnestly implore the boy to faithfully do as he was told. From then the minutes dragged like hours. We watched anxiously from our loop-holes for the flash from the young Indian’s revolver. Twenty minutes passed, then thirty, and no shot was fired. Was he playing us false, or had he been captured by the Cheyennes, who in turn might set a trap for us. Thirty-six minutes passed, then a spark flashed in the distance and we counted six shots. This was the critical moment and every ear was listening for the sounds of horses’ hoofs. A few moments later we heard them, as they came out of the ravines. We saw them, too, as they skirted along the dim sky line. We waited a few minutes to give them time to reach the cottonwood tree and then led our horses out and rode rapidly away to the northwest, knowing that the clatter of our horses’ hoofs would mingle with those of the Indian ponies and might readily be taken for those of their own horsemen. Our rifles were in our saddle holsters and our heavy revolvers were in our hands, as we rode in silence. Kinnie was in the lead, while Hayes and I rode behind side by side. Not a word was spoken for more than five hours, until day was breaking, and by the red glow of the eastern sky we saw away down the plains the camp fires and white tents of a troop of cavalry from Fort Morgan. Kinnie burst out into a long, hearty peal of laughter. “What the deuce has struck you now?” asked Hayes. “I forgot to give daddy any change back,” he replied, as he held up a well-filled pocketbook. VII. A COWBOY DUEL. Tom Rawlins rolled out of his blankets from under the chuck wagon with the remark, “I suppose a man shouldn’t be late at his own funeral,” and walking over to the camp-fire, lit his pipe by the glowing embers. Day was breaking, and by a solemn compact entered into with “Kid” Anderson the night before, he would be dead at sunrise. A month before they had exchanged shots in a dance house in Ogallala, after quarreling about a woman. The two cowboys met in North Platte the day before, for the first time since the affair, and each swore the other should die.